CLEVELAND, Ohio – With the threat of a referendum to completely abolish property taxes in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine asked a task force to recommend ways to assuage homeowners’ increasing tax burden.
We’re talking about the failure to address the big picture issue on Today in Ohio.
Listen online here.
Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editorial board member Lisa Garvin, impact editor Leila Atassi and content director Laura Johnston.
You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.
Here’s what we’re asking about today:
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appointed a property tax crisis working group, largely devoid of participants from Ohio’s cities, to come up with a way to provide relief to taxpayers. Early recommendations all would have devastated public schools. What does the final report suggest?
Let’s stick with property taxes. Cuyahoga County has a lot of them that are unpaid, so what are they doing to recoup some of the money the county has lost to delinquent taxpayers?
One more on taxes. This time, income. The cash-stared city of North Ridgeville wants residents to raise the income tax rate, but there appears to be a huge problem with the way the ballot question is written. How might it doom this move?
Everyone predicted this would happen, but when our lawmakers fail us this badly, it deserves more discussion. How did Ohio’s elected lawmakers refuse yet again to do one of their most important jobs?
One of the big Ohio impacts of the latest Trump presidency has been huge cuts to education, and Ohio Democrats are trying to claw some of them back. What is the Gear Up program, and why do the Dems think it should be restored?
Sandhill cranes are striking birds, standing quite tall, having enormous wingspans and notable for a bright red patch on their heads. A lot of people likely have never seen them in the wild. Are chances improving for that?
A Cleveland startup has a robot for a job that’s been done manually for decades. What is Roadprintz and what does it do?
We knew we had a bus driver shortage in Northeast Ohio, but has it become dire? What happened Tuesday in Lake County?
Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which closed a century-long era of uncountable sinkings on the Great Lakes. If you thought you knew all about this ship, partly from the famous Gordon Lightfoot song, think again. Who is the author coming to Cleveland on Monday to relate all sorts of interesting facts from his new book, the Gales of November, and what are some highlights?
More Today in Ohio
Republicans own this shutdown: Why JD Vance’s blame game falls flat
They escaped the Modell law, but the Browns can’t escape their lease violation
End of the road for ticket quotas: Did Ohio just kill the speed trap?
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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.
Chris Quinn (00:00.803)
Well, the Cleveland Heights mayor could not resist one final act of venality as he walked out the door after his recall. He fired the law director in a long, long winded letter that just seems mean. Why would he do it? I hope that the new mayor fixes that. And more importantly, I hope Tony Cuda, acting mayor, releases that video that the former mayor fought us so hard on that we got a court ruling saying it’s public.
It’s Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveham.com and the Plane Dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin, Leila Johnson.
Leila Attasi and Laura Johnston and yes, my voice is still missing a bit. So bear with us. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s appointed property tax working group, largely devoid of participants from Ohio cities, came up with some ways to provide relief to taxpayers. It took a while to figure out what they were because they passed them without releasing them. By the end of the day, we had them. Early recommendations would have devastated public schools.
Lisa (00:42.476)
You
Chris Quinn (01:10.285)
Laura, the final one’s kinda due too, right?
Laura (01:13.438)
There’s no real new ideas here. This is 20 recommendations. They range from technical fixes to new relief programs. They’re meant to give legislators a menu of options. As we keep saying on this podcast, nobody’s looking at the big picture of taxes. They’re just like, hey, pick and choose like a cafeteria what you think that you can do to give some taxpayers relief and hopefully not devastate schools, libraries, park districts because these ideas
Generally don’t have any buy from the state. They’re not giving more money from the state. So any relief you give to taxpayers is going to be hurting the public governments that they support. So some of them are already in play. House Bill 186 is one of the recommendations. That’s the one that will limit how school taxes increase for about 75 % of Ohio’s districts. Generally the rural ones with the tax rates on the 20 mil floor that we talked about last week.
There’s an idea about a modified version of House Bill 156, expands property tax credits for seniors and disabled homeowners with limited incomes. House Bill 154, which would give school districts the ability to disapprove of a community reinvestment area programs that affect them. Those are, you know, when the taxes get collected, where they go. There’s other property tax legislation they recommend that would phase out permanent levies by requiring expiration dates, letting voters reduce millage after a levy is approved.
There’s three ideas that Dewine has already rejected and vetoed that were in the state budget that they brought them back. But instead of capping school district savings at 40%, remember the idea was saying you can’t carry over that much money, which school districts said, hey, that’s how we budget. get more money from the levy than we need at the beginning because by the end we’re really going to need it. They raised that cap to a hundred percent. They brought back the proposal to let county budget commissions trim levy saying, no, you don’t really need all that money that voters just approved.
but only after five years of that, clear definition of what’s unnecessary or excessive. And we we’ve talked about scrapping emergency levies, which the confusion over what’s an emergency levy and what’s a renewal and what’s a replacement is confusing. But they’re saying the emergency levy should be limited to districts in fiscal trouble or hit by extraordinary events like a quote, act of God.
Chris Quinn (03:34.147)
Look, this is a failure. They did not come up with a real solution to the property tax crisis. The legislature and governors caused the crisis by cutting income taxes, cutting what the state provides to local governments, and that resulted in property taxes going up. They also provided lots of business tax breaks. So this put a lot more burden on the residential property owner. That’s it. That’s what happened.
The only way they’re offering to fix it is to lock what property taxes could be raised. That’s gonna stick it to every school district and every government instead of looking at the big picture, as you said, saying, what are our priorities as a state? Let’s figure out how to pay for them. They just looked at little band-aids instead of a macro fix, and it’s a failure.
Laura (04:13.495)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Quinn (04:30.511)
And part of the reason it’s a failure is they didn’t have anybody from a single city on the thing. It was just a bunch of people from rural areas. And the legislature immediately said, yeah, maybe we got a bunch of people looking at this, too. Nobody is looking at this as anything other than a way to stick it to Ohio’s public schools yet again. And that’s wrong. The people of this state, by not paying attention to this, are participating.
in the erosion and destruction of their public schools.
Laura (05:02.957)
I would argue it’s a failure because this is just a stopgap. The only reason Mike DeWine put this commission together was because he didn’t like the ideas in the state budget. And the only reason those were in the state budget is because people near the end of that term, you know, getting close to the budget were screaming about property taxes and the idea of abolishing them altogether came up with this referendum that’s going to be on the ballot probably.
next year. And so everything’s been done in desperation. They’re just throwing things out like, maybe this will work, maybe this will work. Nobody’s taking a big picture looking, saying, actually, we want to solve this crisis. And we want to work with everyone in the state to find the best solution. If they did, I think they’d have to look at all those tax breaks they gave to rich people and the businesses and the tax exemptions that Anna Staver has written so intelligently about all of the property that is not taxed and say, what are our priorities for us as a state?
What do we want to accomplish and what’s the fairest way to do that?
Chris Quinn (06:00.065)
I keep hearing from people who say that they support public schools, but they say the only way to force these do-nothing lawmakers and the governor to fix this really is to abolish the property taxes and put them in a jackpot. Because if voters go and abolish property taxes and 20 billion plus goes out the window, they’re going to have to figure out a way to pay for public schools. And they won’t do it.
Laura (06:21.197)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Quinn (06:28.675)
This is a failure. The legislature is a failure. And so some smart people are saying, you know what? Let’s abolish the property taxes. Let’s stick it to these bozos who won’t do their job and get a real macro look, a 30,000 height view look at our tax system, what our spending priorities are, what we care about, and do it right. And it’ll be a crisis if we abolish the property taxes, but it will actually force these folks.
to do some real work.
Laura (07:00.001)
Well, I think that’s what people are thinking, right? The whole burn it all down. And yesterday men are closed school because they didn’t have enough school bus drivers. Right. So like you just think about one thing happens. What if the entire system broke down?
Chris Quinn (07:06.721)
Yeah, we’re going to be talking about that.
Chris Quinn (07:14.371)
You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Let’s stick with property taxes. Cuyahoga County has a lot of them that are unpaid. So what are they doing to recoup some of the money the county has lost to delinquent taxpayers? Layla.
Leila (07:26.379)
The county is getting pretty aggressive about these unpaid property taxes and we’re talking about $33 million owed across more than 3000 parcels. Treasurer Brad Kromes told County Council this week that the county plans to sell those debts as tax lien certificates to a private collector called NAR Solutions. That sale could happen in November, but homeowners still have time to pay up or get on a payment plan before then.
The county says this is about protecting schools and local services that rely on property tax revenue. If the sale goes through, the revenue would be split with the majority, about 61%, flowing directly to school districts, plus shares for the county municipalities and libraries. Now, the county is building in protections so struggling homeowners don’t immediately lose their homes. Properties in high poverty, what they call equity zones.
homes under $100,000 in accounts already on payment plans are off the table for this tax lien sale. And even when liens are sold, NAR will have to offer payment plans with capped interest, which the county says is actually less punishing than the current system of compounding interest. The last time Cuyahoga sold tax liens like this was back in 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic. Chrome says this method works better
than slow, costly foreclosures. And he stresses that this isn’t really chasing the last dollar, but making sure everyone pays their fair share to keep schools and safety forces and health services afloat.
Chris Quinn (09:01.305)
All right. But let’s be realistic here. One, I get why the county has to get this money. They’re not being paid what the road. Everybody has to pay their first share. You can’t be delinquent forever on your taxes. The county has to do something about it. I understand why they they take this method instead of foreclosing. But make no mistake, when a private company buys the tax liens, they’re doing it to make money. They’re going to go after people and say, pay up.
Leila (09:14.135)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Quinn (09:30.959)
They can put all the gentle language around it they want, but there’s a profit motive now for this company to get people to pay, and they are going to put pressure on them that’s not there now. There’s no way you can say it’s not, and it’s thousands of people that are gonna get hit up in a tough economy. It’s a horrible situation, because if you don’t pay your taxes, then I have to pay more, because the county needs money to run, and everybody does have to pay their fair share.
I do think what we talked about in the first story, we’ve stuck it to ourselves with all the tax breaks we’ve given out. They’re staggering. And we’ve stuck it to ourselves by exempting business from a lot of property taxes. But the simple fact is they’ve got to do it. Jim Rukakis used to do this. It was always controversial. But people are going to feel pain no matter how many pretty words they put around their press release yesterday.
Leila (10:26.497)
That’s true. Yes, think the payment plans though feel like a fair and humane way to go about recouping that money. So with this plan, if a homeowner resists a payment plan or still doesn’t pay after the lien is sold, foreclosure is still on the table, like you said, but it’s not immediate. The county says that the earliest that process could start is a year after the sale. And even then, NAR has to give people
multiple chances to catch up. They’ve built in grace periods and reentry options for payment plans. Still, if someone flat out won’t comply with this or falls too far behind, the lien holder can take them to court and that’s when the property itself is at risk. But like you said, everyone has to pay their fair share. So pay what you can on a payment plan is the solution here.
Chris Quinn (11:21.871)
The county could have offered payment plans without a profit motive for a private company. This is just expedient for the county to get its money. And they need it because as we keep saying, they’ve spent profligately, irresponsibly, and they’re in the red. You are listening to Today in Ohio. One more on taxes, this time it’s income. The cash-starved city of North Ridgeville wants residents to raise the income tax rate. But there appears to be a pretty huge problem with the way the ballot question is written.
How might that doom this move, Leila?
Leila (11:54.626)
This is an interesting dilemma. yeah, Northridgeville, they say that they found this way to solve two problems at once. They want to bring in new money for city services by increasing the income tax while also lowering the tax bills for most residents with a tax credit. The trick is, know, pairing these two together. On paper, about 80 % of taxpayers would come out ahead under this plan. But the wrinkle here…
is that the ballot voters will see in November only spells out the tax increase. There’s no mention of the credit. City officials say it’s guaranteed to get the credit in there because the ballot refers to an ordinance that contains both the tax hike and the tax credit. Still, that’s left a lot of residents really uneasy, wondering if the city could back out later. Avon, on the other hand, which is something that
reporter Hannah Drowne learned, Yvonne learned this lesson the hard way years back. Their own tax proposal failed when the ballot language wasn’t clear. It did the same thing. It mentioned only the tax increase and not the credit. So when they tried again this spring to get a tax increase passed, they insisted on spelling out both the tax hike and the tax credit, and it passed when voters had that language before them.
So North Ridgeville, by contrast, may have really set itself up for the same kind of defeat that Avon faced the first time around. And the stakes are pretty high in Ridgeville. The city’s looking at a projected budget shortfall by 2027, and leaders have warned that cuts to police and fire and infrastructure could follow if this doesn’t pass. Ironically, you know, the voters who stand to save money may end up rejecting this, but that’s because it’s not written clearly on the ballot.
Chris Quinn (13:46.039)
Yeah, we’ve been talking for months about how elected leaders today don’t operate in good faith. In old days, you could trust them if they said, yeah, we’ll pass something to guarantee you get this break. I wouldn’t trust them. I wouldn’t trust them at all. And the fact that our reporter Hannah Drown could easily find what happened in Avon and these folks in North Ridgeville could not do that tells you everything you know about how incompetent they are. I’d vote against this. I don’t think they’re protected.
You know, they’re saying, well, we’ll have to pass it. They don’t have to pass anything. There’s nothing in Ohio law that says a council member has to vote for something. They all get to choose how they vote. Otherwise, why have them? And they could renege. I wouldn’t trust it. I’d vote it down and make them do what Aydemann did. This is a enormous mistake on their part. And I think it all is part of the lead up to the recall because there’s true incompetence in this city as
Hannah’s reporting has repeatedly shown.
Leila (14:46.795)
Yeah, what’s really fueling this confusion are these completely different reads on the same state law. Northridgeville’s bond council told them the statute only allows a tax increase to appear on the ballot, not a credit. So they left that out. And Yvonne pushed back on that interpretation and said that, you know, you need clear language. And when we tried to get a straight answer from the state or even the Lorraine County Board of Elections, they both kind of shrugged and punted and said, go back to the cities to figure this out.
Chris Quinn (15:15.748)
But-
Leila (15:16.481)
There is a true legal gray area that I’m not exactly sure what’s, but that’s what’s driving the skepticism among the voters is, and it’s rampant on social media. Voters in North Ridgeville are very anxious about this.
Chris Quinn (15:28.589)
Yeah, I’d vote no. Look, Avon did it. The precedent’s there. You can do this, and they didn’t do it. I would not trust them at all. That’s the way government works today. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Everyone predicted this would happen, Lisa, but when our lawmakers fail us this badly, it deserves our discussion. How did Ohio’s elected lawmakers again refuse to do one of the most important jobs they had?
Lisa (15:45.004)
you
Lisa (15:57.876)
So yesterday was the state constitutional deadline for the Republicans to pass congressional maps with bipartisan support. But that all ended in gridlock yesterday. The redistricting commission has until October 31st now to pass a new map with Democratic votes. If not, this will go back to the legislature and then they can approve maps without Democratic support. So the GOP, to be clear, has no maps. We’ve seen no maps.
They’re expected to increase their seats to 12 or 13. They currently now have 10 or 15 congressional seats in Ohio, but it appears they’re gonna just run out the clock and so they can just, you know, approve the maps without Democrats. Republican from Claremont County, Adam Byrd says, we’ve got time. We’ll follow the process through the end of November. But Democratic Senator, Nikki Antonio of Lakewood says, Byrd’s statement makes me very pessimistic.
that the GOP will do anything besides wait until November and then unilaterally pass their own maps. The Democrats aren’t going to support any maps that increase Republican seats, but they’re open to maps that are more GOP friendly than the Dems’ initial maps that gave the Republicans the advantage in eight of 15 congressional districts. Yesterday was the second of two hearings. The audience was vocally critical at times.
They actually laughed derisively when Senator Jane Timken asked Antonio, the word fairness isn’t in the Constitution, is it? And, you know, Antonio and others are saying, why are you holding hearings if you have no maps?
Chris Quinn (17:35.779)
Look, people have to realize this was not contemplated. What was contemplated in the constitutional amendment is that our leaders would work in good faith to not propose a map at all before the deadline is is not working in good faith. It’s sleazy beyond words. They are abandoning their duty to Ohioans. The Republicans in the Ohio legislature basically just gave the finger to the entire state saying we don’t care what
you expected from our constitutional amendment, we’re going to do whatever we want. And that’s horrifying. That’s not what government is supposed to be. They should have put forward a map. There should have been discussions with the Democrats. If they couldn’t come to an agreement, OK, there’s a fallback. But by not even putting forth a map, they are basically abandoning their promise to do their job. It’s a sad state of affairs in Ohio.
Matt Huffman should be ashamed of himself. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. One of the big Ohio impacts, the latest Trump presidency has been huge cuts to education and Ohio Democrats are trying to claw some of them back. Laura, what is the gear up program and why do the Dems think it should be restored?
Laura (18:52.481)
This is gaining early awareness and readiness for undergraduate programs. That’s the acronym and it’s a discretionary grant program that affects 16,000 students across Ohio, $28 million, trying to help low income students who are prepared to enter and succeed in post-secondary education. These services include tutoring, mentorship, career exploration, leadership development. Basically kids who might struggle in college or might not even apply.
helps them succeed there so they can graduate, get degrees and get good jobs that improve the economy. So Congress members from both parties have said they’d like to retain many of these programs, but the Republicans and Trump cut them because of DEI concerns. So Chantel Brown, along with Amelia Sykes, Marcy Capter, Joyce Beatty and Greg Landsman, Cincinnati, sent this letter on Tuesday to Education Secretary Lindyck McMahon, who was just here, remember, last week crowing about charter schools.
saying thousands of kids going to lose access to proven supports that foster academic readiness and they want the money back.
Chris Quinn (19:56.867)
I think this was part of the willy-nilly cutting they did as they came into office just to make it look like they were doing something quickly. Hopefully, proper review and examination of this will bring some of it back.
Laura (20:04.29)
Mm-hmm.
Laura (20:12.321)
I hope, but you know, they’re so anti-DEI that they could put up stats about who this is helping and saying it’s not fair to white wealthy kids. I don’t know. I don’t have a whole lot of faith in this administration to be fair.
Chris Quinn (20:28.821)
No, that’s not been its hallmark. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Sandtail cranes are striking birds standing quite tall, having enormous wingspans and being notable for a bright red patch, a scarlet patch on their heads. A lot of people in our part of the world though probably have never seen them in the wild, Lisa. Are the chances of that improving?
Lisa (20:51.244)
Yes, and I’m thrilled to know this. didn’t know you could even see sandhill cranes in Ohio. In Texas, they would, you know, descend on the rice fields and you’ve never seen anything until you’ve seen a field full of cranes doing the mating dance. It’s awesome. So the Ohio Department of Natural Resources did a survey in 31 Ohio counties back in April.
Chris Quinn (21:06.189)
No, it’s hilarious.
Lisa (21:14.624)
They found 428 Sandhill cranes. That’s 4 % above the 412 they spotted last year. The counties were chosen because they have marshes and wet meadows that are good nesting grounds for Sandhill cranes. Geauga was one of the top counties and about the only one in Northeast Ohio, well, not quite, for breeding cranes. They tend to gather around the Lidu Public Hunting Area, the Blue Heron Preserve and Headwaters Park. Wayne County was number one with 101
Sandhill cranes Lucas County had 97 Ottawa 59 Geauga had 51 crane spotted in Sandusky County had 19. Will Bab with ODNR says they’re really hard to spot in April and it’s really hard to find their nest. But fall and winter is a good time to see them. You have to go to like wetlands and then harvested farm fields. Like I said, they love the rice fields in Texas. They were endangered in Ohio. There’s still a species of concern.
but breeding cranes started coming back in 1987 and they’ve just expanded since then.
Chris Quinn (22:19.535)
They have so many of them in Michigan. It’s odd that we have a dearth of them here. One of my first encounters with them is we were in Michigan and we were walking our dog and I’m hearing this frightening sound. mean, they have this sound you could hear from a half mile away. And the closer we got to the cemetery, the more deafening it was. And it turned out there were 20 of them in there, all standing close together, just doing this chortling sound that is, it’s not pretty, but…
Lisa (22:32.48)
Yes.
Chris Quinn (22:49.145)
but it’s very striking. They are beautiful birds. When they spread their wings and do that dance you were talking about, it’s like you’re looking at a pterodactyl. I they are the biggest birds I’ve seen in the mainland US other than the condors out west. So it’ll be cool if they come here.
Lisa (23:04.81)
Yeah, they actually are the largest birds in North America, them and the whooping cranes. And the only difference between the two is that whooping cranes are white.
Chris Quinn (23:14.551)
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful Burt’s. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Layla, Cleveland startup has a robot for a job that’s been done manually for decades. What is road prints and what does it do?
Leila (23:27.365)
Well, Road Prince wants to change the way cities paint their streets. Instead of sending crews into traffic with stencils and rollers, which is very dangerous and slow and usually done overnight, they’ve built this robotic system that’s mounted on a pickup truck. A robotic arm swings out, paints arrows, bike symbols, crosswalks. They even do custom lettering. And then the operator never has to leave the cab.
The company was co-founded by Wyatt Newman, a Case Western engineering professor, and Sam Bell, a Cleveland Heights mechanic who used to run a shop called The Lusty Wrench. They’ve spent seven years building this with backing from family, friends, and $1.5 million in National Science Foundation grants. And now they’ve landed their first buyer. It’s the Missouri Department of Transportation. The system can handle about 80 different federally approved road symbols.
It will even drop cones before and after painting. And it uses paint that dries in 10 minutes so traffic can move quickly again. Newman says the department will make back its first half a million investment in about two years, thanks to labor and safety savings. So, you know, this is great. The routes are local. The truck is built in Avon Lake. The paint comes from Mentor. And Road Prince is headquartered on Cleveland’s East Side. So what a cool…
What a cool startup.
Chris Quinn (24:53.679)
Okay, I’m been around long enough. remember the Lusty Ranch. was right in Cleveland Heights, but I watched the video this thing and it did not seem very quick and efficient to me. And I’ve watched people paint the streets and it is efficient. They’re very quick at it. I don’t think this is going to be faster. Maybe it’s safer, but when I was watching the video that they posted, it seemed very awkward to me.
Leila (25:11.168)
Interesting.
Chris Quinn (25:23.063)
I was thinking, God, it would just be quicker to go do it the old-fashioned way and be done with it.
Leila (25:27.809)
Why do you think it took so long? Did it seem like the machine was just getting glitchy or something?
Chris Quinn (25:30.255)
it now would do a sweep. It would do a sweep like it would do a 12 inch sweep. Then it would reset and then it would come back and do another little sweep. then, and it just, wasn’t, if you’ve ever watched the people that do this, they’re quite skilled at it. It’s kind of amazing how fast they can do it sometimes without using stencils. So I don’t know. I mean, it’s great that this might be safer because I don’t know how many people get hurt painting the lines.
Leila (25:41.005)
Chris Quinn (25:59.949)
But watching it did not make me feel like it was an inefficient effort.
Leila (26:03.851)
Yeah, they say that this is more about shifting the work than anything to make it less dangerous, because these are dangerous assignments standing in traffic at night with stencils and rollers. So hopefully that is the outcome, even if it does, I guess, take longer.
Chris Quinn (26:15.448)
Yeah.
Chris Quinn (26:21.423)
All right, you’re listening to Today in Ohio. We knew we had a school bus driver shortage in Northeast Ohio, but Lisa, has it become seriously dire? What happened Tuesday in Lake County?
Lisa (26:33.568)
Yeah, the Mentor Public School District had to cancel their classes yesterday because they didn’t have enough bus drivers to serve all their routes. So the school district message to parents said that we couldn’t cover all the routes due to a large number of absences in the transportation department. They apologized for the late notice. It went out about 6.15 a.m., probably as people were just getting ready to go out the door.
Superintendent Craig Heath, in a letter to one of our news partners, WKYC, says we have 48 routes, including special education, private and parochial school students. Two full-time driver positions are unfilled currently. They’re already stretched thin. And then yesterday, five drivers called in absence, three of them at the last minute. So they didn’t make the decision to close schools lightly.
but they anticipate resuming regular operations the rest of the week. And they also, as an aside in the letter said, we’re actively recruiting new bus drivers. If you’re interested in, then they provided a link to their website, you know, this, yeah, this is bad. You know, we were, we’ve talked months ago about how some of these school districts are strained by having to take kids to private and parochial schools that are like an hour away.
Chris Quinn (27:46.863)
Right, that’s I’m sure part of the problem. As a kid, I would love this. You don’t just have snow days, now you have school bus days. I was talking to somebody involved in economic development a couple of weeks back, and they’re concerned about the dearth of potential employees in Northeast Ohio. So much so that they’re thinking of how do you keep people from 65 to 75 in the workplace if…
they wish to be. And I imagine it’s for things like this, because there just aren’t enough people to do it. And then what do you do if you’re a school does you can’t cancel school repeatedly because you don’t people to drive the buses. So what is the answer? And I think one of the answers might be, they’re going to try and talk people into retiring later. You’re listening to Today in Ohio, we’re going to leave it there. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Laila. Thank you, Laura. Thanks for listening to Today in Ohio. We’ll be back Thursday to talk about the news.