PREVIEW 2011 High school football kicks off FOOTBALL 9A Put an Island in Your Life
Boardwalk’s Lobster Bisque
$12.99 ea. FREE
Volume 29 Number 28
www.thebeacon.net
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Farmers leave dry land
PHOTOS BY ANGIE ADAIR ZAM
Stone Lab staffer Nikki King shows off a plankton sample collected in Schoolhouse Bay during the Lake Erie Ag Tour Monday aboard BioLab.
Soil & Water Conservation District puts on Lake Erie Ag Tour BY ANGIE ADAIR ZAM Editor About 40 area farmers boarded boats Monday morning and headed out onto Lake Erie during the Ottawa Soil and Water Conservation District’s Lake Erie Ag Tour. The groups — aboard the Gibraltar III and the BioLab — were then led by Stone Lab staffers through a number of water quality monitoring exercises. In addition to basics like wave direction and speed, water and air temperature and the depth of the station, participants learned how to measure sunlight penetration and the amount of oxygen in the water. To see what was living in the lake, the guests also dredged the bottom pulling up zebra mussels and mayflies and trawled for fish. After the net was in the water for about 5 minutes, the BioLab brought up more than 200 fish including yellow, white
See TOUR 8A
Tax push brings in more than $1.1M
Tour participants try to identify a fish. After time on the water, those on the tour headed to the Stone Lab on Gibraltar Island for more hands-on activities such as fish dissection and checking water samples under a microscope.
Drivers take care as construction continues
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once upon a time about doing something like this. Anyway, all day this Saturday, starting at noon, some great bands will be playing some great rock ’n’ roll classics harkening back to the days when Gem Beach Dance Hall was a rock ’n’ roll Mecca! One of the bands to play there back in the 60s was Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. The feature band Saturday will be the Bob Seger tribute band Lookin’ Back. The party runs until 8 p.m. and parking will be available with shuttles along Ohio 163 in the old Winke’s Storage Building lot. All proceeds go to United Way in Ottawa County. nnn
Mark Hoffman was selected as our “Find Wylie” winner this week. He found our friendly fish in the ad for State Theatre on page 6B in last week’s Beacon.
INSIDE RECORDS 2A
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Prosecuting Attorney Mark Mulligan and Treasurer Bob Hille are now concluding the initial phase of their campaign to collect past-due real estate taxes in Ottawa County. The officials have collected more than $1,138,000 over an 18-month period. Hille and Mulligan primarily concentrated their efforts on large delinquencies that were the result of willful failures to pay. When confronted with the possibility of foreclosure, many delinquent taxpayers paid off the outstanding debt; other property owners went through the foreclosure process. “Foreclosure is the final alternative, but is
Mark wins a $20 gift card from Friendship Food Stores AND two tickets to Gem Beach Rocks on Aug. 27! We’ll be hiding Wylie again next week. If you find him, just drop off an entry form at our office in the Beacon Place Business Center, or hit the Find Wylie icon at www. thebeacon.net. nnn
The second weekend of the Oak Harbor Chamber of Commerce Farmer’s Market is Saturday, Aug. 27, at Flat Iron Park and Downtown Oak Harbor. For information to become a vendor, call the Chamber at 419-898-0479 or visit their Web Site at www.oakharborohio.net. nnn
I am happy to report that Daisy the Dog, whose picture appeared in The Beacon last week, has been adopted! Hope-
See TELL TALES 8A
AROUND OTTAWA COUNTY 3A
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Nathan Green, Director of Strategic Business Investment Division of the Ohio Department of Development, was the main speaker at the Friday morning breakfast event for Experience Ottawa County. He explained the changes coming with the JobsOhio initiative, a portion of which was declared unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court on Monday. One of the sponsors of the Supreme Court challenge to House Bill 1 that created the JobsOhio program was local State Rep. Dennis Murray. The Court essentially agreed with Murray that the legislature did not have the authority to take the challenge directly to the Supreme Court. It can now be heard in lower courts. One of the other initiatives he talked about was the creation of a new “TourismOhio” operation to challenge neighboring states like Michigan in their marketing efforts. Experience Ottawa County is a longs-tanding program sponsored by the Ottawa County Community Improvement Corp. and this year’s event started
SCHOOLS 8A
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Living
WATERFRONT COMMUNITY • MARINA W/DIRECT ACCESS TO LAKE ERIE • POOL • CLUBHOUSE
PHOTO BY JOHN SCHAFFNER
Nathan Green, Director of Strategic Business Investment Division of the Ohio Department of Development, spoke Friday during Experience Ottawa County. Thursday evening with an informal reception at Put-in-Bay followed by Friday’s breakfast at Port Clinton Yacht Club. According to Jamie Beier Grant, a significant number of site selection consultants were in attendance at the program here.
BUSINESS 1B n CLASSIFIED 6B
5050 E. Muggy Road, Catawba Island East of Thompson’s Landscaping
Experience
See TAX 8A
Experience Ottawa County
Tell Tales
It is so nice to see one of my brainchildren become such a huge success. Such is the case with GEM BEACH ROCKS! Actually, I have to give credit to Ottawa County Treasurer, Bob Hille who prodded me
By JOHN SCHAFFNER Publisher Following a national trend, new home prices along the lakeshore have dropped in the past several years. However, according to statistics from the Ohio Association of Realtors, home sale prices were up in July compared with 2010 figures. “Throughout the state we experienced a significant uptick in activity in July which has buoyed the industry’s outlook for the second half of the year,” said OAR President Meg Hudson. “We’re hopeful that the marketplace is poised to regain its footing and overcome the challenges that have beset the sector since the onset of the recession in 2008.” According to statistics published by OAR, sales since January 2011 have been very flat for total units sold, increasing by one through July of 2011 compared with the same period last year. Of more significance was the average sale price and the dollar volume, which increased by roughly 8 percent year over last year’s January through July numbers. For the month of July, local sales increased from 140 units in July of 2010 to 170 in July of 2011, a healthy jump of 21.4 percent. Of even more significance, dollar volume in sales nearly doubled compared to July of 2010 while the average sale price jumped by more than 60 percent.
See HOME 8A
By JOHN SCHAFFNER
There is a whole lot of Port Clinton under construction these days, some of which is happening on Fulton Street now through Friday. The contractor firm Inland Waters is lining the sanitary sewer lines between Second and Fourth streets. Since school started Tuesday in Port Clinton and Fulton Street is a popular route to the high school, they will be working from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. for the rest of the week. Fulton Street will not be closed during the nighttime construction, but drivers should take care to avoid accidents and injuries to the workers.
Good news on the local home front
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