Booms and busts, billboards and bank loans, tips taken
If COVID-19 has an upside, it could be the impetus it has given to people spending so much more time at home to properly rid garages and basements of unneeded household chemicals by delivering them to the Household Hazardous Waste Drop-off Center operated by the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio. SWACO happily reports business at the center has been booming, which is way better than having improperly discarded chemicals go boom in a landfill.
Snagging Ohio tax incentives in exchange for promised jobs must be one of the sweetest deals around, especially when the state drags its feet on clawing back funds after promises are broken. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority was due Monday to review $60 million that General Motors received in 2008 and reneged on when it closed its Lordstown assembly plant last year. The item was pulled from the agenda along with a separate item to consider new incentives for a GM joint venture to build electric vehicle batteries in Lordstown. We’re shocked.
President Donald Trump is getting extra exposure in northeast Ohio, but he may not like it. Ernie and Debbie Lehman have plastered the president’s own words on a handful of billboards in Stark County, leaving unsaid any interpretation, good or bad. One of our favorites is Trump’s comment on a lack of COVID-19 testing: “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Minority and low-to-moderate-income borrowers might find a ready lender in Huntington Bancshares, thanks to $20 billion the bank is committing to spread across its Midwest market. The hefty commitment follows a $16.1 billion package Huntington offered in 2016 and completed before its five-year timeline. We like that $4.9 billion of the new pledge is targeted for loans to community programs supporting affordable housing, food security, workforce development and social equity to benefit populations including seniors and veterans. Welcome.
Here’s a tip about your tips: They may not end up in the pocket of the server or wait staff for which you intended them. At least that’s alleged in a suit pending in U.S. District Court. The dispute by a former bartender for central Ohio restaurant chain Local Cantina has to do with a tradeoff in which certain staff received a guaranteed salary in exchange for relinquishing tips to the company. It’s apparently a rare enough practice that you don’t need to ask every server if they actually get your gratuity.
Don’t tell the stalwart members of the Roundtown UFO Society in Circleville that what they have spied in the sky is the Great Pumpkin. They’ve been meeting for three decades to discuss unexplained aerial sightings and review research on their favorite topic. Old video releases from the Navy earlier this year, with more government UFO findings expected to be out soon, is raising interest in their club.
So what is that mystery metal disk discovered by dredgers in a stretch of the Olentangy River in Delaware? At 880 pounds, it must have made an impressive splash whenever it plopped into the water. Space speculators are having fun guessing it might have been discarded from a UFO long ago.
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