Ginther to talk about recovery, resilience
Residents, business owners bring up youth, jobs, housing, more
In mid-february 2020, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther used his annual State of the City address to say once again that, “The state of our city is strong.”
Days after he spoke those words last year, 300 Americans were evacuated from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan, including 14 who tested positive for COVID-19. And a month later, a 49-year-old man returning from a trip on a cruise ship became the first of more than 120,000 Franklin County residents to eventually test positive for COVID-19, a pandemic that would rock the city’s service-sector job base.
In the midst of this health and economic crisis, Minneapolis police officers on May 25 arrested George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man. Floyd’s death in police custody that day touched off racial justice protests and riots across the nation, including in Columbus.
Since then, Ginther has faced a series of tests: an ongoing citywide emergency due to COVID-19, during which he granted himself special powers; calls for the city to remove a large statue of Christopher Columbus from the front of City Hall, which he did; the fatal Columbus police shooting of Andre Hill on Dec. 22 and subsequent protests; a new record year of 176 homicides in 2020, with 2021 on its way to surpassing that figure; and the search for a new police chief after demoting his last chief.
In the wake of a year of turmoil, Ginther is set to give his 2021 State of the City address on Wednesday evening, when he will outline his goals for the coming year. The talk will have basic themes of “recovery, rebuilding and resiliency, all through the lens of equity,” said Robin Davis, the mayor’s spokeswoman.
Putting an exclamation point on the amount of disruption the city has experienced, even the speech itself – normally delivered no later than February in past years – was pushed back by the mayor as the city addressed more pressing matters.
“It is the latest Mayor Ginther has done a State of the City,” Davis said in an email. “Events of the last year and even the first months forced us to focus our attention on the most pressing needs of the community.”
A cross-section of Columbus residents and business owners reached by The Dispatch said that helping residents rebound from the COVID economic slump was among the top topics they would like to hear Ginther address.
“What we hope is that he would talk about opportunity for youth, i.e., jobs and activities,” said Nana Watson, president of the Columbus Chapter of the NAACP. “We would look for him to talk about housing issues, affordable housing, integrating housing equally in our community. We would hope that would be a major focus.”
The Rev. Jason Ridley, director of youth ministries for the Allegheny West Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, agreed that getting a full grasp on COVID must continue to be a priority, but “the other thing that I think they have to get right this time is the selection for the chief of police.”
Ridley is among a group of Black faith leaders who have pressed Ginther for systemic change within the Police Division.
“I do believe the mayor has good intentions and wants to do well in that area . ... But if real change is going to take place, it's going to take place at the top. You have to get the right person in that position.”
David Cooper, a longtime Northland business owner who recently sold his Ink Well Printing, but continues to work there as a consultant, said he hopes to see police get back to working closely with communities, particularly on antitruancy programs that have been shuttered since COVID shut down in-person Columbus school learning.
“I think they're shorthanded,” Cooper said of Columbus police. “We work very closely with them – at least I have – over the last 24 years. I encourage them.
“We need to support them in any way that we can. Not everybody's perfect,” Cooper said about the police.
He said he admires the work of two officers he's worked closely with over the years on issues like neighborhood block watches and keeping kids in class. The city reopening anti-truancy programs as in-person school reopens “is a must,” Cooper said.
Keith Mccormish, director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said he would like to hear that more city support for affordable housing will go to the most atrisk population in the coming year, like those leaving homeless shelters or camps. What the city considers affordable housing, he said, “is out of reach for people who are homeless or very low income.”
“Their version is focusing on people who are working, maybe focusing on average income or a little bit below,” and officials haven't figured out a way to make housing affordable for people who make very little money, Mccormish said. “And there's a lot of them out there.”
Small businesses have been hit hard, and “there's a lot of places on life support right now,” said Michael Reames, manager partner of the Old Mohawk Restaurant in German Village, which has seen its lunch business decimated by the shutdown of Downtown offices due to COVID.
Reames said government support for small businesses at the federal, state and city level, including a $10,000 grant administered through the city using federal funds, helped keep his 88-yearold restaurant going. He said he hopes those programs will continue until the economy is back on its feet.
“These politicians come out here and talk about how small business is the foundation of the economy, yet the tax breaks go to the big boys,” Reames said.
The Old Mohawk's business sunk by about 60% during the peak of the crisis, but Downtown establishments were hit even harder by a triple-whammy of people generally dining at home, offices closing, and protests and riots resulting in much of Downtown turning into a closed, boarded-up area, Reames said.
“Unfortunately, they got nailed,” Reames said of Downtown businesses. “Yeah, it was rough. It sill is. but thank God, it's getting better.”
But few small businesses are back to where they were before COVID, and anything the city could do to help businesses continue to survive would be good, Reames said. When people feel comfortable returning to restaurants en masse, “I'm hoping that it's going to be like the Roaring Twenties,” he said. wbush@gannett.com @Reporterbush