Every time his kids cough, Dave Hisey’s mind starts to race. Is it cancer? Is it coming back?

His oldest daughter, diagnosed with leukemia nearly five years ago when she was 13, is in remission. His 12-year-old son has another year of chemotherapy for a different type of leukemia. And his 9-year-old daughter is scared she’ll be next.

Hisey is not alone in fearing the worst. Just about every mom and dad in this rural northern Ohio town gets nervous whenever their children get a sinus infection or a stomachache lingers. It’s hard not to panic since mysterious cancers have sickened dozens of area children in recent years.

Since 1996, 35 children have been diagnosed — and three have died — of brain tumors, leukemia, lymphoma, and other forms of cancer — all within a 12-mile wide circle that includes two small towns and farmland just south of Lake Erie. With many of the diagnoses coming between 2002 and 2006, state health authorities declared it a cancer cluster, saying the number and type of diagnoses exceed what would be expected statistically for so small a population over that time.

“All you think about is what happened to these kids,” said Donna Hisey, 43, the mother whose family has been devastated by cancer. “Is it gone? Or is it still here? What is it?!”

After three years of exhaustive investigation, no cause is known. Investigators have tested wells and public drinking water, sampled groundwater and air near factories and checked homes, schools and industries for radiation.

They also set up a network of air monitors across eastern Sandusky County, finding cleaner air than in most places around Ohio, the health department said.

Nothing unusual was detected. Not even a hint.

“From the very beginning, we’ve said the vast majority of childhood cancer causes aren’t known,” said Robert Indian, the state health department’s chief of comprehensive cancer control. He’ll soon release yet another investigative report.

Without any answers as to what’s attacking their children, parents are left to question whether living within a known cancer cluster area is endangering their kids. Perhaps surprisingly, only a handful have moved away.

“It’s in the back of everybody’s mind,” said Scott Mahler, who has two healthy young sons. “Are you going to risk your children’s lives by living here?”

Eight children were diagnosed with cancer in and near Clyde between 2002-2006, nearly four times the number that state health experts figure is normal.

Ohio health investigators converged on the town of just 6,000 people halfway between Cleveland and Toledo and home to the Whirlpool Corp.’s largest washing machine factory.

What they found was worse than anyone suspected. The cancers affecting victims age 19 and younger included neighboring townships and much of the nearby town of Fremont.

One in five of the cancer cases were related to the brain or central nervous system, matching national rates, according to the American Cancer Society.

The diagnoses peaked in 2006, when nine children were told they, too, had cancer. Since then, there have been four new cases. The most recent came in the spring this year, when a 7-year-old girl was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the body’s connective tissues.

At first, investigators focused just on Clyde, where social calendars revolve around school, sports and church. Most families have been here for generations. It’s the kind of place where teens can’t wait to leave — only to find they can’t wait to come back to start a family.

Seeing their children afflicted by unexplained illnesses has strengthened the bond among parents and neighbors instead of scaring them away.

“Even if it would’ve happened to my family, I can’t imagine where else I would go to get the support I needed,” said Melanie Overmyer, an English and journalism teacher at Clyde High School.

“People in neighboring towns say ‘I can’t believe you still live there,”’ said the mother of two. “You can’t pick up your life and move every time there’s something that scares you.”

Enrollment numbers at area schools haven’t dropped and real estate agents say they haven’t encountered anyone who doesn’t want to look for homes in the area or is desperate to get out.

“Clyde is small enough that we would really know if that was happening,” said City Manager Paul Fiser.

Ohio health and environmental regulators have speculated the cause was environmental and may have come and gone — maybe a chemical from a factory or a dump that polluted the air or water.

Air and water samples have not revealed any concerns around the Whirlpool plant or the Vickery Environmental waste site just outside town, where hazardous chemicals are injected into rock a half-mile below ground.

And in September, investigators said they found no radiation from homes, schools, or industries to link to the illnesses, ruling out the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, about 20 miles from Clyde, and NASA’s former nuclear reactor near Sandusky as a possible source.

Doctors also have been vigilant, making sure they’re not missing any signs or symptoms in young patients. And parents are more likely to bring their kids in for checkups instead of waiting for an illness to go away.

“You still have to treat common things first,” said Dr. Daniel Herring, who has a family practice in Clyde.

“But it’s definitely one of the things we worry about more.”

What’s stumped investigators is the lack of any common threads among the children — all of them don’t live in the same neighborhood, go to the same school or drink from the same water. They don’t all have the same type of cancer or even parents who work at the same factory.

State health officials have spent recent months asking the sick children and their families dozens of questions about their homes and health histories, hoping to find a link. A report due soon will reveal whether they found any connections among all or some of the children, Indian said.

Some parents think it’s likely that investigators will never identify a cause.

In a way, it’s not a surprise.

Pinpointing the cause of a cancer cluster rarely — if ever — happens.

During the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigated 108 cancer clusters around the United States, most of them childhood leukemia. But they found no definite causes for any of them.

The CDC has since allowed states to take the lead investigating almost all suspected clusters while still offering some oversight, as the federal agency is doing in Ohio.

The outbreak around Clyde is only 50 miles north of another cluster that Ohio health officials spent four years investigating. Beginning in the late 1990s, nine former students from River Valley High School in Marion were diagnosed with leukemia.

Tests found toxic chemicals in schoolyard soil and students were relocated to new buildings miles away. Investigators never definitively linked the cancers to the old school site, a former World War II Army depot where wastes and solvents were dumped and burned.

The nation’s most intensive investigation ever of a cancer cluster began nine years ago in western Nevada and remains inconclusive. Hundreds of state and federal experts have spent millions investigating the leukemia that sickened 17 children and killed three between 1997 and 2004.

Some parents of Clyde area’s sick children question whether the state’s inquiry has been thorough enough. They point out that there’s been no soil testing or requests for experts from CDC to join the investigation.

“Why haven’t they brought all minds to the table?” said Warren Brown, whose 11-year-old daughter, Alexa, died of brain cancer in August 2009. “Why not throw everything at it?”

Investigators insist they’ve ignored nothing. Soil testing wouldn’t reveal any answers, they said, because the sick children come from a widespread area and all would have needed to come in contact with contaminated dirt.

Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Christopher Korleski said the state has consulted with federal health officials throughout the investigation and that they’ve signed off on the steps Ohio has taken.

The investigation is his top priority.

“It is disappointing and frustrating to not know,” said Korleski.

Brown wishes there were somebody to blame.

He’s been careful not to point fingers and doesn’t want the town to suffer. But he also said he wouldn’t hold back if something here was the cause.

“I’d be yelling at the top of my lungs to leave town,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

Brandy Kreider, a mother of five children, said she and her husband spent an agonizing week and sleepless nights wondering if they were making a mistake before buying a new home in town two years ago. In the end, leaving didn’t feel right.

“Those things don’t want to make us retreat,” she said. “They bring us together.”

The Hiseys faced the same question almost five years ago when daughter Tyler Smith, who’s now 17, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

They put their house up for sale even though it had everything they wanted: ponds for fishing, a woods for hunting and plenty of space. They’re now glad it didn’t sell.

The outdoors surrounding their home has become a sanctuary for Tanner, 12, diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia two years after his sister was sickened.

Chemotherapy has kept him out of school most of this year so home is where he spends much of his time. It’s where he can catch catfish, watch deer romp across the fields and still be a kid.

“Everything else has been taken away,” his father said. “We can’t take their support, their comfort and their home away from them.”

Ohioans are about to receive the delayed final round of a five-part income tax cut.

The arrival of the new year will bring state tax rates down by 4.2 percent, completing what was supposed to be a five-year, 21 percent reduction begun in 2005. But it will have taken six years finish the tax cut; the last stage was put on hold for one year in a 2009 compromise to help bridge an $850 million state budget gap.

The Ohio Department of Taxation said in a Dec. 30 statement that the latest tax change means a family of four earning $60,000 per year will pay $77 less tax for 2011.

With next year’s rate change, state income tax rates will be a full 21 percent lower across the board in 2011 than they were in 2004, the year before the Ohio General Assembly launched the tax reform plan as part of House Bill 66.

The Department of Taxation release also stated that this plan, launched during the Taft administration, and supported by Governor Ted Strickland reduced taxes throughout his term as governor. The reforms also included a gradual phase out of local property taxes on business machinery and equipment and a phase out of the state’s corporation franchise tax on profits. These taxes, which ended for nearly all taxpayers after 2008 and 2009, respectively, were replaced with the commercial activity tax, which imposes a much smaller burden on businesses and generates far less revenue.

It was reported these reforms mean a net annual savings for Ohio taxpayers of about $2.1 billion each year. Next year’s income tax cut will add an additional $400 million per year to that total. Ohio Tax Commissioner Richard A. Levin said the changes helped improve Ohio’s business climate. In particular, he praised the elimination of taxes on business personal property.

“For decades, experts said these taxes on machinery and equipment discouraged business owners from making investments that create jobs in Ohio. And they were right,” Levin said. “Ohio is now one of just ten states that no longer taxes machinery and equipment. That’s a big competitive advantage — one that I think will grow in importance as business owners learn about what we?ve accomplished during the past five years.”

Others share Levin’s view that the reforms have improved Ohio’s business environment. Last January, Eric Burkland, president of the Ohio Manufacturers Association, told the Columbus Dispatch that Ohio has a “tax structure right now that beats anybody.” Jay Foran, senior vice president of Team NEO, told the Akron Beacon Journal that Ohio’s new tax structure has made the difference in some companies deciding to locate in Ohio.

Abercrombie & Fitch recently informed shareholders that it would save $180,000 each year in state taxes if it reincorporated in Ohio instead of Delaware, according to the Department of Taxation.

“That was a striking announcement, “Levin said of the Abercrombie notice. “Delaware’s reputation is that of a state tax haven. For a corporation to conclude that Ohio’s taxes would impose less of a burden than those of Delaware’s that speaks volumes about just how competitive Ohio has become.”

The 2005 tax reform plan was implemented on schedule except for one piece — Next year’s income tax cut. The cut was originally scheduled for 2009, but state leaders decided to postpone it for two years in order to close a budget hole created by the Ohio Supreme Court decision concerning the placement of video lottery terminals at horse racing tracks.

Taxpayers will realize the savings when they file their 2011 income tax returns due in April 2012.

Crystal Bowersox is our STAR of the Year, coming in at No. 2 on our 2010 Newsmakers list. Huntington Center is No. 9. Read all about them, along with Jeff McGinnis’ Best of the year in our digital version.

This edition features Toledo Free Press 2010 Newsmakers, including Rich Iott and Toledo Mayor Mike Bell (see page 4). There is also a special Health Zone section (see page 15). The issue also features Thomas F. Pound’s column on the newsmakers (see page 3).

Despite the holiday break, popular bars in downtown Bowling Green are expecting a huge turnout Friday night to bring in the new year.
Eric Pelham, co-owner of bars City Tap and The Attic, said every bar in Bowling Green creates an atmosphere people are used to on New Year’s Eve.

“On New Years, lots of bars in the cities usually have a big $20 or $30 cover for the whole night,” he said. “Bowling Green is more of a bar hopping town where people can go anywhere.”

Pelham opened City Tap and The Attic in fall 2009 along with Jeff Hobbie who has owned Uptown/Downtown Sports Bar and Deli since 1979. Since then City Tap has gained popularity, offering over 40 foreign and domestic beers on tap. The Attic, located above City Tap is also an 18+ favorite due to its club feel and outside patio.

Pelham, who is also a manager at Uptown/Downtown said he and Hobbie will bring the same atmosphere there for the bars’ 31st New Year.

Pelham said one of the biggest draws to bars on New Year’s Eve is the party-like feel. He said City Tap, The Attic and Uptown/Downtown will all be giving away party favors like beads and noise makers throughout the night. At midnight, there will be a champagne toast for 21+ patrons.

“We always have huge crowds at all the bars on new years, especially before the ball drops,” Pelham said. “The fact that people from the university are usually gone on break doesn’t really slow down business at all, plus lots of people come back just for New Year’s Eve.”

A look at the year’s great and not-so-great

Best Movie: “The Social Network.” Told you so. It was actually a fairly weak year for films, with only the past few weeks bringing any consistent level of quality to moviegoers. And yet, even in the strongest year, David Fincher’s biopic of Mark Zuckerberg would stand out as a remarkable achievement. More than just an examination of the early days of Facebook, the film looks at how one man can change everyone around him, while never finding the ability to change what he dislikes the most — himself. They’ll nominate nine other movies on Oscar night, but if anything else wins Best Picture, it’ll be highway robbery.

Best Farewell: David Tennant leaving “Doctor Who.” The makers of the BBC’s brilliant re-launch of the classic sci-fi series have long been dogged by the specter of the Doctor’s past. How could they hope to find someone who would be able to stand up to the memory of Tom Baker and the others? But in Tennant, they cast a performer who would lead the character to new heights of popularity, becoming a new standard by whom all Doctors to follow would be judged. And when it was time for him to leave, in a two-part finale that climaxed last New Year’s Day, he was sent off with one of the most emotional and spectacular departures ever. Fortunately, Matt Smith, the man who has followed in Tennant’s shoes, has proven more than worthy of the title — but still, Tennant is missed.

Best Video Game: “God of War III.” Fans of “Red Dead Redemption” will scream bloody murder at this choice, but I stand by my earlier criticisms. While the world of x“Dead” was a beautiful creation and there are many wonderful moments in the game, they could not overcome the crushing disappointments found in the game’s story. Meanwhile, the final adventure of Kratos set new standards in graphical beauty, cinematic majesty and plain excitement. And the overriding story proved surprisingly deep, arriving at an emotional climax where Sony’s ultimate anti-hero decided to turn his rage and lust for vengeance on his ultimate target — himself. A fitting close to a gaming series that changed the industry.

Best Television SNAFU: The Leno/Conan debacle. Anyone with half a brain and the ability to understand television should have been able to see the train wreck coming a mile away. In other words, everyone but NBC programming executives. It started as a half-hearted effort to appeal to a younger audience by installing a new host of their flagship late-night program, and ended with the network’s entire schedule being restructured around placating one ego. The end result was that NBC made a hugely sympathetic figure and cult hero — out of the guy who left, that is — and made themselves and the now-restored “Tonight Show” host look incredibly bad, both in and out of the industry. Bang up job, Peacock.

Best Video Game You May Not Have Played: “Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.” One of the best examples of re-imagining a classic gaming experience while delivering something wholly new. Namco’s homage to the first true gaming icon is instantly fun for anyone who ever played the original game — in other words, everyone — but then amazingly deep once you start to understand the strategy that is now involved. Until you’ve done it, you don’t know how satisfying it is to be chased around the screen by 30 or more ghosts, then to grab that power pellet and chomp them down in a huge row. And at just ten bucks to download on both XBox Live and the PlayStation Network, there is no excuse to not buy this one.

Best Addiction: Netflix. I’m late to the party on this one, but better late than never. And oh, what a party it is. A pop culture paradise, the service would be well-worth the price for just the home-delivered DVDs alone. But then you add in the instantly-streaming content available, and it completely changes the way one watches entertainment. I’ve been able to catch up on films that I never thought I could track down, and television series that it would have been costly to catch up with, all with remarkable ease. And with the looming showdowns over net neutrality — one which Netflix’s bandwidth usage is a big part of — the service will only continue to grow in prominence and importance in the months to come.

2010’s Best Thing, Period: CHIKARA

For any art form to survive, it must evolve. If it remains stagnant, time will pass it by, and quickly. For the uniquely American brand of performance art known as professional wrestling, that level of toxic sameness has persisted for far too long. The fruits of this condition have been reaped in ever-dwindling interest from fans and record-low numbers on pay-per-view for the industry’s domestic leaders.

But evolution is happening. And like most true change, it is grassroots, homespun, earnest. It is being done away from the meddling influence of the bigger budget companies. It is under the guidance of people who seem to genuinely love what they are doing. And it is bolstered by a rabid fan base hungry for something new.

It is called CHIKARA, and in my eyes, it was the Best Thing, Period of 2010 in pop culture.

Founded in 2002 by independent wrestling stars “Lightning” Mike Quackenbush and Tom “Reckless Youth” Carter, the company began simply as an outlet to showcase the students that Quackenbush and Carter were training at their wrestling school in Pennsylvania. But as time passed and Carter departed, leaving Quackenbush as the main creative force, something new and wonderful began to take shape.

CHIKARA is more than just a run-of-the-mill wrestling promotion. Its influences in storytelling are myriad. It draws inspiration not just from other companies, but from comic books, cartoons, sports, video games, movies and more. Watching a CHIKARA event is like experiencing the whole of pop culture, filtered into one wrestling ring.

Its characters are audacious and over-the-top, even for pro wrestling. There is the Colony, a group of heroic “ants” who march to the ring to do battle. Or the Super Smash Bros., a pair of video game characters come to life — but have to be wary of someone hitting the pause button, lest they be left defenseless. Or the Egyptian team the Osirian Portal, made up of Amasis, the “funky pharaoh,” and Ophidian, a half-human, half-snake grappler.

These characters do battle in wildly entertaining contests that both satirize and revolutionize the presentation of pro wrestling. One minute, fans are thrilling to perfectly executed aerial moves by CHIKARA’s performers. The next, they’re roaring with laughter as broad comedy is performed. It all fits and it’s all in context. Quackenbush and his wrestlers have crafted a world where they can do almost anything, and it will almost always work.

It is that level of freedom that helped lead CHIKARA to its best year of storytelling yet in 2010. The whole of the year was dominated by an uncharacteristically serious storyline where the company was threatened by an evil outside force. “Invasion” stories are commonplace in wrestling, but rarely — if ever — executed as well as the one CHIKARA put on.

The emotion generated by the invasion among CHIKARA’s fans was palpable. You often hear discussion of the “suspension of disbelief” necessary for the audience to invest in fiction. For a whole year, CHIKARA — a company built on mainly on satire — was able to generate in its audience more true passion than any story the big league companies have put on for a long time. And when the invasion reached its climax in December, the reaction of the fans was the most genuine I’ve heard in years.

But there are bigger issues at work. At the risk of putting too much weight on such a delightfully light entertainment, CHIKARA is doing something important. Modern wrestling has been beset by tragedies in the past decade. Many companies have encouraged an environment where importance is placed on physical appearance and/or placating a “hardcore” audience enthralled by bloodlust. The end result is an increasingly disturbing trend of deaths at a young age.

CHIKARA stands in direct opposition to these trends. Their shows are largely full of smaller performers, ones who big league promotions would never dream of looking at. Yet because they’re playing such over-the-top characters, there is no pressure to build muscle (through either natural or unnatural means) to stand out. And CHIKARA has always promoted a product that shuns the trend of “extreme” wrestling, while still presenting a thoroughly entertaining and exciting product.

“It was always our goal to attract younger fans first,” Quackenbush told me in an interview earlier this year. “Everything else is just gravy.” But like the best family entertainment, his company can be enjoyed by kids of all ages.

For being family entertainment done right, for firing on all cylinders as storytellers, for presenting something unique in an industry of copycats, for standing in opposition to dangerous trends in its business, and for simply being great fun — CHIKARA is 2010’s Best Thing, Period.

E-mail Jeff at PopGoesJeff@gmail.com

For those of you looking for what’s happening in our area, our expanded Pulse events guide is below:

Lucas County Republican Party Chairman Jon Stainbrook overcame controversy in 2010 and said he has since worked to move the local party forward But for roughly six months, the leadership of the Lucas County Republican Party (LCRP) was in question.
On Dec. 21, 2009, during a LCRP central committee meeting an intra-party battle broke out. Two separate factions declared they were leadership of the party; one with Stainbrook as chairman, the other with Jeff Simpson as chairman. Both men acted in the forthcoming months as if they were head of the party.

Stainbrook

A number of court cases were filed regarding the dispute and on Feb. 11, a judge found that neither Stainbrook nor Simpson were head of the LCRP. The ruling also stated the Lucas County Board of Elections (BOE) was required by law to forward the two competing factions’ list of central committee members to the Ohio Republican Party to decide the true chairperson.
The leadership battle raged through the May primaries and in June, with assistance from the state party, the LCRP’s central committee hosted a meeting to elect new leadership.
On June 10, Stainbrook was elected to his second term as LCRP chairman by a standing vote. During that meeting Meghan Gallagher was elected chairwoman of the LCRP central committee.
Gallagher defeated Paul Hoag, of the Simpson faction, by a vote of 147 to 111, in a secret written ballot.
“My leadership was never in question because we always had the vote and support,” Stainbrook told Toledo Free Press in a telephone interview.
Stainbrook said the dispute was caused by the BOE wanting to cast doubt on the party’s leadership so it could to keep appointments from going through to the board.
“I made it very clear that there was corruption at the Lucas County BOE,” Stainbrook said. “After all this mess and all the scandals, someone had to step up and say enough is enough.”
Stainbrook had previously accused Lynn Olman, former member of the BOE, of bringing members to the December meeting to try and defeat the fact that you need to have petitions to get on the ballot.
At the time, Olman said the accusation was “laughable.”
“Never have I gotten so much credit for doing so little,” he said. “I wasn’t the person who planned the event and I didn’t make any motions, I just happened to be there.”
On March 1, during the leadership dispute, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner appointed Ben Marsh to the BOE to replace Olman. Neither Stainbrook’s nor Simpson’s recommendation for the position were considered due to the dispute.
Since being declared chairman of the LCRP, Stainbrook has been helping the party raise money and get out the vote for candidates. Stainbrook has also assisted and met with state-wide candidates when they came to the county.
In Lucas County, Barbara Sears and Steve Yarbrough were the only Republicans to win. At the state level Republicans swept the election, but not one non-judicial candidate won in the county.
Despite not carrying any elections for the statewide candidates, Stainbrook said he felt the local party assisted the Republicans statewide.
“It’s so hard when you have the Democrat machine to work against,” he said. “To win you have to have a vehicle these candidates can run through. You can’t just put candidates on the ballot and not have any volunteers with literature, or infrastructure. I believe we delivered on that.”
For the county it’s always been about “stopping the bleeding” against the Democratic Party, Stainbrook said.
For many of the races, more votes came in for candidates than the total number of registered Republicans in the county.
Volunteers did a number of different literature drops for candidates as well as made phone calls on their behalf, Stainbrook said.
The LCRP phone bank was honored with a visit from John Boehner, the house Republican leader, for breaking the national single-day phone call record.  The phone bank made 18,685 calls on behalf of the Republican Party on Sept. 25, beating the previous record by 1,000 calls.
“We wouldn’t be recognized by a visit from John Boehner unless we had done something that deserved merit,” Stainbrook said.
Individuals who made phone calls at the bank were tracked by a barcode, Stainbrook said. The majority of the calls were made by individuals Stainbrook brought in, he said.
Tom Waniewski, Toledo City Councilman and Republican candidate for state senator District 11, said regardless who won in June, Republican candidates would have faced the same problems. Waniewski did the majority of his campaigning on his own, but did receive support from the party dropping literature, he said.
Republican George Sarantou said Stainbrook and the party were very involved in the elections locally and statewide. The party assisted Sarantou by passing out literature and sending volunteers to attend events with him.
Stainbrook and the LCRP are
currently helping the Toledo city councilman with his contest of the election.
“There is absolutely no way I wouldn’t stand beside [Sarantou] when I feel he was wronged,” Stainbrook said.
Sarantou, candidate for Lucas County Commissioner, filed a Contest of Election Dec. 13 in regard to the outcome of the November commissioner’s race. Sarantou was originally declared Lucas County commissioner by 1,376 votes but lost the election to Carol Contrada by 191 votes after provisional ballots were counted.
“They’re assisting me with a lot of research in the questions we’ve raised,” Sarantou said. “So far they’ve been very, very helpful.”
Sarantou’s next court date is Jan. 3.

In medieval times, people prayed for a knight in shining armor to come to their rescue. In 2010, many Toledo-area residents believed a charismatic former fire chief, known for his Harley, was Toledo’s salvation.
Instead of slaying dragons or rescuing maidens, Mike Bell had a harder task — attempting to manage the city while trying to appease businesses and residents who did want not services cut or taxes increased.
Rather than knights of the Round Table, Bell had 12 City Council members to face. His promise early on to be more proactive in attending Toledo City Council meetings is one that he has kept; he has attended more of the meetings and committee meetings than any mayor in recent history.
Bell’s once hopeful tone of working with Council as a team has turned to expressions of frustration. Accusations that his administration is not transparent when it comes to communication have come from some in the community and by more than one member of Council.

A Dec. 27 media release stated that due to the inaction of Council, the mayor was seeking to re-open contract negotiations with Toledo’s collective bargaining units to fill a potential $3.2 million budget hole; the release took Council members by surprise.
The budget in 2010 was rife with discussion related to exigent circumstances.  In the end, with the exception of one union that is still fighting the city, some unions made minor concessions; one came away with only temporary concessions.
Trash collection is a hotly debated issue in Toledo. The automation process that Bell did not support — but inherited — created changes in the trash fee and the elimination of weekly bulk pickup. Now the Bell administration is proposing completely removing Toledo from the business of collecting trash and turning it over to Lucas County.
During 2010, the former Finkbeiner administration was blamed for many of the city’s woes. The most recent instance related to the four-year scheduling of utility rates. The Bell administration stated the reason for the large increase was  failure of the past administration to generate the amount of revenue needed to repair and maintain water services, sanitary sewer and storm water systems.
Prior to taking office, Bell said he would accomplish three goals in the first 30 days of  his administration: hire a Business Advocate, initiate a plan to consolidate all city departments responsible for permits, inspections, business incentives into a single location; and to create an electronic business center.
A year later, one of those goals has been met in full, as Bell hired Dean Monske for the position of Deputy Mayor for External Relations.
On Dec. 20, Jennifer Sorgenfrei, public information officer, said via e-mail that Bell was still working on the consolidation of city departments. She said Toledo had held discussions with Lucas County on joint consolidation efforts and that recent legislation approved by Council to separate the Division of Building Inspection/Code Enforcement from the Department of Neighborhoods would, “allow the department to better interface with sister departments like the Plan Commission and Economic Development to ensure more streamlined service.”
Sorgenfrei said the electronic business center “remains something to which the Mayor is committed,” but the city’s computer system is not currently capable of providing electronic permitting.
Mayor Bell said, “We are currently on track to end the fiscal year with a balanced budget — something that has not been accomplished in many years. It seems like it should be common sense not to spend more money than you have, but in practice it’s something that the City has failed to do for several years running.
“We have lived within our budget for 2010 and have not laid off police officers or firefighters; the parks and cemeteries are maintained;  trees are trimmed in the spring; parks and cemeteries maintained throughout the summer; leaves collected in the fall and streets plowed and salted after it snows in the winter; we’ve demolished 350 blighted houses this year and we still had a street resurfacing program.
“With good financial management we can provide the basic services that people want. That’s not to say the decisions we face now are easy or popular, because many of them aren’t, but they are the decisions we need to make to get Toledo back on track.”
Will Bell receive more huzzahs than hisses from the populace in 2011?  We’ll learn that during the next 365 days —  for 2010, the mayor’s armor is a little worn, but not yet tarnished.

Editor’s note: Toledo Free Press will follow the Blank family of Millbury for one year as they rebuild their lives after the June 5 tornado destroyed their Main Street home.

Even though Ed Blank and his family ended their year in triumph, they know rebuilding and healing will not end in 2010.
“It took six months, 11 days and 12 hours, but we are back,” Ed said.
Ed said it feels great to return to their Millbury neighborhood in such a short amount of time, although the view from their newly built house will never be the same.
His son’s school, Lake High School on Lemoyne Road in Lake Township, was destroyed in the June 5 tornado that killed seven people, including alumna Bailey Bowman and three of the four members of the Walters family. The Walters lived next door to the Blanks.
“The Walters’ house is gone,” Ed said. “There is a picture of the four of them in the yard facing both ways. We will have to see that. That is going to be different. The view is going to be difficult.”
Ed remembers the last time he talked with them. It was the night the F-4 tornado tore through the community and destroyed and damaged dozens of structures.

Ryan and Mary Walters said they were tired and going to bed when Ed saw them come home. Ed wishes he had woken them when the sirens sounded, but he didn’t think a tornado would hit his neighborhood.
“You have feelings of guilt that you made it and your neighbors didn’t,” Ed said in June.
The night of the tornado started out as a celebration. His son, Casey, was turning 15, and they were hosting a party. Parents began to pick up their kids at about 10 p.m. Ed told those who drove to hurry home because the weather looked bad.
He told his wife, though, “Don’t worry about it honey. They never hit us.”
This time, a tornado did, and it took the Blanks’ home with it.
The tornado also hit a neighborhood in Moline, as well as the Delta area and Southeast Michigan. In Dundee, Cabela’s, the Splash Universe water park and Dundee High School were damaged.
Millbury suffered the greatest loss of life. In addition to the Walters, another victim was Ted Kranz. His daughter, Katie, the valedictorian, was scheduled to graduate at the high school June 6.
By June 8, Katie and her classmates were graduating at Owens Community College. Amid tears and cheers, Jim Witt, superintendent of Lake Local Schools, assured the audience that Lake High School would be together in some fashion by the start of school.
“By sticking together and taking care of each other, this school district and this community will be even stronger,” Witt said.
Owens would become a lifeline for Lake. The community college placed Lake students and teachers in a building on Tracy Road. Before the first day of school, a Lake High School sign was erected to welcome anxious students to the new location.
The building came with logistic problems. It had no cafeteria, so a makeshift one was created. It also had no lockers, so those were installed. The building has no gymnasium either, so athletes practice at Lake elementary and middle schools, which survived the tornado with mostly roof damage.
Casey plays basketball and his team has been practicing at the Lake Middle School and East Broadway Middle School. His games are played at the Student Health Athletic Center at Owens.
When it came to football, what was left of Lake’s football field was turned into a state-of-the-art stadium with artificial turf. It was ready in time for the first home game Sept. 3. Lake also received good news when it won $500,000 through a national contest sponsored by Kohl’s Department Store.
That money, along with Lake’s $19.1 million disaster insurance claim and a $4.8 million commitment from the Ohio School Facilities Commission, could help the district achieve its goal to rebuild the school for the 2012-13 school year. If that goal is met, Casey will start his senior year at the new school.
Ed said Casey didn’t show much emotion until they moved home Dec. 17, reinforcing the notion that rebuilding and healing takes time.
“He posted some things on Facebook that he was glad to be back and loves his new house,” Ed said.

Toledo Public Schools (TPS) Superintendent Jerome Pecko can often be found walking the hallways of the city’s schools, interacting with students.
It’s what he does when the stresses and challenges of his administrative role start to distance him from the true reason for what he does. School Board President Bob Vasquez calls it Pecko’s “kid time.”

“One of the things I really like best about Dr. Pecko is he has students at the center of his thinking,” Vasquez said. “Sometimes the things we do as a board, especially financial issues, are so far removed from the students that he likes to go in and remind himself, because he believes they are why we are doing what we are doing. He has that built in. He had that when he first came to the district.”
When Pecko came from the Akron area to take the reins of TPS in August, he inherited a system with declining enrollment and a nearly $40 million deficit poised to ask voters for the largest levy in decades. A smaller levy had failed only months before, prompting TPS to cut middle-school and freshman sports, lay off crossing guards and cut bus service to state minimum levels, angering many parents. When $824,000 in extra funds were discovered days before school started, the crossing guards were hired back, but the district has shed more than 400 employees and closed Libbey High School.
When 59 percent of voters rejected November’s 7.8-mill levy, which would have raised roughly $21.6 million a year, Pecko handled the defeat with his characteristically even-keeled demeanor, conceding that voters had spoken and it was time to move on.
Pecko said TPS’s budget crisis is challenging, but he has faced similar situations before and knew what he was getting into.
Although proud of the campaign waged, he admits the defeat has been the low point of his tenure so far and wishes he would have started sooner and done more.
“Momentum was starting to build right at the end,” said Pecko, who said the school board will address in January whether to pursue another levy. “As I reflected at the time, the notion was in my head that had we gotten started a month earlier we might have been able to have been successful.”
School Board Vice President Lisa Sobecki said she understands why voters were apprehensive, but suspects Pecko had higher expectations of support for TPS.
“I think where he came from, people had always rallied behind the schools, maybe not always agreed with decisions, but had always supported public education. I think maybe it was an eye-opener for him, a disappointment for him, that maybe he didn’t see that in Toledo,” Sobecki said.
Even so, Pecko said Toledo has more interest in its school district than any other place he has served.
“That’s been very impressive to me,” Pecko said. “Everybody wants to lend a hand. Whenever I think about that, it brings a smile to my face because I think we obviously don’t have a lot of resources available to us. To have so many different organizations and agencies out in the community who have legitimate services to provide that will benefit our students, reaching out with their hands and offering to help us, it doesn’t get any better than that.”
However, Pecko said one thing that surprised him was how poor a perception many people had of the state of affairs within TPS, something he hopes to change with more transparency and dialogue with the community.
Vasquez and Sobecki both said Pecko’s heart for children is obvious. Vasquez said he watched Pecko get emotional listening to a student talk about TPS, while Sobecki said Pecko works tirelessly and sees the good in every child.
Vasquez said Pecko has a lot of patience: “I have pushed him very hard and he has never gotten angry with me,” Vasquez said. “He doesn’t react impulsively to anything.”
Pecko, who began his career teaching English at an inner-city Akron junior high before moving into administration, was offered the superintendent job in July after a 4-1 vote in which board member Larry Sykes said his vote was not against Pecko but against the search process. Pecko was the only candidate remaining after another finalist, Tom Watkins, withdrew.
Despite the challenges ahead, Pecko said he is still glad he came to Toledo.
“I am still very excited,” Pecko said. “I have a period of time to be able to demonstrate that I can help make a difference in the school district and that’s what I’m focused on.”