by David Miller, Loveland Magazine’s Managing Editor
Loveland, Ohio – “I am super excited about this sip and shop and I know it will be a great event to support Loveland Schools and these small businesses,” said Loveland High School Senior Kate Krabacher.
Kate is a student at Loveland High School and is a member of Tigers Inc. Kate said that she and Tigers Inc are excited to be co-hosting the “Sip and Shop: Mother’s Day Edition” with Lemons and Limes Boutique owner, Wendy Knight. The event will be on April 22nd from 11 AM until 4 PM at the Landing Event Center on the bank of the Scenic Little Miami River in Historic Downtown.
Lemons and Limes is a local small business boutique with locations in Loveland and Mason. Tigers Inc is a nonprofit organization run by a selective group of business-oriented student leaders at Loveland High School.
Kate is also an intern at Lemons and Limes and Wendy said she has been in charge, from “start to finish” of the planning for the Mother’s Day event from day one. Kate reached out to business vendors in the area and persuaded them to be involved, and purchase a space at this event. Wendy said that one of the most important things she wants the community to know is that this is “truly a student led event”
The venue will be set up as a small business market and each vendor will have their own space for a pop-up shop or display.
Last year the event was run by an employee at the Landing Event Center, but she is no longer there, so Tigers Inc took on the responsibility of organizing the event with Wendy at Lemons and Limes.
Kate said that it was a great success last year for all vendors and they are hoping to grow the attendance, even more, this year.
Besides supporting Tigers Inc, this year, the event is supporting a Loveland Elementary School Capital Campaign to fund new tables for the LES cafeteria.
Wendy said that shopping at the Sip and Shop is an excellent opportunity to support local small businesses by buying Mother’s Day gifts, birthday presents, something for yourself, or a graduation gift. She said there will be many items to buy for men and boys as well.
There will be a map provided to attendees that will encourage shoppers to visit the other shops in Historic Downtown and Wendy encourages shoppers to buy a meal at a local restaurant.
The fashion show will feature local “elite celebrity” models you will recognize, teachers, school administrators, and local moms and students. Most of the fashions come from the selection of clothing and accessories found at Lemons and Limes.
Learn more about Kate and Wendy and their excitement about “Sip and Shop: Mother’s Day Edition” in this newest episode of LOVELAND MAGAZINE TV.
Please “Like” and become a “Subscriber” to our YouTube Channel!
Do you want to join the fun and become a vendor? Email Wendy or Kate.
Ellen Main, is a stay-at-home mom of two boys in Loveland Schools: one kindergartener and one first grader. Her family lives in the Belle Meade subdivision.
by Ellen Main
Loveland City School District has an operating levy on the May 2 ballot this year. Because Loveland has not passed a school levy in nine years, they are in desperate need of these funds to maintain their current high quality of education. If the levy is not passed, they will move towards State minimum services. Our students and future students deserve better than this. As a mom of two young Loveland students, I am witness to the outstanding and dedicated faculty, staff, and administration in our community. My experience at a recent school event illustrates this perfectly.
Waiting anxiously for the show to begin, I looked around at all the other parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members sitting in the Loveland Primary School gym and thought how grateful I am to live in this community. After the heartwarming show, during which the look of pride on my son’s face almost made me tear up, we walked through a gallery of children’s art—vibrant paintings, oil pastel drawings, and construction paper weavings covered the hallways from floor to ceiling. My son showed such confidence in finding his art on the walls and explaining it to his family. Then, he led us to his classroom (Ms. Miller, Room 9), where he showed us two beautiful books, one created by him (about koalas) and one created by his classmate, a biography about what makes my son special (my son created one about his classmate too). He proudly showed us all his work, which had an Australian theme (each class had a different country). All of this thanks to the hard work, energy and creativity of Lauren Alten (music teacher) and Kayla McClary (art teacher) as well as the classroom teachers, custodians, administration—too many people to mention.
The “Around the World” Showcase is an example of what makes Loveland Schools such a special place to be. Music, theatre, art, athletics, physical education, robotics and so many other programs we may take for granted won’t be possible much longer if we don’t pass a school levy. Think about the most memorable and important moments of your elementary and secondary education—most likely they were made possible because of school levies being passed.
I was lucky enough to have some extraordinary teachers in the Perrysburg School District in Northwest Ohio. My most memorable experiences had to do with music and theatre, which would not have been available without teachers having the freedom to use their creativity to benefit students both in the classroom and through extracurricular activities. Maybe yours have to do with sports, science club, art, student government, none of which would be possible without our talented educators, who would slowly be cut due to lack of funds. We cannot deny future generations these experiences.
Right now, the employees at Loveland Schools are doing amazing work despite not having the money—92 percent of all Ohio school districts receive more money per student yet we are in the top 2 percent in the state on the Ohio Department of Education scorecard. We cannot keep the talented and hard-working people we have in Loveland Schools now if they feel stressed that they may lose their jobs or if the class sizes are so big they are spending all of their time managing student behavior rather than teaching.
With the passing of the levy on May 2, we can keep not only our schools strong but our community as well. Voting yes for Loveland Schools on May 2 is a vote for our students and future students and also for the well-being of our entire community.
The Oho Statehouse, Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)
The way that the law is written would only complicate the state’s school-funding woes, take money from libraries, and increase property taxes for farmers and homeowners, it added.
It sounds fair. If everybody paid income taxes at the same rate, the rich would pay more because of their higher incomes and the poor would pay less because they make less in the first place.
But an Ohio proposal to enact such a “flat” state income tax ignores a host of other taxes, said a progressive public policy think tank. And the way that the law is written would only complicate the state’s school-funding woes, take money from libraries, and increase property taxes for farmers and homeowners, it added.
“One of the myths that we have to dispel is that flat taxes make things fair,” said Guillermo Bervejillo, a state policy fellow at Policy Matters Ohio. “It’s quite the opposite. One of the things people forget when they talk about income taxes is that there’s a whole array of state taxes.”
Bervejillo was speaking in reference to House Bill 1, which, as the bill number implies, is a top priority of the Ohio House’s Republican leadership. A spokesperson for that leadership didn’t respond to questions about the many criticisms that Policy Matters made of the bill.
One is that many economists have long argued that so-called “flat” income taxes add to the overall tax burden shouldered by the poor and act as yet another means of lightning that of the wealthy.
“There’s use taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, taxes that are generally focused around consumption and use,” Bervejillo said.
Graphic from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
He explained that those kinds of taxes are the same for everybody, no matter her or his income. Buy a $100 pair of shoes in Ohio and you pay $5.75 in state sales tax regardless of whether you make $100 in a minute or in a whole day of work.
“You can only buy so much toilet paper,” Bervejillo said, explaining why sales and excise taxes fall more heavily on the poor. “You can only drive so many miles.”
The cumulative impact of those taxes is that the poor pay much more as a percentage of their income in state and local taxes than do the rich.
“On average, the lowest-income 20% of taxpayers face a state and local tax rate more than 50% higher than the top 1% of households,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said in a report, Who Pays? “The nationwide average effective state and local tax rate is 11.4% for the lowest-income 20% of individuals and families, 9.9% for the middle 20 percent, and 7.4 percent for the top 1%.”
Federal and state income taxes are the few exceptions that were originally structured to be “progressive.” In other words, they were intended to fall most heavily on those with the greatest ability to pay.
And it’s true that if you take those and all other taxes into account, the richest Americans pay a bigger portion of their incomes out in taxes than poorer Americans. But the spread isn’t very wide.
In 2019, the poorest 20% of Americans paid 20.2% of their incomes in taxes, while the richest 1% paid 33.7%, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reported.
But in Ohio if you take just state and local taxes into account, the script is flipped. In 2018, the poorest 20% paid almost twice as much of their income in such taxes — 12.3% — as the richest 1%, who paid just 6.5% of their lavish incomes in state and local taxes, the institute reported.
And if Ohio were to enact a flat income tax, it would come on the heels of other measures in which the state has foregone large sources of revenue largely to the benefit of the wealthy.
Ohio is giving up about $1 billion a year on a tax break for limited liability corporations. It was sold as a way to incentivize mom-and-pop businesses, but a 2017 analysis by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission found that as much as $450 million of that annual benefit was going to the highest 0.5% of Ohio wage earners.
Meanwhile, there’s been no evidence that the cut improved Ohio’s jobs picture. It was 39th among states for job growth in February 2003 — well before the LLC tax cut was implemented, according to data compiled by Arizona State University’s Seidman Institute. By last month, Ohio ranked 46th in year-over-year job growth.
And former Gov. John Kasich created JobsOhio by diverting funds from the state liquor monopoly. It’s spent more than $1 billion on things like incentives for wealthy businesses to locate to Ohio, but the agency has struggled to show that those expenditures have made much of a difference to the state’s jobs picture.
But aside from fairness, Policy Matters raised another objection to HB 1 — it’s not paid for. Working from a fiscal analysis of the bill by the Legislative Services Commission, the group found that after the initial phase-in:
Property taxes on farmers and homeowners would increase at least $600 million a year because of “changes in the bill and the operation of Ohio’s existing property tax limit, known as House Bill 920.”
Schools, libraries and local governments would lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
There would be $780 million in annual net losses to the state that are not paid for in the bill.
Bervejillo said it’s not hard to understand why pain would spread to large swaths of Ohioans from the flat-tax proposal.
“At the end of the day, there’s only two things you can do when you cut taxes on the wealthy,” he said. “You can either cut services — and who depends more on services than low-income people? Or you increase sales and use taxes and gas taxes and cigarette taxes that fall disproportionately on low-income and working-class Ohioans.”
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MARTY SCHLADEN
Marty Schladen has been a reporter for decades, working in Indiana, Texas and other places before returning to his native Ohio to work at The Columbus Dispatch in 2017. He’s won state and national journalism awards for investigations into utility regulation, public corruption, the environment, prescription drug spending and other matters.
The new Mural Unveiled at Loveland High School (Photo provided by Loveland Schools)
Loveland, Ohio – Loveland High School (LHS) has a new mural, thanks to a partnership with the Cincinnati Reds and PNC Bank. The school was selected as the recipient of a “Murals with a Mission.”
Artist Brent Billingsley worked with Loveland High School students to design and paint a mural that spreads a message of hope, depicting the journey from sadness to hope with the help of those around us,
according to a release from the school district.
Students from the LHS Hope Squad took a leadership role in creating this artwork. Hope Squad is a national youth suicide prevention program that includes education, training, and peer intervention.
The mural was unveiled during a celebration on Friday, March 31, with guests from the Reds and PNC Bank in attendance during a full school assembly in the high school gym.
The mural will be on display in the main hallway of the school, where students and guests will pass it every day.
Murals with a Mission, powered by PNC Bank was launched by the Reds organization in 2022 with the intention of creating a mural at high school campuses across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The mission is to elevate positive social messages relevant to each school’s student body. Under the guidance and leadership of local artist Brent Billingsley, students at each location work together to develop a concept, design, and finished product through which fellow students can feel represented.
Both Mason High School and and Princeton High School have previously completed and installed murals as part of the Murals with a Mission initiative
The mural at Mason High School (photo by Cincinnati Reds)
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Loveland, Ohio – It was sunny and warm at the Wicked Pickle in Historic Downtown last Sunday afternoon. That’s where I met singer/songwriter, Jason Ritchie.
In Jason’s intro on his FaceBook page he describes himself as, “I’m just a singer natural born guitar ringer, kind of a clinger to sad old songs.” He is also a project Inspector for the Ohio Department of Transportation and lives in Milford.
Jason is warm and genuinely loves to chat with his audience and play their requests. He seems a Wikipedia of country music and artists. He says, “You yell it, I play it!”[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/eOdUYzcOHzQ”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Loveland, Ohio – The Loveland City School District is asking voters to approve an additional 4.9 mills permanent operating levy that will be on the May 2nd ballot.
Your voter registration and updated Information Form must be postmarked by the voter registration deadline, the 30th day before the election, to be eligible to vote in that election.
April 3rd is your deadline.
Absentee voting begins April 4th.
If you register in person or online, you must do so by the 30th day before the election. You, or another person acting on your behalf, also may deliver your application to your Board of Election offices.
What are the qualifications to register and vote in Ohio?
If you meet all the following requirements, you are qualified to register to vote in Ohio:
You are a citizen of the United States
You will be at least 18 years old on or before the day of the next general election
You will be a resident of Ohio for at least 30 days immediately before the election in which you want to vote
You are not incarcerated (in prison or jail) for a felony conviction
You have not been declared incompetent for voting purposes by a probate court
You have not been permanently disenfranchised for violating the election laws
You are eligible to vote in elections held in your voting precinct 30 days after you are duly registered to vote in this state. Your Board of Elections office will mail you a notice of your voting location. If you do not receive a timely notice, contact them.
7 PROPOSED TAX LEVY (ADDITIONAL) LOVELAND CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
A majority affirmative vote is necessary for passage.
An additional tax for the benefit of Loveland City School District for the purpose of current operating expenses that the county auditor estimates will collect $4,903,000 annually, at a rate not exceeding 4.9 mills for each $1 of taxable value, which amounts to $172 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s appraised value, for a continuing period of time, commencing in 2023, first due in calendar year 2024.
Loveland, Ohio – Team CoUREage 4.0 is a Loveland High School fundraising team for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Emma Steiner, Marcel Mangan, and Orhan Ozbudak were the leaders of a team of over 25 members with a goal throughout a 7-week campaign that ran from February 1st to March 25th to raise as much money and awareness as possible for blood cancer research. Their goal was to raise $100,000.
They raised $214,301 to help fund cancer research and to support cancer patients. This is a record for fundraising for an individual team in Ohio.
At the gala Saturday night at the Great Wolf Lodge in Mason it was announced that a total of $805,365 was raised by all teams.
Emma Steiner said, “My connection to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society began when a favorite middle school teacher of mine, and now mentor, lost her aunt due to Leukemia.” Steiner is a junior at Loveland High School.
Marcel Mangan, Emma Steiner, and Orhan Ozbudak
Steiner was asked to join Loveland’s Team CoUREage last year. She said, “While fundraising, I got to hear so many touching stories of people affected by blood cancer.” That was more than enough to make her want to accept the nomination to be a candidate for this year’s campaign. “Although I don’t have a direct connection to blood cancer, my grandpa passed away from cancer last year, and I fight so that other families don’t have to experience what my grandpa went through.”
LLS’s Student Visionaries of the Year campaign is a seven-week competition among high schools across the Cincinnati area. Loveland was one of 15 teams raising money for blood cancer research, advocacy, patient support, and ultimately, a cure. However, it is not just a competition among these 15 teams, rather it is a combined effort to help LLS find a cure.
The trio built this year’s campaign using the community as its foundation. Since last August, they have been building partnerships with local businesses securing sponsorships, auction items, and organizing events. So far, they have over 10 events planned to help them raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
They surpassed their goal with secured sponsorships with local businesses, community donations, events, and t-shirt sales. One of the biggest ways that the team fundraised is through donations received by each of their 30 team members.
Team CoUREage 4.0
The goal is to not only raise money for blood cancer but also to raise awareness in our Loveland community about Leukemia and Lymphoma.
Background Info about LLS:
LLS is uniquely able to report on the many advances and accomplishments that have occurred since their founding in 1949. From cutting-edge research and precision medicine innovations to legislative victories that improve access to therapies for cancer patients, LLS plays a leading- and often pioneering- role in the fight against blood cancers. Since 2000, approximately 40 percent of all U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved cancer drugs were for blood cancer, and some are now used to treat other forms of cancer and non-malignant diseases. A “win” for blood cancers, therefore, is a win for the cancer community overall.
Rocky is a member of the Congressional Committee for the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War and the Purple Heart Foundation. He is an active board member of the Warriors to Citizens Foundation, which is devoted to helping soldiers, police, fire, EMTs, and their families recover from the psychological harm caused by career-induced stress.
Rocky will share his story about his time in Vietnam and his amazing journey to recovery from injuries sustained while in the service.
6 PM: Pre-event live music from the ‘60s and ‘70s with The Remains
Live music from the ‘60s and ‘70s with The Remains
Concessions available for purchase throughout the event
7 PM: Tribute program begins
Rocky Bleier, Super Bowl Champ and Vietnam Veteran
Entertainment acts, including Bob Hope impersonator and tribute by Bill Cunningham
Stories of Vietnam veterans
Recognition of veterans from all eras and military branches
Only about three months ago, Ohio lawmakers passed a wide-ranging elections bill that will require voters present a photo ID when they cast a ballot. But it didn’t start out that way. Lawmakers bolted on the photo ID requirements only at the last minute.
The bill began as a proposal to eliminate August special elections. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Township, argued there should only be two elections a year “a primary election, and a general election.”
“August special elections are costly to taxpayers and fail to engage a meaningful amount of the electorate in the process,” he argued.
So why are lawmakers now preparing to un-eliminate the elections they just scrapped?
The Senate’s proposal
Sens. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, and Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, introduced a bill Wednesday that would, once again, allow August special elections.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — MARCH 22: State Rep. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, speaks to reporters after the House Constitutional Resolutions committee meeting first hearing on HJR 1 that would require 60% vote to approve any constitutional amendment, March 22, 2023, at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)
Despite the most recent August election barely clearing 8% in statewide voter turnout, the sponsors specifically add legislature-initiated amendments to the brief list of proposals that can go on an August ballot. Citizen-led amendments can still only go before voters in November
McColley and Gavarone’s change of heart has to do with one such proposal working its way through the Ohio House. That resolution would put a proposal on the ballot raising the threshold for passage of all future amendments from a simple majority to 60%.
After that resolution’s hearing, House minority leader Allison Russo criticized the unnecessary expense. Of Republicans’ about face, she said, “the hypocrisy here has no bounds.”
“Really what this is about is silencing the voice of voters and shutting down direct democracy,” she argued, “Because again, this is a legislature who has no interest in being checked by voters — they picked their voters.”
The sponsors readily acknowledge the expense of their gambit. The bill appropriates $20 million to help county boards conduct a special election. If lawmakers were to wait about three months, they could save that money. As it happens, there’s an election every November, and it’s relatively cheap to add one more question.
But Senate president Matt Huffman is calculating the question differently, and to him, the math adds up.
Huffman’s take
“If we save 30,000 lives as a result of spending $20 million, I think that’s a great thing,” Huffman told reporters after a Senate session Thursday. “Now I know a lot of people don’t look at it that way, but that’s the way I look at it.”
His comments are an explicit connection between efforts to raise the threshold for amending the constitution and undermining an abortion rights amendment. Organizers are currently gathering signatures for that proposal and hope to have it on the ballot this November.
The senate president over-shot the mark, however. Department of Health statistics put the number of induced abortions at more like 21,000-22,000 per year on average.
Huffman defended the push for an August election. He said he’d expected the House to have the supermajority resolution passed in time for the May primaries.
COLUMBUS, OH — JANUARY 03: Newly elected Ohio House Speaker Rep. Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) gives brief remarks at the opening day ceremonies of the 135th General Assembly of the State of Ohio, January 3, 2023, in the House Chamber at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)
Still Huffman attempted to draw a distinction between the current proposal and lawmakers eliminating August elections as a standing “as-needed” date on the election calendar.
“Do I have turnout concerns in school levies in August because very few people come out, and they’re done when people are on vacation, and they don’t know about it? And liquor permits and things like that, that typically happen? Yeah.” Huffman said.
“But I think in this case, it’s something that a lot of people are going to be very fired up about,” he added.
Huffman said he plans to have the special elections measure passed by mid to late April. He wants the House to have “ample consideration,” before the deadline to get the supermajority amendment on the ballot.
House headwinds
If House Speaker Jason Stephens has his way, though, the special elections bill may be dead on arrival.
“We just voted to not have those anymore just a few months ago,” Stephens told reporters Thursday. “The county election officials I’ve talked to are not interested in having it.”
“I’m frankly not interested in having an election in August,” he said.
A new lawsuit claims the Ohio Ballot Board made the wrong call when they approved the validity of a constitutional amendment proposal on abortion.
In the lawsuit, filed this week with the Ohio Supreme Court, Cincinnati attorney Curt Hartman asks the court to demand the ballot board vacate their March 13 decision, in which they said the proposed ballot language to cement abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution attempts to make changes to only one constitutional issue.
The lawsuit also wants the state Ballot Board to “issue a determination that the foregoing initiative petition contains more than one proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution,” divide the petition into separate initiatives and certify those with the Ohio Attorney General.
To prove the separate issues, the lawsuit cites the overturned legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade, in which abortion was described as “inherently different” than other personal rights. Because abortion is “inherently different,” parties in the lawsuit argue it represents a different issue than “one’s own reproductive decisions,” which is part of the ballot initiative, therefore “does not and cannot relate to a single general object or purpose.”
The lawsuit acknowledges in a footnote that supporters of the ballot initiative “have not, to date, provided any explanation of the distinction between a decision concerning ‘continuing one’s own pregnancy’ versus concerning ‘abortion.’
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost saw the initiative before the board, and certified the amendment proposal in a separate process. In his letter confirming that the proposal could then move on to the ballot board, Yost made his own comments on the issue.
“I cannot base my determination on the wisdom or folly of a proposed amendment as a matter of public policy,” Yost wrote in his letter on the amendment proposal.
The lawsuit now sets the state, specifically Yost, up to defend the decision of the ballot board, despite any personal feelings he may have on the initiative itself.
The board made no decisions on the merits of the issue, though state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, made a point to speak out against the issue during the board meeting, saying she was “horrified at the thought of this amendment.”
Hartman is representing Margaret DeBlase and John Giroux, both members of the Cincinnati Right to Life. Giroux spoke during the Ohio Ballot Board meeting.
“If this is about one issue, this amendment is about abortion, and that’s plain and simple,” Giroux told the board. “They want to advance abortion in our state constitution.”
In the lawsuit, Hartman argues there was “absolutely no discussion or debate whatsoever” by the members of the board, other than Gavarone’s comments.
Parties challenging the decision say the ballot board’s action, or lack thereof, “constitutes an abuse of discretion and/or an act in clear disregard of applicable legal provisions.”
The Ohio Supreme Court has not decided whether or not they will accept the lawsuit for review.
Pro-abortion rights groups are facing a July 5 deadline to gather signatures in support of placing the petition on the ballot in November. That deadline might also lie in the shadow of an August special election now, with Senate President Matt Huffman expressing interest in placing a measure on the ballot that month to increase the threshold needed to amend the constitution by changing it to 50% plus one vote to 60%.
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