Akron's Firefighters Awarded for Life-Saving Efforts: Heart Attack Hotspot or Heroic Haven?

Hey, let's start off with some good news.

Akron fire and EMS services, they've received a national recognition from the American Heart Association.

Yeah, they received the Mission Lifeline Gold Achievement Award.

And it stems from an initiative to reduce barriers to prompt treatment when dealing with heart attacks or strokes.

So very cool for those guys.

I guess if you want to have a heart attack or stroke, Akron is a good place to do it.

If you're looking for someplace to get cool with the kiddos, there is a new splash pad in town.

It's at Elizabeth park.

That's at 40 East Lodge street and the city celebrated the new opening a couple weeks ago.

It's 2,600 square feet of splash and fun.

They say there are 15 different water features for people of various ages to get involved with.

It was funded by a $278,800 in community development grant funding.

So that's very cool.

And Elizabeth park was one of those two parks that received $100,000 in 2019.

And the new splash pad is added to the additions that they did back then.

So if you're looking for a fun place to get wet with the kiddos, you might want to check it out.

If you're a fan of Steve Martin and Martin Short, check this out.

They are coming to the Civic Theater November 20th.

That's one of the events I've added out@akronpodcast.com events.

Another one.

If you grew up in the 80s, life is just a fantasy.

Mr.

Aldo Nova is coming to the Goodyear Theater and I bought my tickets for that one for all the events and what's going on.

I'll talk about them a little later.

But just remember, just go to akronpodcast.com events.

The Sirens Curse.

The new coaster out at Cedar Point is now open.

There's some videos.

There was a guy from the Beacon Journal that wrote it.

I watched the video.

I got to tell you, here's the thing.

It's about, I think it's 1500ft.

You go about 58 miles an hour.

And the whole big thing is when you get to the top of the coaster, it then flips you like you are staring straight down.

And it lets you hang there for a bit, just long enough to wet your pants.

And then it lets you fall, yeah, 160ft and it does a couple 90 degree turns.

There's a lot of loops and things like that.

It's 2,966ft and again you go about 58 miles an hour.

They say there are 13 instances of weightless or so called airtime where you're getting kind of thrown out of your seat.

So, you know, it sounds like fun.

But if you think about it, we are so lucky to have Cedar Point in our backyard because it has so many great coasters there.

You do have to be 48 inches tall to ride the ride.

And because this is the newest ride.

Yeah.

Expect a couple hours to wait in line.

If you've been up on Howe Avenue, the Sheets there, right when you get off of Route 8 is roped off.

They are rebuilding it and it's going to be closed probably till fall.

And what they're doing is they're putting in a few more pumps and they're making room to sit down and eat inside the building because, you know, when I want fine dining, I go to the gas station.

And I realize, especially if you've ever been out of Ohio where they have a Buc Ees like in Texas, there are, if you're at Wawa over in Pennsylvania, there are some gas stations that are serving decent food.

But if you're wondering like why are they ripping up a really popular already, you know, working great kind of situation there, that's what Sheets is doing.

And the other thing, as I was on that street, Dick's Sporting Goods is gone.

The closest location now is in Stowe.

So that's the one across from Target.

And I looked up and was like, hey, what happened to Dick's?

And yeah, there they are gone.

There was a robbery and here's the good news, they've been arrested.

There were five males ranging from 15 to 33.

What are you doing when you are 33 hanging out with a 15 year old.

But this happened back last week and this was in Firestone park in the Peppermint Hippo parking lot.

Something tells me the Peppermint Hippo, maybe not the most upstanding, I could be wrong.

But anyway, the, the police respond to the reports of a robbery.

And this was on the 1000 block of East Waterloo Road at 3:30 in the morning.

And again, I call me weird, I don't want to be a fraidy cat, but if I'm not off the streets by one, I'm going to put on some armor or something like that.

But basically they found one suspect on South Arlington where he found some of the victim's property.

And the other suspects were arrested after they were observed running into an apartment in the 900 block of Barbara Avenue.

So kudos to Akron police for getting these hoodlums off the street.

Before you know it It'll be football season and Akron Public Schools is preparing to do work on two football stadiums.

And there are some necessary repairs and a significant upgrade.

So the Kenmore Stadium where Garfield Community Learning center plays its home games, they had a pipe burst this winter and it caused damage and it left the locker rooms without water.

That's not good.

And the school board last week approved bids to do the repair work, as well as asphalt repairs and resurfacing of the stadium parking lot.

Now the book Duel.

Again, these aren't schools.

It's the Community Learning center is slated to receive a major upgrade with the construction of a new combination press box and concession stand, which will also provide new restrooms for the stadium.

Probably really needed.

And previously those attending games had to go inside the school to access a restroom.

Yeah, I'd say that was needed.

And the board last week approved a contract with an architect for the project.

Now, the funds for all of this was approved earlier and other things.

They say it's going to cost 1.5 million to upgrade the Booktol stadium.

But check this out.

The stadium's press box was built in 1955.

Yeah, that's crazy.

And it says it was something that certainly has been advocated for a number of years.

It's going to be an improvement to the stadium, which is going to be nice to have.

But yeah, all the money for this was out of a fund that was set aside years ago.

So no extra taxes, things of that nature.

Ah, the lovely world of politics.

Well, check this out.

Ohio purged 12,000 voters and 3,500 more are at risk.

Here's the deal.

They removed them because these people voted in other states during the 2024 general election.

And again, they've kind of flagged 350,000 registrants for potential remover with voters having until September 2025 to confirm their status.

So I'll put a link to this out in the show notes.

You might want to go out and just double check your voter registration.

The address is voterlookup.ohiosos.gov it's really long.

And so I'll just put a link to this out in the show notes.

But always fun to hear what's going on with our election process.

Well, here's some good news.

The mayor of Akron a while back, he said, look, I introduced a kind of a proposal for this whole use of force policy by the Akron Police Department because we've talked about there are videos out there where, you know, they're holding a guy down on the ground and they Just kind of come up and you, you know, hit him in the face.

And I don't think that's in the manual.

And the original proposal to look into this was $768,000.

I was like, how many people are watching these videos and what are we paying them?

Then in February he got the price down to 640,000 and now it's been approved for $350,000.

But at least somebody's going to look into this.

The interesting thing will be, you know, what do they find from this?

It's like, are there going to be any changes, things like that?

So it'll be, you know, it's good that it's being looked into.

It's good that it's a third party service.

But 350k to watch some police videos?

It must be more than that, I guess.

But holy cow.

But at least something's moving forward.

Fingers crossed.

How'd you like to maybe win 100 bucks?

The summit county public health is conducting a community health assessment and they need your insights on your health, the health of your community and the health of Summit county as a whole.

And the survey will gather your perspective on multiple aspects of health in your daily life.

I'll put a link in the show notes to this, but you can take a quick survey and there's a chance that you'll win a hundred dollar grocery gift certificate.

If you're not going downtown, if you're looking for some free fun, there are party on the plaza.

That's next to the Civic, and of course you got lock three.

And while you're down there, you're probably going to see more policemen on bikes.

This is a new initiative that they're kind of ramping up again.

The whole part of this is to keep Akron safer.

And it's part of Chief Harding's comprehensive plan for not only keeping things, you know, safe, but also for community engagement and crime prevention.

So if you see them on their bike, let them know we appreciate them for their service.

Akron has received some money to clean things up.

More than $800,000 are coming to Summit county to clean up two Brownsfield industrial sites.

The former Bucky I'm Sorry Buckley auto wrecking on Manchester Road in Coventry Township appears to be the site that will be cleaned up using state brownfield funds.

And they've also got another one that was the old rubber plant.

It is $476,000 to clean up an industrial site on 1025 Schweitzer Avenue.

This is where the Star Rubber company and as well as portage machine and engineering.

So those two sites are going to be clean up.

They are.

I know the Buckley auto wrecking.

They had oil stained concrete transformer room with possible chemical contamination, asbestos wrapped piping.

Wonderful.

And 100 gallon oil storage tank.

So the award said the work could help create 10 jobs in the area.

No thank you, I'll pass on that one.

But again all of this is being funded to us and it's probably these two sites that have need cleaned up for well quite some time.

I mentioned the Akron events calendar tomorrow if you don't mind driving to Youngstown.

Rick Springfield and special guests will be at the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater.

Robin Trower will be out at MGM Northfield.

That's July 5th.

July 21st if you like your rock hard.

Well Buck Cherry is going to be playing the House of Blues in Cleveland.

The Pat Travers band.

I just saw them last year when they were actually this year when they were at Kent.

That's a good show.

And Pat of course, boom boom, out go the lights will be in Warren.

That's about half hour east at the Warren Theater.

July 25.

The Gin Blossoms will be at the MGM Northfield Stage.

July 31.

Priscilla Black with the shootouts.

That's a country star.

They're going to be at Lock three and that'll do it for July.

Be safe out there.

Don't forget to wear your sunscreen.

And I didn't report on the shootings and here's why.

There's just too many.

Every time I open up my new stuff it's, you know, 25 year old guy got shot, robberies, people breaking into houses and you know, maybe I'll bring those back when it's one here and one.

I'm just here to tell you there's enough depressing things going on in the world but can we please quit shooting each other?

It's ridiculous.

So I love you Akron.

If you like this show, please tell a friend Akron podcast dot com.