Cartoon by Jerry King.
Special Report: Pt. 1 | Examining Toledo’s 2025 budget
Part 1 | The Budget Breakdown: This is a 3-part story that looks into the 2025 budget for the City of Toledo, passed by Toledo City Council on Jan. 28
TOLEDO – Vision casting for the new year is not lost on local governments, as plans and funding need to be approved in their yearly budgets.
In November, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz presented his 2025 budget to Toledo City Council, who had until the end of March to make changes and approve the 212-page document. City council passed it on Jan. 28.
The 2025 city budget completes the transition off of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, while maintaining current operations, eliminates 55 Full Time Employee (FTE) positions in the budget, and allowed for saving $60 million by the end of 2025, leading to an increased bond rating for the City of Toledo.
Economic development plans in the budget focus on a new Glass Center of Excellence, based in Perrysburg that will bring in more jobs, and renovating east Toledo streets surrounding the Glass City Riverwalk. Toledo’s main challenges remain finding enough money to invest in remediating blight or poorly maintained areas, lowering crime rates, attracting future investments within the city and reversing Toledo’s chronic population decline.
According to Kapszukiewicz, this new budget invests further in public safety, including a 4 percent raise for government employees, roads, community initiatives and a sizable “rainy-day” fund.
Breaking down the total budget
About $1 billion was proposed for the entire city budget, which is down by about half a billion dollars from last year. The main cuts to the overall budget were made in the following sections:
- Enterprise ($526M to $317M)
- Special Revenue ($294M to $94M)
- Capital Projects ($276M to $111M)
The Toledo Free Press will be diving into these numbers in the future, but part of the reason for this drop-off is supplemental grant funding.
Melanie Campbell, the interim finance director, clarified that the 2024 budget included grants and capital projects that are in process, which can span multiple years.
One such grant are the funds associated with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
“In 2020 and 2021, the federal government made a historic level of investment in local governments and local communities, a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression,” said Simon Nyi, the grants commissioner for the City of Toledo. “And Toledo has done a good job of getting our fair share of that money.”
In total, Toledo received $180.9 million in ARPA funds in 2021, on par with much larger cities, like Columbus, Ohio, which received $187 million in ARPA funds.
“The numbers make it clear that on a per-capita basis, we have been among the most successful cities in Ohio at securing these grant dollars, and we’ve been succeeding at a level comparable to much larger cities nationwide; there is no question that we’re ‘punching above our weight,’” Nyi said when referring to the total amount of grants Toledo received (not just ARPA).
Projects funded with ARPA include afterschool programs, parks projects and — most prominently — $19 million of the $28.7 million for the up-and-coming Wayman D. Palmer YMCA in the Warren-Sherman neighborhood, a neighborhood Kapszukiewicz said has been overlooked for years.
ARPA funds will be spent into 2026, but had to be obligated, not just budgeted, before the end of 2024. All ARPA funds must be spent by the end of 2026.
Changes in the General Fund
The total proposed expenditures for the General Fund — the part of the budget that deals with most community-based services in Toledo — is $365,231,389.
This figure is up about $30 million, 9 percent from last year’s budget, and last year’s budget was up 8 percent from the previous year’s budget in 2023.
City financial planners estimate an increase in the budget to $375 million in 2026, and further stabilization of spending afterwards.
Summarizing the spending in the General Fund was councilman George Sarantou. He said that “police, fire and the courts are priority in this budget, as they always have been.”
A majority of the General Fund is allocated to the fire and police departments, who alone make up $200,903,482 – or 55 percent – of the total General Fund, up from 51 percent last year.
Proudly, Kapszukiewicz declared that he has “grown the size of the police force,” during his tenure as mayor.
“Actually, the previous administrations had sort of used it [the police force], as a budget-saving mechanism. And so by the time I became mayor, the size of the police force was down to about 585,” he added.
The personnel department within the Toledo Police Department (TPD), which handles matters related to employee recruitment, told the Free Press in early January that they had 584 sworn officers (not civilians) on hand, but are expecting 28 new police officers from a class that graduated on Jan. 17. By the end of January Toledo should have 612 police officers.
2023’s annual police report summary documented 628 total police officers with 492 patrolmen.
The increased Public Safety Department budget, which contains the Police and Fire & Rescue departments, can almost solely account for the increase in spending in the new budget.
In 2024, the Public Safety budget was $205 million, and the newly proposed one is $236 million.
Kapszukiewicz is hoping to add a police class of 30 and a class of 20 firefighters, but it’s unclear if this is maintaining or growing the departments.
The budget details the new police class of 30 should be ready to start by the end of March, and reads, “The Toledo Police Department does not currently have any new positions in the 2025 budget.”
In fact, the budget details a net -18.8 full-time employee (FTE) positions, and explains the added $8.95 million to their budget is to keep pace with previous year’s allocations subsidized by ARPA funding, as well as the 4 percent raise to all city employees.
“There’s a lot of reasons our crime has gone down,” Kapszukiewicz noted. “One of them [the reasons] is that we’ve grown the size of the police force so that there are more officers able to do the community policing and foot patrols that we think work.”
High crime? Low crime?
Crime has dropped dramatically since 2021, a record year for violent crime across many communities, including Toledo. TPD reported 68 homicides that year, and last year TPD reported 37 homicides, roughly on par with pre-pandemic rates of homicide in the city.
“What we’ve seen in Toledo, our results are better than the average city. So, for instance, from 2022 to 2023…you’re right, homicides went down by 10 percent in American cities, but in Toledo, they went down by 30 percent,” Kapszukiewicz said.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), who gets their data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), “The number of homicides in the 29 cities providing data for that crime [homicide] was 13 percent lower,” from 2023 to 2024, noting a national downward trend in crime.
Data based on the first six months of 2024 – per a report from the CCJ (see Link 1) – appears to roughly put the average rate of homicide for these 29 cities – which include Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, Syracuse and more – roughly at 17 homicides per 100,000 people a year.
The average rate of homicide for a city the size of Toledo can roughly be calculated to about 45 homicides a year across the country, roughly 17.77 percent less than the average of the cities.
Unfortunately, when looking at the broader data for non-lethal crime, aggravated assault statistics in particular, a figure that was missing from Kapszukiewicz and Police Chief Michael Troendle’s press event on Jan. 15, have consistently been far above the average nationally.
Data provided by TPD in 2023 showed a total of 2,426 aggravated assaults in Toledo, and the estimated average rate for 2023 across the 29 cities presented by the CCJ was 557.8 assaults per 100,000 people. Adjusted for Toledo’s population of 265,000 people, the city would be on par if it was at 1,478 aggravated assaults.
However, the rate of aggravated assault is 64 percent higher than the average across the cities culled, and the rate of violent crime in Toledo when compared to non-cities is more than double.
Regardless, compared to its pandemic highs, Toledo is improving its crime statistics and getting back to pre-pandemic numbers.
Further investments in the police include $2.75 million from the Capital Improvement Fund for procuring equipment for police, and $850,000 is allocated towards the Fire & Rescue Department.
The class of 20 firefighters is slated to start their academy training in August, and the Fire & Rescue Department contains 602.15 FTEs in the budget spreadsheet. This represents -19.75 FTEs from 2024.
The largest expense for both police and fire departments is labor (See Figure 3).
Author preserves Toledo history
TOLEDO – Unveiling a rich history, The Toledo Papers is a book of letters and stories from Toledo’s past, written by local author and historian Tedd Long.
Published on October 11, The Toledo Papers is Long’s third book and his first to be self-published. It aims to help people gain a new understanding of history and its importance in local communities.
“History is more than just dates. It’s about people. It’s about culture. And I feel like the more you know about your city’s history, the more you’ll like it when you understand the context,” said Long.
For John Yakumithis, who helps run Micheal’s Bar & Grill on Monroe St. near downtown Toledo, The Toledo Papers is a story about family, hard work and the American dream.
Chapter 20 of the book describes how Micheal’s started, detailing the challenges faced by its founder, Mike Yakumithis, John Yakumithis’ grandfather and a first-generation Greek immigrant.
“It’s a classic story. Immigrant comes to the U.S. Works hard. Builds up a business. Builds up a family. Is part of the community. I mean, that’s as American as apple pie and Chevrolet,” John Yakumithis said.
Long uses a variety of resources to conduct his research, from interviews like the one with the Yakumithis family, to the Toledo Lucas County Main Library and ancestry websites.
“I’m always looking for those primary sources. I love letters because those are so personal,” said Long. “When you’re reading someone’s letter, you get the emotion; you get a real feel for that person; how they were feeling when they wrote it.”
Though Long’s book is new, his interest in history is not.
“My mother was into history, and she and I used to go to a local bookstore and buy local history books and trade them back and forth,” recalled Long.
As he got older, his passion for history only grew.
In college, I just fell in love with history. I was a liberal arts major but I took almost every history class I could take.
Tedd Long
This appetite for history has driven Long to pursue a range of roles related to preserving Toledo’s past. From conducting Toledo tours to serving on the Valentine Theatre board, and from working in strategic planning to being an author, Long has worn many different hats during his time in Toledo.
One of his most notable historical projects is his maintenance of holytoledohistory.com, a site that features all things Toledo, including Long’s podcast, blog posts, tours, books and photos.
Long has lived in Toledo for the past 35 years and has grown to love it, a sentiment he said he wouldn’t have predicted when he first arrived.
Despite all of his work with history, Long does not consider himself a historian.
“People always want to call me a historian, and I remind them I’m not,” said Long. “I consider myself more a storyteller. I like to gather the information and then tell the stories behind it.”
Long has plans to continue his involvement with historical storytelling and is currently writing his next book titled, A Table for None: Lost Restaurants of Toledo, which seeks to highlight Toledo’s old and forgotten restaurants.
ADHD & anxiety: Knowing the difference
Anxiety and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) are commonly mistaken for each other and are often co-morbid conditions. So, what are these symptoms of anxiety and symptoms of ADHD? How are they similar and how are they different?
Anxiety
Let’s start with anxiety and its common symptoms. Children with anxiety experience excessive fear or worry, whether it be over a specific situation or generalized. In generalized anxiety, they have worry and/or fears over a broad range of situations, including everyday situations. You will also see avoidance over situations that trigger their anxiety.
Common symptoms of anxiety include, but are not limited, to:
- trouble concentrating or making decisions
- feeling irritable, tense or restless/hyperactive
- experiencing nausea or abdominal distress
- having heart palpitations
- sweating, trembling or shaking
- trouble sleeping
- having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom
- an array of physical symptoms like stomachaches, headaches and body aches
- school avoidance
Anxiety can be diagnosed after only a few weeks of symptoms, over months or over the years. Anxiety typically is going to affect all areas of the child’s life, including home, school, work, play and sports. Often, these children will also be competitive or perfectionists because they harbor a fear of not being good enough.
ADHD
ADHD is more commonly known and recognized in children by both providers and parents. Most providers are more comfortable diagnosing and treating ADHD verses anxiety. The symptoms of ADHD can be placed into two types of behavioral symptoms: inattentiveness (difficulty concentrating and focusing) and hyperactivity and impulsiveness.
Children can have primarily inattention, primarily hyperactivity/impulsivity or a combination of hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention. There are also two requirements that need to be met in order to have the diagnoses of ADHD: Symptoms need to occur before the age of 12, and these symptoms need to affect two or more areas of their life (school, work, play or sports). Here are some of the symptoms according to the category of ADHD:
Inattentiveness (difficulty concentrating and focusing)
- having a short attention span and being easily distracted
- being unable to concentrate on tasks
- making careless mistakes – for example, in schoolwork
- appearing forgetful or losing things
- being unable to stick to tasks that are tedious or time-consuming
- appearing to be unable to listen to or carry out instructions
- constantly changing activity or task
- having difficulty organizing tasks
Hyperactivity and impulsiveness
- being unable to sit still, especially in calm or quiet surroundings
- constantly fidgeting
- excessive physical movement
- excessive talking
- being unable to wait their turn
- acting without thinking
- interrupting conversations
- little or no sense of danger
When you look at the above lists and compare the symptoms of both anxiety and ADHD, you will see there are a lot of similarities. These are symptoms, not diagnoses. It is important to see a provider that specializes in mental health so that appropriate diagnoses can be made and appropriate treatment given.
Anxiety can be diagnosed at any age and the symptoms can start at any time, while ADHD symptoms need to occur before the age of 12. Anxiety can be triggered and be directly affected by the surrounding environment.
To properly diagnose anxiety and ADHD, there needs to be an extensive history, screening scores — which is subjective documentation from the patient and parents — observation of behavior by a trained provider and the use of the diagnostic statistical manual for mental health.
If you have any concerns regarding your child’s mental health, please reach out to your primary care provider.
Battle of I-75: We got it covered!
Your main hub for men, women game coverage
Men | UToledo vs. BGSU
BOWLING GREEN – In a Friday night tilt at the Stroh Center, the University of Toledo Rockets kept the Battle of I-75 trophy with a 84-71 win over the Bowling Green Falcons (7-12).
Toledo (11-8) came out hot with a 7-0 run to start the game. Isaiah Adams started with a quick 5 points and finished with 18.
Marcus Johnson answered for BG after the Toledo run to start the game with 8 points, including two deep threes. He came into the game as BG’s leading scorer, averaging 16.4 per game. The senior forward finished with a game high 28 points.
To read the rest of the story:
Women | UToledo vs. BGSU
TOLEDO – Toledo sophomore transfer guard and local Springfield HS alum Kendall Carruthers‘ 21 points and a robust second-half team effort lifted the Toledo Rockets over the BGSU Falcons for the 5th straight time in the Battle of I-75 on Saturday.
A back-and-forth first half led to a 10-point BGSU lead with 6:18 left in the 2nd quarter as BGSU senior guard from Cincinnati Lexi Fleming had it all working. But her high-game score of 23 points wasn’t enough to close the 12-point gap at the end of the game: The Rockets took the Battle of I-75 with a 80-68 victory.
To read the rest of the story:
To view photo galleries, go the bottom of the Homepage.
Toledoan honored during women’s Battle of I-75 game
TOLEDO – The Battle of I-75 brought out a record crowd as more than 6,000 fans packed Savage Arena to watch the women take on rival Bowling Green on Saturday.
One special season ticket holder, Linda Tillman, who is in her eighties (but wouldn’t divulge more than that), was in attendance to root for the Rockets and to celebrate her birthday with friends and family.
Tillman was also pronounced the Fan of the Game, and the love and energy inside Savage Arena before the tipoff was palpable as she was escorted onto the court and through a player tunnel by daughter-in-law, Joan Fankhauser, and granddaughter, Erin Fankhauser.
A season ticket holder for more than 10 years, Tillman briefly attended Bowling Green State University before earning her degree from Toledo.
“My loyalties are really all for Toledo; they did great today,” exclaimed Tillman, wearing Toledo’s blue and gold.
“She normally doesn’t miss a home game,” said Erin Fankhauser. “She loves going and watches them on ESPN + when they’re online, so I would say she is a pretty big Toledo women’s basketball fan.”
Tillman shares her love for the Rockets with her family, including Erin Fankhauser’s mother, Joan Fankhauser, who is also a season ticket holder.
“We’ve all gone to Rockets games since I was little. I used to go with my family back when they won the WNIT (Women’s National Invitation Tournament), so we’ve been going for quite a while,” Erin Fankhauser said.
Tillman and her family will sometimes travel to away games, too.
“We go to Cleveland when they play in the MAC tournament. We love going to the games, especially the women’s games,” Erin Fankhauser said. “We go to a lot of football games and the men’s basketball games, too. But I’d say the women’s are our personal favorite.”
The Rockets and Falcon will face off one more time this season when Toledo travels to the Stroh Center in Bowling Green on Feb. 22.
Toledo (13-5) defeated the Falcons (9-10) for the fifth consecutive time.
Toledo beats BGSU for 5th straight
Story by Max Alfonso | Photos by Scott Grau
TOLEDO – Toledo sophomore transfer guard and local Springfield HS alum Kendall Carruthers‘ 21 points and a robust second-half team effort lifted the Toledo Rockets over the BGSU Falcons for the 5th straight time in the Battle of I-75 on Saturday.
A back-and-forth first half led to a 10-point BGSU lead with 6:18 left in the 2nd quarter as BGSU senior guard from Cincinnati Lexi Fleming had it all working. But her high-game score of 23 points wasn’t enough to close the 12-point gap at the end of the game: The Rockets took the Battle of I-75 with a 80-68 victory.
BGSU (9-10) went into the halftime break with a 32-27 lead, but it was all Toledo after that.
Toledo (13-5) came out in the second half hot. Two straight BGSU turnovers led to a quick five points to tie the game, forcing BGSU head coach Fred Chimel to call a timeout.
Toledo outscored BGSU in the second half 53-36 to secure their fifth straight game against their rival down south.
Graduate senior Khera Goss had 20 in front of a record-breaking crowd of 6,527, the most ever for a women’s UT-BGSU game.
“I couldn’t hear myself think for a second there,” Goss said after the game. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a crowd like that before.”
Senior forward Jessica Cook only played 10 minutes due to foul trouble but her impact was felt. After having zero points in the first half, she finished the game with 8 points, and Toledo was +10 with her on the floor in the second half.
“She (Cook) was really, really important to us out there,” first-year Toledo head coach Ginny Boggess said. “She’s gonna be hard for us to replace.”
Boggess, who came to Toledo after three seasons as head coach at Monmouth University (New Jersey), said this kind of atmosphere is great for women’s basketball.
“This game is really exciting … it’s really fun,” Boggess said. “Women’s basketball is blowing up for a reason.”
BGSU dropped their second straight game in a season where coming out of halftime has been an issue.
“It’s a pattern,” admitted Chimel. “I think we’re getting better at it but I don’t think we’ve solved it; we’re going to keep on seeing the same test.”
Bowling Green hosts Akron on Tuesday, and Toledo stays at home to host Miami Ohio.
Toledo victorious in Battle of I-75
Story by Max Alfonso | Photos by Kyle Brown
BOWLING GREEN – In a Friday night tilt at the Stroh Center, the University of Toledo Rockets kept the Battle of I-75 trophy with a 84-71 win over the Bowling Green Falcons (7-12).
Toledo (11-8) came out hot with a 7-0 run to start the game. Isaiah Adams started with a quick 5 points and finished with 18.
Marcus Johnson answered for BG after the Toledo run to start the game with 8 points, including two deep threes. He came into the game as BG’s leading scorer, averaging 16.4 per game. The senior forward finished with a game high 28 points.
Sophomore guard Bryce Ford made four big treys for Toledo. He started the year coming off the bench but moved into the starting lineup in the first MAC conference game against Western Michigan.
“We needed some floor spacing,” said Toledo head coach Tod Kowalczyk about Ford. “We needed to get better defensively on the perimeter and what he did tonight played big in big moments. I’m happy for him.”
Toledo guard Sonny Wilson had 18 points on an efficient 7-9 from the floor, and made his only three-point attempt.
Toledo came into the game 9th in conference play in three-point percentage (3P%) but went 12-24 Friday night.
“You’ve gotta give up something when you have mismatch problems out there,” Bowling Green head coach Todd Simon said. “Numerically, you would say yeah, you might have to give up a couple three’s to guys that are not making them.”
Johnson made a three to cut the lead to 6 with four minutes left. But Simon says they ran out of gas late.
“Right now we’re squeezing too many minutes out of everybody. It catches up with you at some point, I think the fatigue is certainly showing,” said Simon, who’s in his second season with the Falcons after spending seven seasons at Southern Utah.
Toledo moves to 99-84 all-time in the battle of I-75 rivalry.
“This is a heck of a rivalry,” said Kowalczyk, who has played against the Falcons since 2010. “I know Senderoff and Groce disagree; they keep saying it’s the best rivalry in the MAC. It’s not .. this is. And if I offend those other two schools, it’s okay.”
Toledo, 4th in the MAC, travels to Athens Tuesday to take on Ohio, and Bowling Green goes east to Kent State to take on the Golden Flashes.
