The Maumee City Council has approved $184,979 for elongating the island on Conant Street between Union School and St. Joseph’s Church.
It’s a perfect example of excessive, unnecessary, and unneeded expenditure of tax dollars. The cost could have been saved by having the few pedestrians who crossed at Harrison Street make the short walk up to the Conant-Broadway intersection and cross safely at a signal-controlled crossing.
I hope to be wrong, but I believe that there will be loss of life if that island remains as designed in its location.
The number of accidents at that location indicate that the locals have an issue with that island and its location. First-time drivers who travel north from Perrysburg across the bridge are not aware of the pedestrian crossing being the first thing they cross. And while crossing, one could encounter speeding vehicles on each lane. That pedestrian crossing is pretty well hidden in plain sight. I also pity the individuals who have to maintain the flowers and vegetation on that island.
If the island is to remain as is, at minimum it needs a yellow light that would indicate someone is crossing when actuated by a pedestrian. Better indication and identification of all pedestrian crosswalks is needed in Uptown Maumee.
FRANK RUGGIERO
Maumee
Editor’s note: A city spokesman said the primary purpose of the island is to slow traffic coming from a four-lane bridge into the three-lane street in Maumee. The installation of the island was an opportunity for a midblock crossing, which offers a direct, safe path for pedestrians to travel between East and West Harrison.
Perkins Coie was responsible for hoax
Jeff Robbins’ op-ed on Friday was interesting but incomplete. Jeff rails against Trump’s executive order regarding law firm Perkins Coie. He states, “what Perkins Coie did was represent Hillary Clinton in 2016. ...” Thereafter he builds his case for how the executive order will ruin Perkins Coie, a reputable law firm, in Jeff’s opinion.
Here are the facts he failed to share regarding 2016. Perkins Coie paid for Christopher Steele to drum up opposition research that turned out to be fiction about Trump colluding with Russia. It was then published as a dossier. That led to a court order to spy on the Trump campaign. The DOJ later admitted they didn’t have probable cause for the warrant. We all know what happened next: two years and tens of millions wasted investigating Trump without basis. In the end the DNC and Hillary Clinton paid a $100,000-plus fine for misreporting spending on research regarding the Steele dossier. Yes, they were complicit in the fictional dossier. That fine is peanuts in comparison to the cost to us taxpayers.
Kash Patel, the new FBI director, at the request of Devin Nunes, followed the money to unearth this sleaze operation and end the Russia fiasco. Kash was the most opposed cabinet member Trump chose for his current presidency.
It’s no wonder why. Kash has the goods on the “deep state.” Democrats are scared to death of him and what else he’ll expose of D.C.’s scandalous political behavior.
I understand why Jeff left out the part about the Perkins Coie involvement in the Steele dossier and the attempt to reverse the 2016 election. The facts don’t fit his narrative.
Perkins Coie should have stuck with being a law firm vs. a political action committee.
Look how close Perkins came to ending the presidency of a duly elected candidate with a dossier riddled with falsehoods. As described in Trump’s executive order: “The dishonest and dangerous activity of the law firm of Perkins has affected this country for decades.” Jeff calls that garbage. I call it accurate.
ROB STOIBER
Temperance
Urging opposition to alter Constitution
State Sen. Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green) is vice chair of a committee that is hearing testimony on Senate Joint Resolution 3, which calls for the creation of a constitutional convention. Its purpose? To tear up the Constitution and write a new one.
Conservative Republicans used to stand for the Constitution, for Liberty, for America first — before Russia.
But this bill threatens everything Republicans used to hold sacred. Why are they doing this? Diane Telles, a member of the group Convention of States Action that is pushing this terrible idea around the country, said it was “... to support the efforts of DOGE,” in other words, admitting that what Musk is doing to the country is unconstitutional.
So, the Constitution has to go so that an unelected billionaire bureaucrat can do whatever he wants to America.
Republicans have had absolute control over the Ohio state government for 14 years now.
They have become corrupt.
SJR3 is just the latest corrupt legislation, but it is by far the most dangerous.
Letting Musk rewrite our Constitution would destroy our nation. I call on all Republicans to remember who you are! Defend our Republic! Defend the Constitution! Tell Gavarone to withdraw SJR3!
JOE DeMARE
Co-Chair Wood County Green Party
Bowling Green
Trump doesn’t care about stolen children
My heart breaks every day because of what is happening with the current administration. I cite just one headline of an action that should affect everyone, regardless of party affiliation: “Trump ends program that was tracking the mass abduction of Ukrainian children, hindering efforts to rescue the children.”
According to the Yale University School of Medicine, over 19,000 children from Ukraine ranging in age from 4 months to 17 years have been deported to Russia. Especially targeted were orphans, children with disabilities, children from low income families, and children with parents in the military.
The children were then illegally placed for adoption in Russia. They have been denied communication with their families. Some have been physically abused and have not been given adequate food or medical care. Only about 1,200 have been returned to Ukraine. According to other news sources, the Russians have told the children that “your parents have left Ukraine and are not coming back for you.” The Trump Administration does not care. If this does not break your heart, I don’t know what would.
KATHY FARBER
Maumee
One could hardly call Kaptur a ‘moderate’
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) should retire instead of running again for office in 2026. She passes herself off as being moderate when she was part of the entire gang of Democrats that were responsible for falsely attacking President Trump in his first term as being a puppet of Putin and during his run in 2024.
She recently attacked Elon Musk, an appointee of President Trump to find fraud in the governmental agencies, for only having been a U.S. citizen for 22 years. I didn’t know you had no right to aid your President unless you had been born in the United States.
It is time for Marcy to save her reputation and not run again. Once I was the Secretary of the Toledo Port Council AFL-CIO. I supported Marcy for 28 years. She said she would vote down NAFTA. When the time came to vote for the USMCA trade agreement that would end NAFTA, she voted no. Once a good liberal, now she is part of the ultra left Democratic collapse.
GLENWOOD BOATMAN
Vermilion
Senators idle as legislature wanes
As an Ohioan, I would like to ask our senators, Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted, why they wanted to be senators. My question arises from seeing them and their fellow Republicans sit by in Congress and watch President Trump grab powers that the Constitution gives to the legislature. Why do they want to be members of an increasingly irrelevant institution?
For the paycheck? To prevent the offices falling to Democrats who might actually function as senators? As constituents, we must demand that Senators Moreno and Husted work to take back the functions of the legislature that the citizens of Ohio assumed they were entrusting to them.
RONALD TUOHY
Toledo
First Published March 27, 2025, 4:00 a.m.
