Good morning, Cincinnati! Here are your morning headlines.
• Cincinnati Parks Director Willie Carden is under fire again. This time for messing with one of a reporter’s all time favorite things: public records. Carden recently changed the retention schedule, a listing of public records available in the Parks Department for public use, without state or local approval prompting questions from State Auditor Dave Yost. But strangely enough, Carden appears to be unsure of what the retention schedule even is. The Enquirer reports when they asked him something about it while covering election issues, he responded that he didn’t know what it was, and that it wasn’t part of his administration. An attorney for the City Hall issued a statement saying the whole thing was a misunderstanding by the department’s staff, who didn’t know they needed approval prior to changing the schedule. The Parks Department has been under scrutiny in the past few months for top officials’ pay and campaign donations brought on by Mayor John Cranley’s election push for a parks tax levy, which failed at the polls.
• Cincinnati may get a new police chief by the end of this year, and it looks like he already might be getting a raise. City Council voted in committee yesterday to increase the top salary for police and fire chiefs to $165,000 a year. Former police chief Jeffrey Blackwell was making $135,000 a year when he was fired last September. The only candidate for the position is currently interim chief Eliot Isaac, who has hired Democratic Party Chair Tim Burke to negotiate his salary. City Manager Harry Black has said he hopes to have a new chief in place by the end of this year.
• The recent mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., the 355th in the country this year, has reignited the heated debate on gun control. While many have demanded further restrictions on guns, Boone County Sheriff Michael Helmig posted a message on his Facebook page requesting that those with conceal and carry permits carry their weapons for the safety of themselves and others. He called on his fellow Kentuckians to uphold the second amendment and protect the country from foreign and domestic terrorism.
• Several Greater Cincinnati school districts have made Niche’s list of top school districts. The San Francisco-based start-up that uses data to rank schools put Indian Hill Exempted Village School District as ninth on its list of the 100 best school districts in the U.S. Also making an appearance is Sycamore Community School District at no. 66, Wyoming City School District at no. 69, Mason City School District at no. 79 and Mariemont City School District at no. 93. To see the list for yourself and an explanation of their methodology, or to guess my own home school district, which is somewhere on the list, but is far from Ohio, click here.
• Cincinnati’s also made a list of one of the fastest growing areas for the creative classes. The Atlantic‘s CityLab found Cincinnati has a 21 percent growth in the creative class from 2000 to 2014. It’s nestled comfortably between Salt Lake City and Charlotte. The post also has more fun maps and facts and figures so check it out.
• The Trump-Kasich war of 2015 continues. Gov. and GOP presidential candidate John Kasich has recently taken on the strategy of attacking fellow headline-grabbing GOP candidate and real estate tycoon Donald Trump. In response, Trump has released a 15 second video on Instagram that combines a speech given by Kasich with the sound of crickets while Trump is shown speaking to a roaring crowd, leaving just one obvious question for viewers: When will these two grow up?
• Trump has again succeeded in making headlines for another extreme, ill-informed statement. Yesterday, Trump called on the nation’s leaders to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. until authorities have figured out exactly what happened in the Dec. 2, San Bernardino, Calif. shooting that left 14 dead at a social services center by two Islamic extremists. Trump’s comments, unsurprisingly, have been met with criticism across the country from many including Rick Kriseman, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Fla., who tweeted Monday night that he was banning Trump from his city until “we understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps.”
Email me at nkrebs@citybeat.com for story tips, questions, comments or concerns.
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2015.
