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A4 Your Community Press newspaper serving Addyston, Bridgetown, Cheviot, Cleves, Covedale, Dent, Green Township, Mack, Miami Township, North Bend, Westwood E-mail: westernhills@communitypress.com
Doug Elsaesser with Brutus, his Grand Champion chicken at the Hamilton County Fair.
Volume 83 Number 43 © 2009 The Community Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Elder grabs game
TONY MEALE/STAFF
Elder wide receiver Tim O’Conner goes up and gets it against Colerain. See more on the nationally televised game in Sports on A7.
We d n e s d a y, S e p t e m b e r
9, 2009
Web site: communitypress.com
B E C A U S E C O M M U N I T Y M AT T E R S
By Kurt Backscheider
kbackscheider@communitypress.com
Pete Minges said the three days of sweat and hard work the members of the Kiwanis Club of Cheviot-Westwood put in at the Harvest Home Fair are more than worth it. “Everybody comes together to work as a group to give back to the community,” said Minges, a Green Township resident and Kiwanis Club member who is serving his second year as chairman of the annual fair in Cheviot. “Everybody pitches in, and you just try to do your part.” This year’s tradition is no different. All the money the Kiwanis Club raises at the Harvest Home Fair goes directly back to the community in the form of scholarships, building projects and charitable giving. Throughout the years, proceeds from the fair have helped women’s shelters, area schools, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, local parks and recreation fields, and Minges said he’ll always remember the year the club gave
more than $30,000 to Margaret B. Rost School to build a multisensory room for children with physical disabilities. This year’s fair kicks off at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, with the annual Harvest Home Parade. Minges And although the fair, which runs Thursday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 13, marks its 150th anniversary this year, the theme is “Green Township – 200 Years Old,” Minges said. “We’re not doing anything special to commemorate the 150th year of the fair because it’s Green Township’s 200th anniversary this year, so we’re concentrating on that,” he said. While the fair will include all the traditional attractions west-siders have come to love, such as the livestock exhibits, art show, horse show, rides and stage shows, he said this year’s event will also feature a few new additions. He said the Stray Animal Adoption Program
is sponsoring a dog walk in conjunction with the annual 5K walk at 9 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 13, and people looking for a new pet will be able to adopt animals throughout the weekend. Minges said fair organizers hope to draw large crowds with its Friday night concert, when local favorite The Rusty Griswolds take the stage at 7 p.m. Fair-goers always enjoy the food, and this year in addition to the brats, metts, fries and other traditional provisions, will be Sandy’s HiLo burgers. “If you’re a west-sider, you know that name,” Minges said. As a life-long resident of the west side who marched in the parade when he was in grade school, he said Harvest Home is a tradition he’s participated in since he was a child. “The fair is just a west-side institution,” he said. “It’s been around long before I was here, and it will probably still be around long after I’m gone.”
Commissioners will hear about Mercy
Oak Hills Local School District’s new superintendent Todd Yohey has only been working – officially – since Aug. 1. He said his time has Yohey been positive. – FULL STORY, A5
By Kurt Backscheider
Next meeting
kbackscheider@communitypress.com
KURT BACKSCHEIDER/STAFF
Lighting the way
Laying the groundwork
Do you know where this is in the Western Hills area? If not, it's time to go hunting in the
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Harvest Home tradition continues
First months
neighborhood to see if you can find it. Send your best guess to westernhills@communitypress. com or call 853-6287, along with your name. Deadline to call is noon Friday. If you're correct, we'll publish your name in next week's newspaper along with the correct answer. See last week's correct guessers on B5.
PRESS
Covedale resident Jeff Francis, a professional stone mason, volunteers his time installing a stone walkway for the pocket park being developed at the corner of Ralph and Covedale avenues. The nonprofit group Friends of Covedale Gardens LLC is funding the park project, which is in the early stages of development.
Tennis courts get facelift Community Press Staff Report The Oak Hills Local School District and Green Township recently joined forces to upgrade the tennis courts at Oak Hills High School. The school’s five courts were resurfaced and painted at a cost of $46,000. The township donated $15,000 to the project and the district covered the balance. The courts are open to the community, unless the high school and middle school tennis
teams are practicing or playing matches. “Oak Hills and the Green Township Trustees continue to look for opportunities to work together to better the recreational facilities in our community,” said Oak Hills Athletic Director Jan Wilking. “The tennis court project will benefit the residents of Green Township and the students within the Oak Hills Local School District.”
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The Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners will have the next say in whether Mercy Health Partners’ plans to develop a new hospital in Green Township should move forward. At a meeting Aug. 20, the Hamilton County Rural Zoning Commission voted 5-0 in favor of the proposal to rezone the 70-acre site to planned office for a new hospital and medical office complex off North Bend and Boomer roads near Interstate 74. The zoning commission’s approval follows unanimous votes in favor of the project by the Green Township Board of Trustees and the Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission. The county commissioners are scheduled to review the project at a public hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16. Bryan Snyder, development services administrator for the Hamilton County Planning and Zoning Department, said the commissioners do not typically vote on issues the same day as the public hearing. He said the commissioners will likely vote on the project at their meeting Wednesday, Sept. 23. Concept plans for the $200 million hospital development include a cluster of medical offices on the western portion of the site, a two-acre buffer between the offices and St. Ignatius, 100 to 450 feet of buffering along most of the site’s southern border and an up to six-story hospital on the eastern edge of the property. The section of Boomer Road adjacent to St. Ignatius would be rerouted south and west, and
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The Hamilton County Commissioners are scheduled to review the proposal to rezone the 70acre site to planned office for a new hospital and medical office complex off North Bend and Boomer roads near Interstate 74 at a public hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 16, at the commissioners meeting room, 138 E. Court St., Room 603. become a hospital access road. The old road would then become a private drive for St. Ignatius. Mercy plans to use the centrally-located site in Green Township as the hub for efforts to expand access to acute care, primary care and a variety of outpatient services for residents on the west side and in western Hamilton County. Kleeman Road resident Mark Broering Sr., co-founder of the Concerned Citizens in Opposition to the Proposed Mercy Hospital Site, has said the group will continue fighting the development. Broering said the opposition group will look to put the issue on the ballot as a referendum if needed. If the county commissioners support the project, the opposition group will have 30 days to collect signatures and submit a petition for a referendum. The issue cannot be placed on this November’s ballot since the filing deadline has already passed, but a referendum could be placed on the May 2010 ballot. “We can only hope that the Hamilton County Commissioners will respond to the overwhelming majority of community members, and not be swayed by the misleading rhetoric of groups willing to change the face of an already successful community against their will,” Broering said.
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