Tough choices ahead for Cleveland and Akron, despite Levy victories.

Ohio House Republicans lined up behind a new speaker.

And could Cleveland land another professional sports team?

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Andrew Meier, in for Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Voters in Cleveland and Akron gave approval earlier this month to new levy requests for their school districts.

But just two weeks after those ballot box wins, a forecast for Cleveland shows the district quickly running out of money.

While the board in Akron says more cuts are needed there.

With the end of the legislative term coming to an end soon in Columbus, the prospects for property tax help for owners in Ohio is rapidly dimming, hoping to avoid a repeat of the messy split that has impacted the Ohio House over the last two years.

Republicans have aligned unanimously behind a speaker candidate while the current speaker ended his repeat bid.

And could another professional sports team land in Cleveland?

Joining the roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

Supervising producer for Newscast, Glenn Forbes and education reporter Connor Morris.

In Columbus, we have Statehouse Bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get started on Election Day.

Voters in Cleveland overwhelmingly approved a new ten year, 8.6 mill levy to fund operations.

But despite the Levy's passage, the financial fortunes ahead for the district.

Iraqi counter.

Let's lay out the timeline in the five year forecast and when things get dicey for the district.

Yeah, so it's kind of important to look at the last five year forecast.

Very exciting.

And now we're getting off to a great foot here.

Their last forecast from the spring before the levy was passed shows them running out of money by the end of of this next school year.

Now, with this levy added in, it's the end of the following school year.

So 2026, 2027 where they've got just about 25 million in the bank left.

And that might seem like a lot.

But this is a school district that's, you know, usually spending about 750 million to 800 million a year.

So it's it's not very much to have at the end of the bank at the end of the year.

There was it was it surprising just how short the runway was here until the district ran out of money?

Even with the Levy passage, I think it was surprising to the public to hear that.

I mean, the superintendent said, you know, essentially, thank you for passing the levy.

It makes a huge difference.

But it's also, you know, not long after he said that, he said it's only bought us another year.

And so to hear that, I think tha This was a pretty significant increase in funding as well.

I mean, it was almost nine mills.

Normally when you're looking at school levies, people are districts are saying, you know, 3 to 3 mills, four mills, five mills, sometimes six, seven.

But when you get up to the eight mill, nine mill range there, that's kind of a big ask for people.

And just to put it in context, that's about 49 million more dollars each year for CMT.

And they also have an interesting little bit of a split where 3 million also goes to partnering charter schools, which is kind of an interesting make up that doesn't happen in other city school districts.

I'm going to hit you with some math for journalists.

We talk about Mills, but how does that impact the average homeowner for looking at $100,000 of assessed value?

What is that going to mean for the average extra bill?

Yeah.

So I think our last reporting, I think it was about like 200 to $300 extra a year for a home valued at that 100,000.

So that increases, of course, as your your home value goes up.

And for the board as well, you know, as I've been covering, they didn't really react too much to this news.

Really.

I think that it was disappointing for them because it means more work is going to have to be done.

And the board chair did say that she was honest about that in her, you know, assessment and said, you know, we're going to need to be looking at, you know, this kind of long term operating plan this next year, that's probably going to mean cutbacks.

So there's more money coming in.

We're talking about potential cutbacks here.

One of the things you've done a bit of reporting on already previously is plans to, as we say, right sized the district to cut the number of buildings that are actually in use.

Student enrollment capacity is not matching up in many cases to the capacity of buildings.

How much money could rightsizing save the district?

It could potentially save a lot.

It's a really complicated topic and the district's been kind of loath to talk about it this year because they had the levy on the books and they didn't want to say give us money and also we're going to cut back as well.

But they're probably going to have to.

The CEO has said the district's going to look at its footprint.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has said something similar.

He said, you know, the district has outdated facilities but outdated facilities footprint that's kind of based off of enrollment that's declined significantly.

Cleveland schools used to have 100,000 students in the late seventies.

Now it's down to like 34,000.

So it's not it's kind of a numbers game overall moving forward.

There's not like you're going to save a lot of money when you close a building, but a lot of that, unfortunately, is coming from from staff being cut back.

And that is not a popular thing.

It's not popular to close the school building either.

You got alumni associations that have close connections with those buildings.

You've got folks that are saying, hey, you know, this is going to be the only school in my in my neighborhood, only public school.

So cutting that is is you know, it could harm neighborhood vitality.

So but yeah, I mean, it's when you start to look at the overall picture the districts most of their expenses when it comes to schools there there are public enterprises, mostly people.

So you know, it could mean staff cuts for sure and quickly, we still don't have any initial indications of what that could mean for potential staff cuts.

Oh, no, not at all.

I mean, the faculty union.

All right.

I mean, excuse me, the teachers union has told me that they've got about like 100 empty positions.

So that could be a good place to start.

Cut those.

They say they can operate the district fine with their current level of staffing, even minus that 100 people that they're missing.

And then kind of taking a step back as well.

Some folks are starting to really dig into the district's expenditures in general on administrative costs, especially there's a local mom.

Her name's Polly Carr, who started a substack a blog looking at, you know, administrative expenditures.

And she's calling out, hey, they're spending $200,000 on a contract for women's empowerment for upper level administrators.

Why are we doing that?

There's, you know, smaller expenses on chairs and other things like, you know, if you're going to start to cut the budget, maybe we'll start looking at these smaller things.

They add up over time and the final part of this equation, of course, is the money that comes from the state or the money that doesn't come from the state.

Where does Cleveland stand when it comes to the state funding?

And it's let's say its fair share?

Yeah.

So if you look at the overall landscape of public school funding in Ohio, it's increasing each year under this fair school funding plan.

Cleveland as well is receiving a benefit from that.

It's been phased in, should be fully phased in over the next two years, but there is a funding stream for economically disadvantaged students and that's been reduced significantly for the district because they've figured out the formula that's about like a $10 million loss this year alone and it's going to keep dropping.

So the district is saying like this is we'd be advocating for ourselves.

We do need this funding.

It's important.

The other angle here is the the these property reappraisal that we've been talking a lot about lately.

It does show, you know, property values increasing in the city.

The state bases its funding for schools on property values.

You get more money from the state if your property values are lower.

This reappraisal saw those values increase in the city of Cleveland, even though the district saying we're not really getting a whole lot of that.

There's kind of a complicated other school funding angle that we can talk about if we have time.

But, you know, it's just there's a whole lot to it.

We could spend a whole show, I think, talking about that.

But let's move on to Akron, which of course, is another district that where voters passed new levies, new moneys for the schools, but yet they're in a similar boat, not exactly the same boat, but the what's happened here is the board has come back to the district administration and said, well, thanks for cutting 5 million, almost, but it ain't enough.

Yeah.

So they're working on their five year forecast right now as well, looking at the expenses over the next five years, not as bad as Cleveland.

It shows them running out of money.

You know, at the end of like 2019, 2029.

But still, the board is saying they've given them a couple of different projections.

They're going to prove it.

I'm on Monday.

But, you know, one model shows 4.5 million in cuts each year, another one shows another 10 million.

But they're saying this overall is still showing us expecting a lot out of our reserves.

It's still showing expenditures higher than revenue.

We do need to like you need to give us a different plan because otherwise we're going to have to be the ones telling you what to cut.

And you might not like it when we're the ones telling you rather than you're the ones bringing the plan to us.

Glen Board Member Barbara Sykes, who's also on the Finance Committee, She says the more cuts would be a signal to the community that they're being good financial stewards.

Yeah, there's a lot here and you mentioned it were a couple of weeks, you know, two and a half weeks after the election.

And I now is the time when people feel like they have to deliver on the promises they've made.

Right.

If you pass this levy now, we have to do our part.

That's the message from Barber Sykes, who said, you know, we understand we have a responsibility to say, okay, we're a part of this.

Conner mentioned those different projections, and if there were no more cuts, which there will be, but if there weren't anymore, there'd be about $23 million in deficit.

But with those 10 million that he was talking about, those are compounding.

So those are going to continue to save the district money.

But the other part of this and both of you know this very well, the other part of this is we can't go a week without some sort of dispute between the board and the superintendent or the superintendent and the former communications director or the superintendent and the union.

I mean, I remember there was a story that came out this week about that press release, you know, that said don't go to your union rep.

But I remember asking Conner, when that came out, did he really say that?

Did they really have a yes right there?

Okay.

So we look at it and then he backtracked on that, said he never said it.

And now there's an article out today that's saying, well, he's got handwritten notes that says this this whole thing.

And I looking down the rundown of this show, we're going to be talking a lot about bodies that need to work together that can't necessarily get along.

And that is the case here.

But as as Conner said, it is expected that they will pass, you know, one of these five year forecast with with more cuts in it.

One of the other big differences with Akron, of course, is that there's a big ticket item that was on the bill for the levy, which is the replacement of North High School, $85 million estimated cost there.

About what do we know about the next steps now that that levy has passed?

And, you know, everybody wants to know when are we going to see a shovel in the ground?

Yeah, I asked that actually like a week ago and I haven't heard back yet.

So anyway, from listening, Hey sent me an email back.

I love to know when North High School construction will get started.

A little bit of an interesting note on that.

I don't know yet whether it's going to be on the current building site if they're going to build it next to it, keep the students in the old building or if they, you know, demolish it, swing the students to another building.

It's always kind of an interesting calculus for districts.

And Matt Huffman of Lima is on track to be the next speaker of the Ohio House.

Huffman is the outgoing Senate president.

Karen Huffman still must be confirmed by a full House vote.

It seems the chances for that going off the rails, the chances are unlikely.

But I got to ask you, there's no chance of deja vu all over again here, is there?

I don't think so.

And what you're talking about, of course, is two years ago when the House GOP caucus elected Derek Marin as their speaker, and then in the intervening months or weeks between that vote and the vote on the House floor, Jason Stevens started working with some Republicans and the Democratic caucus to gather votes for himself, and he ended up beating Derek Marin on the House floor, which set off this two year struggle among Republicans for leadership in the Ohio House.

And it's been blamed as the reason why so little legislation has moved forward.

So it's expected I mean, Matt Hoffman's nomination went through very cleanly.

I mean, there were reports that other people were going to try to challenge him, that he had a challenger in Representative Tim Barr.

Horst, that never materialized.

Other people who were talked about never came forward.

So Matt Hoffman got the unanimous support, and it's expected that he will be speaker.

Karen, was it surprising that Jason Stevens bowed out?

No.

No, I don't think so.

I think the path to speaker for him would have been very difficult because, again, that whole struggle that he had had and his supporters had had with Derek Marin supporters, there were 22 Republicans who had supported Jason Stevens for speaker, 43 Republicans who supported Derek Marin, and those 22 Republicans who supported Stevens, who are collectively known as the blue 22, because Republicans felt that they were collaborating with Democrats, they were censured by the Republican Party.

Four of them lost their primaries.

That group was pretty small, and Democrats have kind of stayed out of this at this point.

And so there was really no path for Stevens to become speaker.

So going forward, you Democrats have less of a say now in the process.

Well, I mean, Democrats do have two more seats, but they are still in the super minority.

And I asked Minority Leader Allison Russo for our TV show, the State of Ohio this week if Democrats are going to mount their own candidates when the speaker vote comes forward, you know, try to capitalize on any possible fractions in the Republican caucus.

But she said at that time, no, I would expect or she said at that time she wasn't sure, let's put it that way.

I would expect that this is going to go forward smoothly.

And Matt Hoffman is a known quantity to Democrats.

In fact, he has worked specifically with the minority leader, Allison Russo, on redistricting.

So they know what they're getting and whether they're going to be able to move anything forward.

I mean, anything Democrats propose has to have bipartisan support.

So that's going to be what they're going to have to deal with.

Karen, Matt Hoffman has a lot of power already in Columbus.

If he takes over as speaker, does he become, let's say it, the most powerful person in state politics?

Well, I mean, in a sense, because he and his the his successor in the Senate, Rob McAuley, they're kind of on the same page in a lot of different areas when it comes to legislation.

So the legislature will have kind of a united front potentially here, and that allows things to move forward that may not have moved forward last time because Hoffman and Stevens were battling each other over which House bills, in which Senate bills were going to go forward.

And Hoffman said the night that he was elected speaker, he said that the agenda was not going to be set by him but by his caucus.

And if 80 or 90% of his caucus wants to do something, they're going to do it.

Increased property appraisals and rising property taxes.

Have home and business owners concerned.

As we saw in the run up to the election, many households say they're at their financial limit due to rising costs.

Karen, this is a topic lawmakers have been working on, but current speaker jason Stevens says not happening.

Why?

It's because I think that some of the stuff is really complicated.

I mean, if you pass one property tax bill that say gives some benefit to senior citizens, that will affect other things.

And so property taxes are so involved in school funding and and it just you can't just put one thing in place and not expect a domino effect.

And so as I mentioned before the break, there's been the struggle in the House with leadership and struggle between the House and the Senate.

And it's really cost a lot of legislation to build up and not get through.

And this is part of the result of that in that these are complicated issues that have to be discussed and you have to look at all the potential ramifications.

And just that has not happened.

Bill Blessing, a senator from a Republican senator from Cincinnati, was part of this bipartisan joint committee that was supposed to be looking at all this legislation and making recommendations on what lawmakers should pass to deal with property tax reform.

And he said that kind of sat in the House after the Senate was done with it.

So he's suggesting that really maybe nothing will move either.

Maybe there'll be a study that moves forward or something.

But for the most part, real property tax relief for people who are seeing those valuations go up and are concerned about property tax bill, that's not going to happen definitely by the end of this legislative session.

Some new details were released this week from the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into a chain reaction crash that killed six people last November on I-70 near Columbus.

The dead include three members of the marching band from the Husky Valley, Middle High School and were passengers in a charter bus.

The band was on its way to perform at a meeting of the State School Boards Association.

Glenn, the NTSB investigation is focused on the driver of the semi that rear ended the bus.

61 year old Jacob McDonald Zane's vehicle.

What are the new details?

Details emerging?

Okay, a couple of things.

So first to know is that McDonald did not speak to NTSB investigators.

He did speak to the highway patrol after the crash and said that he didn't remember anything.

Basically, he came to with his vehicle on fire and, you know, was was was trying to get out.

He had some previous instances where he was, you know, pulled over for speeding and the officer in that situation, this was in Indiana, said that his phone was open to a video game, but he was unable to prove whether McDonald had been engaged with the game when he was pulled over.

Now, investigators found that he was streaming about 10 minutes before the crash.

Peak phone data usage about 40 megabytes per minute, and that is a high definition video use about 41.7 that was cited in the report.

But the NTSB also said they could not definitively determine whether or not the data was through an automatic phone or application update or whether it was initiated by McDonald.

So there are still some questions here looking at his past and looking at the fact that that 10 minutes before the crash, that there was this high, you know, megabyte usage and and possibility of streaming.

It's just it's a terrible, terrible story.

And, you know, investigators continue to look to try to get to the bottom of this for for for closure for the family.

But it's a difficult thing to prove with with these devices to find out what was actually going on at the time of the crash.

And I mentioned the three students on the bus that died there, also three chaperons who were traveling in an accompanying car who also lost their lives in that horrible accident.

Glenn, the driver didn't talk to the NTSB, but they also were able to look back at McDonald's driving history.

What is his past history?

Right.

I mentioned that incident in Indiana.

There was also in May of 2022, he was pulled over after his tractor trailer was observed weaving in and out of lanes.

McDonald at that point had been on duty for 15 hours.

That was an hour past the 14 hour federal limit imposed for commercial drivers.

Should note, you know, he is facing 26 criminal charges in this crash, six counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.

He is at the Licking County Justice Center being held at this time.

But so it appears that at this point, you know, they're trying to build a case in terms of his his prior issues with driving and also the fact that that stream was was going about 10 minutes before that crash.

But again, hard to prove exactly what was going on.

And we'll just have to keep an eye on it and see what other evidence comes out.

We got new details.

And the next stop for Greyhound and Baron's busses after they leave Cleveland's iconic Greyhound bus station.

This has been talked about the sale of the old Greyhound station that's right adjacent to Playhouse Square.

It's going to be relocated to Brook Park.

Yeah, I've heard.

It's interesting.

I've heard for, gosh, maybe 10 to 15 years.

And if I've heard about it for that long, or at least rumblings about it for that long, that means it's been in conversation for much longer than that.

The developers, city, Cleveland, whoever they were trying to get that bus station moved is right across the street from from the idea center here.

Basically, the Playhouse square garage is right across the street, Cleveland State, You know, they want that space for more development.

There's a lot of room in Brook Park, as we've heard, learned with this, a lot of room.

But the new trans blog is reporting that it's not the best location for a lot of travelers.

No, because there's really nothing else around it.

I mean, here it's it's more of a central area.

It's more accessible to public transit, things like that.

But, you know, they're going to have to build this area out.

But it is further away from county services, from city services, you know, things like that.

So it's it's maybe not the best place to to to put a bus station, but they've wanted it out of this area for out of the Playhouse Square area for quite a while.

And of course Playhouse Square is the new potential owner or the new owner of the building and they have envisioned reuse of the old Greyhound bus terminal, at least on a silver lining to this story.

It'll be interesting to see that really great from the outside.

Art Deco Deco building reused for the arts.

It is.

It is.

It is a nicely designed building.

They're talking about redevelopment as a dining and performing arts venue, using some of the memorabilia from from Greyhound's past and and things like that.

But yeah, a reimagined space, let's call it that.

We could see the return of the WNBA to the land.

Dan Gilbert wants to make a pitch for a new franchise, as Glenn and I say the return of the WNBA because the city once laid claim to the rockers.

Who knew?

I certainly didn't.

Yes, I remember the rockers quite well as a child of the nineties.

They were one of the original eight in 1997, as you mentioned, didn't attend any rockers games, but certainly remember the logo and kind of the excitement as as the WNBA got started.

So I'll just put it out there.

Now, maybe you're going to ask this question later.

I know we're all sick of the guitar motifs in the rock, but this is nostalgia.

If if Cleveland gets it WNBA team, they should be the rockers with the original logo.

That's my take.

Conner, do you have a thought on a name I'm a fan of, you know, stuff that reflects the local assets like Lake Erie.

I was thinking about native creatures, but I didn't really come up with much.

I was like the walleyes and I was doing some searching and I was like, I found out there are freshwater jellyfish in Lake Erie, has a crazy name, but I think it'll really roll off the tongue.

CrossFit Augusta.

Sorry.

Be No.

There you go.

That's going to be here.

Come the crisper.

Could Karen please see if we're going to go back to the nineties?

How about the zebra mussels?

I mean, they're not exactly fearsome, but, you know, I got to say, I got it.

I got to go with Glenn here.

If for nothing else, the Browns were stolen in the middle of the night when we got the franchise back later, they were the Browns rockers.

They folded.

It was a different time.

It was a different time.

There wasn't the sport.

You obviously weren't the only one who didn't go to games, Glenn But that's true.

They couldn't get another owner.

They simply folded.

The landscape of women's basketball is totally different now, and a lot of that can be attributed to Caitlin Clarke, the rise of the college game.

I would argue also the name, image and likeness deals that have seen these these collegiate women athletes get much more involved in fashion and branding and things like that.

The rivalry with Angel Reese, I can tell you I did take my family to the the Final Four, which was recently in Cleveland.

That was a huge event.

But 65,000 people down to Cleveland for those events.

I will say this, though, the WNBA has is still not making money.

They're still subsidized by the NBA.

They do want to expand to 16 teams with four teams.

Cleveland's going to have some competition from Philadelphia and some other cities that want these teams.

It'll be interesting to see how these economics play out.

They're getting more television exposure, more revenue is coming in.

But the players, of course, want a piece of that, too.

So can they create a league that's sustainable while expanding?

There's a lot of questions here, but certainly there is more excitement around women's basketball than there has ever been.

On Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 80 97w KSU, we'll talk to some environmental reporters, including one who just returned from the recent COP 29 Conference about what the future holds for U.S. climate policy.

I'm Andrew Meyer, in for Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for watching.