Like the rest of the world, Toledo started 2021 hopeful that vaccines would let us return from a frightening coronavirus pandemic to normal work and play.
Vaccine “hesitancy” tempered those hopes, as the unvaccinated population ended the year flooding hospitals to the point that the National Guard was needed to back up the regular staff.
We watched horrified as rampaging gun violence in Toledo ended in a record number of homicides.
We saw the city of Maumee admit that for decades its employees concealed illegal overflows of untreated sewage into the river.
We followed with delight as concrete grain silos along I-75 became the canvas for a massive, nationally noted work of public art.
We — some of us, anyway — participated in an election in which Toledo re-elected a sitting mayor for the second time in 30 years.
We mourned a victim of an irresponsible college fraternity tradition at Bowling Green State University.
What else? Abundant snow fell in February, exciting new employment opportunities arose in northwest Ohio, and our airport took on the name of a NASA hero who refused to see failure as an option.
CORONAVIRUS
By the time 2020 ended, Lucas County had accumulated 25,281 cases of the coronavirus and 530 deaths.
By the end of 2021, those numbers had more than doubled, to 66,933 total cases and 1,117 fatalities.
In 2021, the vaccines that had been developed in 2020 began to become available, but at an agonizingly slow pace.
We became aware of Pfizer, which needed subzero cold storage for its two-shot regimen, and Moderna, which did the same thing and didn’t need refrigeration, and finally, Johnson & Johnson, which needed only one shot.
Under Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the state started the year by parceling out scarce vaccine shots — beginning with health-care workers and the elderly.
By April, 38 percent of Lucas County residents had started the vaccine, as many of us marveled at the in-and-out efficiency of the vaccine operation at the Lucas County Recreation Center. But the efforts to get 70 percent of the population vaccinated in order to bring about “herd immunity” fell flat because of “vaccine hesitancy.”
As of Dec. 21, about 59 percent of Ohioans were vaccinated. Lucas County lagged, at 58 percent of the population, with about 247,000 people receiving a first dose.
Ottawa and Wood counties both had more than 61 percent vaccination rates, while rural counties west of Toledo were lower. In Williams County, 45 percent of residents had started the vaccine.
In March, Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly had had enough of their fellow Republican governor’s restrictions requiring mask-wearing, social distancing, quarantining, and staying home from school and work. The legislature overrode his veto to force into law a bill limiting the governor’s power to quarantine individuals in a pandemic and limiting the length of states of emergency.
Though some called for mask mandates when the start of the 2021-22 school year came around, Mr. DeWine chose not to fight with Republicans in the General Assembly and issued strongly worded advice to the school districts.
HOMICIDES
Toledo set a record of 61 homicides in 2020, and then followed up in 2021 with another record — 71 homicides as of Dec. 23.
Thirty-year-old Dominique Davis, found shot in his home on Caledonia Street in East Toledo on Nov. 18, had the dubious distinction of being the record-breaking 62nd homicide victim.
It wasn’t Mr. Davis’ first time getting shot. He was wounded by gunfire in 2010, 2014, 2016, and one month before he was killed.
Damontre Mills was only 14 when he was shot while driving a vehicle that crashed in an intersection in South Toledo on Nov. 11. He had been a student of Toledo Public Schools.
Police Chief George Kral aimed his ire at lenient judges.
“When we're having repeat offenders being arrested for the same weapons charges, we need to have more than a $10,000 bond. We need to have a higher bond to keep the community safe," Chief Kral said.
Judge Ian English, the administrative judge of Lucas County Common Pleas Court, responded, "There are only 370 beds at the Lucas County jail. So who does Chief Kral want released: rapists or child molesters?"
A Blade review of Lucas County court records found five cases in the previous two years in which a person was charged with killing someone while out on personal recognizance bail for another crime.
Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz borrowed a program from some other big cities with high murder rates, the Community Initiative to Reduce Gun Violence, putting "violence interrupters" at work in the neighborhood to intervene in tense situations and rivalries, and he hired former Central Catholic High School football star Jojuan Armour to head up the program.
The city hired three “violence interrupters” focused on the Junction and Englewood neighborhoods just west of downtown. The program seemed to have some positive impact, but then two of the violence interrupters resigned.
In November, he appointed a full-time director of public safety, retired Fire Chief Brian Byrd, along with a deputy director, and announced he was expanding the violence interruption program to North Toledo and East Toledo.
Nine of the homicide victims were under 18 years old.
The death toll included Gabriel Phillips, 1, and Ahmir Phillips, 6, who were shot in Byrneport Apartments in South Toledo on Feb. 5 allegedly by their mother’s boyfriend, Kevin Moore.
An 11-year-old boy, Nathan Summer, was shot while playing basketball in Toledo’s Polish Village neighborhood Aug. 20, and his brother, Miguel Sumner, 14, was injured. Four months later, Tyler Williams, 20, of the 3000 block of Nebraska Avenue, was indicted on multiple counts, including aggravated murder with a gun specification.
Also included among Toledo’s homicide victims: Officer Brandon Stalker, 24, was shot and killed Jan. 18 in the line of duty.
HAZING
The Bowling Green State University community reeled from the death of a college sophomore in a fraternity hazing ritual.
Allegedly urged on by his “Big” — frat lingo for a member who mentors a pledge — 20-year-old Stone Foltz, of Delaware, Ohio, drained a bottle of bourbon over the course of 20 minutes in early March. The ritual took place in an off-campus house and was part of a tradition of the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha.
Mr. Foltz was dropped off that night at his apartment where alarmed friends and roommates called 911, but not in time to save his life. The coroner put his blood-alcohol content at 0.35 percent.
Eight defendants were indicted in Wood County Common Pleas Court and the fraternity was permanently banned from campus.
A new hazing law influenced by the Foltz case took effect in October. That law stiffened the penalties for those who engage in or turn a blind eye to such rituals on campus. And it requires all colleges and universities to develop policies and educational plans to prevent hazing and to train both staff and students to report suspected hazing activity.
BLIZZARD
Northwest Ohio felt warmer and wetter this year than usual, but the most extreme weather was a blizzard. The snow that fell on Feb. 15-16 triggered the inevitable comparisons with the Blizzard of 1978. The measuring stick at Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport showed 14.5 inches of powder.
The pain of shoveling that much snow motivated Sam Chipps of the 2300 block of Marengo Street to tell a reporter he’ll have a snowblower before the next big one.
Jay Berschback, chief meteorologist with WTVG-TV, Channel 13, pronounced it Toledo's biggest two-day snowfall since a 15-inch storm in 1912, and those were topped only by a 20.2-inch snowfall in 1900.
The snowfall contributed to making February, 2021, the seventh snowiest February on record for Toledo, with a total of 22.7 inches. Just to show how fast the weather can change, March, 2021, owns the record for the least snowfall — 0 inches.
POLITICS
In 2021, Toledo voters — the 34 percent who bothered — easily returned incumbent Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz to office, quashing the comeback hopes of former three-term Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.
The campaign started as a three-way race, including Republican Jan Scotland, but the September primary outcome left no doubt as to the probable outcome of the general election when Mr. Kapszukiewicz won 53 percent of the primary votes — the first time a mayoral candidate had won a majority since the city’s strong-mayor era began in 1993.
In the general election, Mr. Kapszukiewicz, the endorsed Democrat, retained his seat with 69 percent of the vote, also a record for the strong-mayor era.
Subtly referencing the former mayor’s age (82) and the controversies of his tenure, Mr. Kapszukiewicz’s campaign advertising urged voters, “let’s not go back to the past.” For his part, Mr. Finkbeiner harped on the wave of violent crime, pushing a 10-point plan that he said worked when he was in office.
In the last two weeks before the election, Mr. Kapszukiewicz spent $253,601, mostly on TV ads, while Mr. Finkbeiner spent $28,239, using money that he loaned his own campaign.
“We still would have spent that money on TV commercials even if I had no opponent just because we wanted to talk about our accomplishments — growing the police force, winning economic development awards, fixing roads,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.
Democrats also won five of the six open at-large seats on council, pushing their majority to 11 Democrats and one independent.
But if Democrats cemented control over city government, longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo was left to face an uncertain political future. The GOP-controlled General Assembly redrew Ohio’s congressional map to eliminate one of the state’s 16 districts as required by the 2020 federal census.
The result was a new 9th Congressional District with a decidedly Republican edge instead of the overwhelming Democratic balance that has helped Ms. Kaptur hold the seat since her first election in 1983.
Already three Republicans are vying to run for the seat in 2022, including state Sen. Theresa Gavarone who moved her official residence from Bowling Green to a rented address in Huron to be in the new 9th District.
NEW AIRPORT NAME
Toledo showed its pride in space flight hero and native son Eugene F. Kranz by adding his name to the airport.
The airport was renamed Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport, and Mr. Kranz, 87, came to Toledo for a celebratory renaming.
Mr. Kranz is best known for cool-under-pressure leadership at Mission Control in Houston that saved the astronauts of Apollo 13 from an oxygen-depletion crisis during the spaceship’s return in 1969. A son of West Toledo and a graduate of Central Catholic High School, Mr. Kranz never forgot his hometown.
Traveling from his Houston home, he was welcomed at the airport where the new nomenclature was already attached to the building.
A gathering of about 80 people was held the following day, amid coronavirus precautions.
Joining him on his trip into Toledo were daughter Joan Kranz and granddaughters Valerie Green and Hayley Krueger, along with Blade Publisher and Editor-in-Chief John Robinson Block.
"We're just so excited and honored for him," Ms. Green said. "The way his name fits with aviation, it's just awesome, and the fact that it's his hometown too."
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Economic development prospered in 2021, maybe more than anyone expected with all the coronavirus precautions.
Heavy industry gained its share of regional growth in the form of the $1 billion Cleveland-Cliffs Direct Reduction Plant. The plant features a new tallest structure in the city — the 457-foot furnace tower — and employs 160 people processing raw materials that arrive by ship at the city’s seaport for steel manufacturing.
Years after the former Southwyck Shopping Center went dark and was demolished, the site was reborn in May with the opening of a new Amazon delivery station. The facility, which daily sends forth fleets of vans bearing the familiar Amazon icon, hired more than 100 people, at starting pay of at least $15 an hour.
Two months earlier, Amazon Air began daily air cargo flights to Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport, the first plane touching down from Lakeland, Fla., with expectations of hiring more than 50 people.
First Solar Inc. broke ground on a $680-million, 1.8-million-square-foot factory for making solar panels in August in Lake Township. First Solar Chief Executive Officer Mark Widmar told the crowd that the new facility will solidify Ohio as "the home of America's solar" industry. The facility is expected to employ about 700.
That same month, Peloton co-founder and CEO John Foley broke ground on a planned manufacturing facility in Troy Township — its first dedicated U.S. manufacturing plant. The company will build its popular exercise bicycle in the plant that will cost $401 million and create 2,174 jobs.
Announcements like those contributed to a public relations boost in March when Site Selection named Toledo No. 1 for new business investment among metropolitan areas with populations between 200,000 and 1 million.
ProMedica Health System brightened hopes for a downtown Toledo revival with its partnership with California technology company Bitwise Industries on a $30 million project to convert the abandoned Jefferson Center school and former post office into a technology entrepreneurship hub.
But the health company suffered a painful setback when its insurance arm Paramount Advantage learned in April it had failed to land one of several lucrative contracts for administering the Medicaid program in Ohio. The lost contract is expected to result in as many as 600 lost jobs locally.
MURAL
One thing many Toledoans probably didn’t know before 2021 — sunflowers are symbolic of the Native Americans who lived and farmed here before the Europeans came.
Now a mural featuring sunflowers and three Native American portraits decorates the massive Archer Daniels Midland Co. grain elevators on the east side of the Maumee River next to the I-75 bridge.
Nicole LeBoutillier and Brandy Alexander-Wimberly, two friends and local residents, hatched the idea for a mural while recreationally boating on the river in July, 2019. They raised more than $500,000 to employ established Los Angeles artist Gabe Gault to conceive and implement the pictures that tell the story of Native American tribes who lived along the Maumee's banks as early as the 1600s.
A mother, child, and grandmother adorn the three largest silos, while 25 other structures are painted with images of sunflowers and sunchokes, which were harvested by some of the tribes and still grow wild in the area.
Look for a community celebration in the summer of 2022 after the artists have added the finishing touches.
SEWAGE OVERFLOW
Maumee city officials disclosed publicly in July that city employees, unbeknownst to other city officials, had for years failed to disclose to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency when untreated sewage overflowed the sewer system directly into the Maumee River.
That revelation led to the creation in 2021 of an investigative commission.
Maumee notified the Ohio EPA in 1996 that it had finished work necessary to comply with a 1985 directive to separate its sewer lines from its storm drains. But a recently hired employee notified city officials in July, 2020, that the city had long ago stopped reporting to the state about its sewer overflows and had stopped work on separating the storm and sanitary sewer lines.
The public didn’t learn about Maumee’s decades of falsified sewage overflow statistics until mid-2021.
Fixing the problem is expected to cost $100 million over the next 30 years.
The Lucas County Board of Commissioners appointed a commission in November to examine how Maumee's illegal sewage discharges went undetected for years.
"There are a lot of people who are really upset about this," said Fritz Byers, the new commission's chairman.
During roughly the same period, the city of Toledo spent $530 million through its Toledo Waterways Initiative under a consent agreement with the federal government to correct its own longtime practice of allowing untreated sewage to overflow into the Maumee River.
TARTA
Fifty years after the Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority was created, the public bus system finally has a countywide mission.
After the state law governing public transit agencies was revised in March, Lucas County voters went to the polls on Nov. 2 to decide whether TARTA should serve the whole county — and be funded with a one-half-percent dedicated sales tax.
Voters approved the question decisively, 55 percent to 45 percent, though the vote was geographically lopsided. The changes were approved by majorities in the municipalities of Maumee, Ottawa Hills, Rossford, Sylvania, Toledo, and Waterville, while majorities of voters in every Lucas County township and the municipalities of Oregon and Whitehouse voted no.
Under its old charter, TARTA served seven communities: Toledo, Maumee, Ottawa Hills, Sylvania, Sylvania Township, Waterville, and Rossford. The new charter will embrace the whole county, along with Rossford in Wood County. That means bus lines can be extended into busy commercial and residential sections of Oregon and Springfield Township for the first time, as well as the farthest reaches of the county, as needed.
The change will very quickly result in a large increase in revenue. Under its old property tax-based system, TARTA generated about $13.5 million a year. The new countywide sales tax will generate $32 million a year.
TARTA plans to restore Sunday service, modernize buses, create new routes, and expand services.
First Published December 26, 2021, 12:30 p.m.
