Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Tuesday grab bag

My email is completely shut down at WKYC, so I'm afraid I'm missing some stories out there .. but here's what I know.

A major victory for Akron's Fraternal Order of Police this afternoon. A conciliator has awarded the officers three percent raises each year from 2007-09 while seeing no raise to their medical benefits. It's a decision that should boost morale among the force, while creating some emergency finance meetings downtown. City Hall has said it couldn't afford to award raises at those levels without it affecting health care (right now police officers get free coverage). Considering the FOP beat the idea of part-time officers earlier this year, they're now two for two. Now both sides wait to see how the courts rule on whether Akron officers must live in the city limits. Mayor Plusquellic is holding firm to "home rule" on this one, so we'll see how it plays out in the courts.

The Akron Art Museum folks held a sneak peak for the media today. I've already been inside a few times, but we had one of our college interns go over in my place this morning to cover the press conference and ask questions. Seems she was stopped at the door by a security guard who didn't want to let her enter even though she was in-step with our Channel 3 photographer. Eventually she was allowed inside. Still, I'm wondering why an organization that needs all the publicity it can get right now would even consider halting anyone with a notepad and pen from entering? I'll be interested to see how the public views the new building, which provides mega space the museum folks had always wanted.

The Aeros celebrated their 5 millionth fan last night! Not bad in just 10+ seasons. There's not a bad seat in the house and it's a much easier trip than Jacobs Field. Anyone else surprised that we haven't seen a significant hike in ticket prices over the years? By the way, we're still paying back the $$ we borrowed to build Canal Park -- not that it wasn't a great investment and anchor for other businesses -- but I find it interesting to see what the actual cost ends up being on community projects like stadiums.

I received not one but two letters today from the same company. The first one is addressed to "Eric Mansfield, Akron-Canton News at 6:30" and the second is addressed to "Eric Mansfield, Akron-Canton News at 10." Guess they think there's two of me: one who works during the day and the other who handles the night shift. To be honest, sometimes I switch ties between shows, but scouts honor folks, there's only one of me. Maybe one of these days I'll switch ties and coats during every commercial break just to see if anyone thinks I've been cloned :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you should really mess with them by changing your tie color to green so that it doesn't show up on screen during the newscast.