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Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video)
Victim of beating in Kent last week is declared dead at Akron hospital
Dad accused of forcing son into field, killing him
Man found dead in North Akron home is identified
Can DNA tests free ex-Akron captain?
Browns' roster nearly devoid of consistent players
Coventry man killed in crash at I-77 ramp
Does it work? Test team returns to try out new products advertised on television
Blogs:
Pets:
Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
The Heldenfiles:
Friday Night Notebook
Patrick McManamon:
Browns vs. Lions live …
Akron Zips:
Akron trounces Howard to reach .500
Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
Cleveland Browns:
Robiskie, Harrison inactive
Kent State Sports:
Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
Buckeye Blogging:
OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
Varsity Letters:
Four area football teams play tonight
All Da King's Men:
The Sunday Sanity Challenge
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Will Health Care Reform Pass?
Akron Law Café:
Health Care Financing Reform: (69) The Brookings Institute Study on "Bending the Curve" – Four General Strategies
See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic
Car Chase:
TIME TO GET YOUR COLLECTOR CARS WINTERIZED
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
Ohio Travels with Betty:
George is looking for a Thanksgiving buffet in Akron.
Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
A Random Rant on Testing
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Published on Tuesday, Jun 30, 2009
Keep Barberton healthy
As chief of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Barberton Hospital, part of the Summa Health System, I think closing the Barberton Health District would spell disaster for the Barberton community.
The Barberton Health District is a safety net, a clinic for disadvantaged pregnant women. Due to the current economic downturn, there is an increasing need for this service.
As one of the physicians of the prenatal clinic for 20 years, I know that a dedicated staff offers excellent care to the young mothers of our community. This includes nutrition counseling, smoking cessation and the Women, Infants and Children program.
The health district offers a best-practice, cost-effective, evidence-based program. The administration has been able to increase the reimbursement by 64 percent, covering the cost of this invaluable service to pregnant women. This increase has been possible through evaluation of Medicaid eligibility, Medicaid reimbursement and third-party billing.
In 2008, 94 percent of all women served by the health district were disadvantaged, socially and economically, and 76 percent had pre-existing chronic medical problems that increase prenatal risk. Yet the district achieved excellent birth outcomes on par with the best in the country.
The health district continues to develop innovative programs that link clients to needed services and improve their overall quality of life. Shaping the future begins with good prenatal care.
We support the advancement and continuation of the Barberton Health District as a center of excellence in prenatal care in Summit County.
Thomas Ruzics, M.D.
Barberton
Calling for change
Gov. Ted Strickland, in these hard times, you're giving the common man every chance to stop the drastic cuts for all our libraries and their precious programs, except a toll free number to call in our complaints. Your machine has called my home, allowing only three rings to answer. Why no toll free number? I guess I'll just have to express my thoughts by changing whom I vote for in the future. What goes around, comes around.
Shirley Burgess Cannon
Cuyahoga Falls
Decision on St. John made thoughtfully
I am saddened by the anger and misinformation in Barbara Piurkowsky's letter (''Faith shaken by church merger,'' June 12) concerning the merger of St. John and Annunciation parishes.
The decision to merge Annunciation and St. John parishes was made by 30 people from six different cluster parishes over 18 months, and wasn't based on cronyism, greed or deception, but on factors related to location, membership, ministries and other facts and figures. The process has been difficult, inspiring, time-consuming, fulfilling, exhausting, exhilarating and always based on faith and transparent truth.
Some reasons for locating the new parish at the Annunciation site are: St. John the Baptist is an ethnic/personal parish with approximately 320 registered members (some live close and many are scattered) with no boundaries. Annunciation is a larger territorial parish serving East Akron/Goodyear Heights with approximately 1,492 registered members (two-thirds within a two-and-one-half-mile radius).
Annunciation Church is in excellent condition, generates rental income, is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, landscaped with green spaces, and has a senior-citizens apartment, the St. Vincent DePaul Center, HM Life housing, parking next to the church, a lot across the street and soon about 40 more angle parking spaces in front on Broad Street.
Statistics don't show the Annunciation area to be any higher in crime than the St. John area.
The merger of St. John and another parish was an afterthought, after the clustering process was complete and would merge two parishes that still would fall short of the 500 families needed for a full-time priest.
I encourage the people of St. John to participate in the merger process to create a vibrant new parish.
Michael J. Herhold
Akron
Editor's note: The writer was a member of the team that worked on the merger.
Lawsuit spurred election improvements
Was a lawsuit really necessary following the 2004 presidential election to implement common-sense election practices in Ohio? Incensed by the lack of administrative oversight by officeholders empowered to manage elections, the League of Women Voters of Ohio and others filed a lawsuit to force occupants of the offices of governor and secretary of state to protect Ohio voters' 14th Amendment rights.
Fast forward almost four years — past a much more uniformly efficient and fair 2008 presidential election administered by a new secretary of state — to June 16, when the league, its co-plaintiffs and the secretary of state announced settlement of the lawsuit.
Without the settlement, there was no guarantee the next occupant of the secretary of state's office would have continued the reforms put in place by Secretary Jennifer Brunner.
Each secretary of state over the years has had a different attitude about the extent of his or her oversight. As a result, each of our 88 counties, including those with almost no financial resources, had been left to develop its own poll-worker training materials, implement the Help America Vote Act and guess how many voters would show up in a hot election.
The settlement agreement ensures that whoever administers elections over the next six years will be bound by the agreement, a time frame long enough to stabilize and solidify good election administration.
One issue was not covered by the settlement: our claims relating to the implementation of Ohio's statewide voter registration database. Brunner is currently examining and refining the processes by which voter information is compared with information in the Bureau of Motor Vehicle and Social Security Administration databases. The settlement mandates that she file status reports in federal court.
The goal of the League of Women Voters of Ohio has always been to protect every eligible Ohioan's right to vote; ensure that each valid vote is counted; and guarantee that each voting system provides an accurate, transparent and secure record of all ballots cast. We believe this settlement moves us much closer to that goal.
Meg G. Flack
President
League of Women Voters of Ohio
Columbus
Keep Barberton healthy
Get the full article here.
Comments
Click here to post your comments
Akron, OH
Posted 08:12 AM, 06/30/2009
@Shirley Burgess Cannon - I think the State should do away with the machine that calls y'all, or any-buddy else.
The State has a loomin' deficit in their budget and y'all want a toll free number to call and lodge a complaint? Why don't y'all email/mail y'alls complaint, jes' like y'all did for this letter.
Akron, OH
Posted 08:27 AM, 06/30/2009
Mr Herhold, what happened to the missing $500,000 a few years ago !!!!!!!
Akron, OH
Posted 08:56 AM, 06/30/2009
@Meg Flack-your goals are good ones-but, they are all after the fact. Why don't you get ahead of the process and educate people. As in, when ever someone moves they must fill out another registration card with their new address so their record is correct and they won't have to vote provisionally. This is the simplest thing to do-it also will have the largest effect on voting/election day problems.
Barberton, OH
Posted 08:59 AM, 06/30/2009
Dear Ms. Flack,
At every turn Sec'y Brunner has taken the partisan road in her policies and decisions.
She wouldn't challenge ACORN, nor her cronies for revealing personal info on voters.
Se made sure the Dems voted early and often.
Sounds like policies that deserve to be continued.
mogadore, oh
Posted 09:32 AM, 06/30/2009
Pizza Flack: Admit it...stealing elections is an old Republican pastime. Remember your boy...Blackwell......Secretary of State.....and of course......the proverbial leader of the re-elect criminals Bush/Cheney campaign. But of course...no 'conflict of interest" in looney land.
Posted 09:42 AM, 06/30/2009
Brunner is also trying to pad the Board of Elections with her own parties people. She was struck down by the Ohio Supreme Court for her actions regarding Wayne Jones pickling who should sit on the board in Summit County. Since when does
a Democrat advise a Secretary of State on what Republican should be picked for a Board seat? She is as crooked as they come.
Thomas Ruzics, M.D., Your c0omments are quite amusing seeing you work at the worst Hospital in Ohio. The only safety net Barberton could have is your hospital shutting down. It's killed enough people in the area.
KOOKville, oh
Posted 10:05 AM, 06/30/2009
Shirley Cannon...maybe we could put Taft back in???
hudson, oh
Posted 11:11 AM, 06/30/2009
@ voice. thank you for your informed, astute and pertinent comments in refuting the claims made by Dr. Ruzics in the need for continued funding for prenatal care for some poor pregnant women. I would include misogyny in the list of your talents, but you failed to mention anything at all concerning the women that were the center of the good doctor's comments. Idiot.
akron, OH
Posted 11:57 AM, 06/30/2009
@Independent,
Yeah. A mysoginist is a man who hates women as much as other women do. Sounds like Voice.
Tallmadge, OHIO
Posted 12:07 PM, 06/30/2009
Real Voice of Treason spots a Yeti in the Secretary of State's office at 9:42am, June 30th, 2009.
Police were sent to investigate but were unable to verify his reports.
They noted that Mr. Rvot has a history of UFO and other-world creature sightings and seems paranoid, although not a threat to the public in general.
BOO!!!!
Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with it, ..
Posted 12:23 PM, 06/30/2009
@ALL: The Pope has arrived. The Pope will be at Moe's at 7pm as advertised clad in tye-dye. Hope too see all who RSVP'd.
@Independent: Treason=LOL
Akron, OH
Posted 12:38 PM, 06/30/2009
@The Pope-why would anyone care where you are? Are you important?
hudson, oh
Posted 12:46 PM, 06/30/2009
@ voice. Don't know much about mortality outcomes at BCH, but SINCE YOU ARE USUALY WRONG, i thought I should check. Guess what? According to the 2009 HealthGrades report of 5,000 US hospitals, using a mortality and complications report methodology, BCH was one of the Ohio hospitals that ranked as a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence. Hmmm?
Tallmadge, OHIO
Posted 12:57 PM, 06/30/2009
@pope: See you there.
Tallmadge, OHIO
Posted 01:23 PM, 06/30/2009
@Socrates: No more important than the rest of us who will be there this evening.
Hope to see you there, too.
akron, OH
Posted 01:56 PM, 06/30/2009
Unfortunately I cannot be there. Please have a highball in my honor.
Akron, OH
Posted 02:34 PM, 06/30/2009
Please have a highball in my honor also.
Akron, OH
Posted 03:20 PM, 06/30/2009
@Pope/Nottheusual1: Are you the same person? Related? Lovers? Don't kill anyone on your 'potentially' drunken drive home.
Highland Square, OH
Posted 03:22 PM, 06/30/2009
See you at Moe's @ 7:00 - clad in tie-dye!
Akron, Oh
Posted 07:33 PM, 06/30/2009
Mark you calendar ~~ 4th of July TEA PARTY rally ::
~~~~ July 3, 2009
Spread Eagle Tavern
Hanoverton, Oh 44423
6pm -- bring chairs
330.223.1583
Spread Eagle Tavern & Inn Home Page
~~~~ July 4, 2009
Central Park Gazebo Downtown Mansfield
Corner of Main Street and Park Aveune
Mansfield, OH 44902
12 noon - bring chairs
~~~~ July 5, 2009
Where: Kresge Lot
300 Market Ave. N
Canton, OH 44701
3 - 7pm bring chairs
Akron, OH
Posted 09:11 PM, 06/30/2009
So the Moe's was nice.
hudson, oh
Posted 10:28 PM, 06/30/2009
@ swan. as expected. nice to put a face to the avatar.
hudson, oh
Posted 10:30 PM, 06/30/2009
@ doo. in addition to the chairs, please bring a heaping plate of blind dogma.
yummy.
Akron, OH
Posted 10:32 PM, 06/30/2009
I can take that kind of blind dogma, doo.
Viva the Republic!
akron, OH
Posted 12:18 AM, 07/01/2009
I don't have any chairs.
Posted 08:50 AM, 07/01/2009
All I will say is if you think Barberton is a good hospital then by all means, Go there and get treated. If you ask most residents who live in that city about the hospital they will tell you they wouldn't take a pet there for treatment. See you at your funeral.
hudson, oh
Posted 09:22 AM, 07/01/2009
@ voice. I have. I haven't & I won't.
