TODAY

TUE

WED

43/31

52/41

45/25

OSU
falls to
Maryland

Girls
sectional
pairings

SPORTS 1C

SPORTS 1C

Breaking news at limaohio.com

Issue 32, Volume 132

Monday, February 1, 2016 $1

Turnout is name of game in Iowa

TOP OF THE NEWS

2,300 reporters killed

in past 25 years

dential contenders are blanketing Iowa in a final frenzy

to close the deal before
Associated Press
Mondays Iowa caucuses
begin the formal process of
IOWA CITY, Iowa
From sounding duck calls to choosing President Barack
predicting the weather, presi- Obamas successor.
By Scott Bauer
and Bill Barrow

BRUSSELS (AP) In
the last quarter century, at
least 2,297 journalists and media
staff have been killed for doing
nothing more than trying to
inform the world on war, revolution, crime and corruption. And
killers continue to act with impunity, the International Federation
of Journalists announced in a new
report.
The annual total stood at 40
in the federations first year of
counting, 1990, but has not
dipped under the 100-mark since
2010.
The last ten years were
the most dangerous, said IFJ
General Secretary Anthony Bellanger in an interview, with 2006
the worst year of all with 155
killed.

Republican Donald Trump,

campaigning with his wife,
Melania, and pregnant
daughter, Ivanka, continued
his attacks on Texas Sen.
Ted Cruz. The two men lead
polls of likely caucus-goers.

Trump also predicted that

many senators would
soon endorse him rather
than their Texas colleague.
Trump didnt name any such
See iowa |6A

Understanding job issues

By Danae King

dking@civitasmedia.com

LIMA Plenty of opportunities

exist for people to find work in Lima
and Allen County, according to economic development officials.
However, many African-Americans
will tell you landing a job is one thing;
getting promoted is another especially when youre black.
Joe Patton, the administrator of the
OhioMeansJobs Center in Allen County, says a lack of education and communication are what determine who does
and doesnt find a well-paying job.
I dont really think its a race, age or
gender issue, said Patton. Instead, he
thinks the racial disparity Lima is seeing in the jobs market is the result of a
skills gap.
I think actually a lot of employers
are really reaching out to the black
community to try to pull them in and
are having trouble pulling them in, he
said.
Lima has been ranked No. 7 in the
top 10 worst cities for African Americans by 24/7 Wall Street, which offers
financial news and opinion to media
organizations. The disparities in job
figures between blacks and whites were
among the reasons cited.

TALKING POINTS

Youth Profile
LIMA Shawnee High
School senior Mikaela Guillen
hopes to dance her way into
thousands of dollars in scholarship
money as she competes in the
Distinguished Young Women
of Ohio Scholarship Program
later this month in Mount
Vernon.
Page 1B

Arrests in death
BLACKSBURG, Va.
Two Virginia Tech engineering
students have been arrested in
connection with the death of a
13-year-old girl whose disappearance last week from her Virginia
home set off a frantic, four-day
search.
Page 3A

See JOBS | 5A

GET THIS

Goat-tiger couple
may be over

LIMA

MOSCOW (AP) A
romance that enchanted Russia
may be over: Timur the goat
and Amur the tiger have had
a fight and arent together anymore.
In November, the goat
was placed in the tigers
compound in a wildlife park near
Vladivostok with the expectation
that the big cat would eventually
kill and eat him. But the two
not only tolerated each other,
they appeared to become friends.
The odd couple became a
popular topic on social media, and
T-shirts celebrating them went on
sale.
But Timur started pushing it,
constantly annoying and butting
the tiger.
Finally, the tiger couldnt
hold back, grabbed the goat
by the withers and tossed him,
park director Dmitry Mezentsev
told state news agency Tass on
Friday.
We decided to put them in different enclosures for a while, he
said.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION

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in black and white

About this series:

Lima in Black and White is an eightday series that begins a discussion
about the stark differences between
Limas black and white populations
when it comes to income levels,
jobless rates, poverty levels, crime
rates and education attainment.
The disparities were cited last fall
in a study done by 24/7 Wall St., an
internet financial research company.
It rated Lima No. 7 among the Top 10
worst cities for blacks.
The series looks at why the disparities
exist and what can be done about
them.
Sunday, Jan. 31: The gap
TODAY: The job market
Tuesday: Challenges facing schools
Wednesday: Police and trust
Thursday: Who are leaders?
Friday: Entertainment vacuum
Saturday: Young and black
Sunday: Midwest new South

CIVITAS MEDIA

24 pages, 4 sections

As a black
person you have
to work harder
and be better
than the person
next to you.
Bryan Risner

I think actually a
lot of employers
are really reaching
out to the black
community.
Joe Patton,
OhioMeansJobs
Center

Professor discusses primary election at museum

By Lance Mihm
CMYK / .eps

Whats your take on

todays news? Go to
limaohio.com and visit
us at facebook to share
your thoughts.

2016 Published at Lima, Ohio

Craig J. Orosz | The Lima News

Frank Cage of Cage Designs shoots a video at the Bradfield Center in Lima. Cage said he believes
the resources to support entrepreneurs like himself are available in Lima, but the reason theyre not
getting to the people who need them is two-sided. Theres a lack of communicating those resources
to individuals that may need it, he said. And theres a lack of innovation to be an entrepreneur.

lmihm@civitasmedia.com

Facebook f Logo

CMYK / .eps

LIMA With the Iowa

caucus kicking off the election primaries Monday for
the Republican and Democratic parties, Dr. Robert

A NEWS
People
& More: 2A
Nation: 3A
Editorial: 4A
Weather: 6A

B region
& ohio
Obituaries: 2B

Alexander gave residents

some outlook on this years
presidential election as the
guest speaker at the Allen
County Historical Societys
108th annual membership
meeting.
A professor of political sci-

C SPORTS
Classified: 5C

D Drivers
seat
Comics: 2D
Puzzles: 4D
TV: 4D

ence, Alexander is also the

chair of the Department of
History, Politics, and Justice
at Ohio Northern University.
He is the author of several
politically themed books and
a guest blogger on The Huffington Post.

Lottery

DAILY (Sunday)
Pick 3: 9-9-4 day, 1-6-3 night
Pick 4: 4-2-4-5 day, 1-5-2-1
night
Pick 5: 3-9-9-9-9 day, 7-5-37-7 night
Rolling Cash 5: 7-9-16-32-34

We want someone who

is better than us but doesnt
think he is better than us,
Alexander said of voting
for U.S. president. Confident but not arrogant. An

CLASSIC (Saturday)
5-19-20-34-48-49
KICKER: 311935
Jackpot: $2.3 million
LUCKY FOR LIFE
(Thursday)
1-14-24-35-43
Lucky Ball: 4
POWERBALL (Saturday)

See primary |6A

5-12-16-31-43
Powerball: 18
Power Play: 4
Jackpot: $112 million
MEGA MILLIONS (Friday)
20-28-49-51-52
Mega Ball: 6
Megaplier: 2
Jackpot: $63 million

LOCAL

The Lima News

Monday, February 1, 2016 5A

LIMA

in black and white

Finding help for black entrepreneurs

By Danae King
dking@civitasmedia.com

LIMA Getting business funding is challenging for anyone, but it is

even harder for AfricanAmericans because of the
barriers minorities face,
said Kathy Keller, director of the Small Business
Development Center at
Rhodes State College.
Those barriers for
blacks include difficulty
coming up with collateral
and cash requirements
and credit history and
score, and all are made
harder because minorities have lower household income, she said.
In Lima, black median
earnings were $15,409
versus $19,586 for white
people, according to the
2014 American Community Survey by the U.S.
Census.
Keller says the income
gap is because there is
a higher number of
broken families in the
African-American community, and a lower number that go on to secondary education.
There are resources
available to help AfricanAmericans.
The Minority Business
Assistance Center in
Toledo is partnering with
the Lima/Allen County
Chamber of Commerce
to offer business counseling and workshops to
minority business owners or entrepreneurs.
The goal of the MBAC
is to increase the amount
of minority owned small
businesses enough so

that eventually more

people from minority
communities are participating in the community
as a whole, said Portia
Ash, director of the
Northwest Ohio MBAC,
based at the University
of Toledo.
Ash has been coming
to Lima about once a
week since August, when
the Lima satellite office
opened.
Before partnering with
the MBAC in Toledo, the
chamber was partnered
with the MBAC out of
Akron. Now, Ash meets
with minority small business owners and those
interested in starting a
small business. She also
hosts workshops to help
minority small business
people, covering topics
such as access to capital
and more.
We have made
impacts with other
minority businesses
throughout the community, but I dont think were
reaching the number
that we need to, said
Jed Metzger, president
and CEO of the Lima/
Allen County Chamber
of Commerce.
The nuts and bolts of
it are we have to figure
out a way to show that
we can provide additional assistance to help
majorities or minorities
with the obstacles that
they come across when
they want to expand or
start a business.
Focused assistance
Its important to have
a service targeted at

Linking students
with good jobs
By John Bush

jbush@civitasmedia.com

LIMA The road map to breaking the circle of

poverty has one clear route, geting a good education.
If we want to make changes, we can sit back
and complain, or we could be willing to put
some action behind that rhetoric. Part of that
is having the right credentials to have a seat at
the table, said LaShonda Gurley, director of
multicultural development at Ohio Northern
University and a graduate of Lima Senior High
School.
According to Census.gov, 45 percent of blacks
in Lima were below the poverty line in 2014, compared to 29 percent of whites. Also in 2014, black
unemployment was at 28 percent compared to 15
percent among whites.
Gurley said she believes job opportunities exist
for blacks in Lima, but the problem lies in connecting students with those jobs.
In Lima Schools, part of the alternative program
is linking students with jobs after they graduate.
Fran Mort, principal of the alternative school, said
vocational teachers have done an excellent job is
reaching out to local industries.
We had a girl who was probably the best
welder in her class, Mort said. Her teacher
recognized her skills and brought in a couple companies to watch her weld. She could have walked
out of there and had a job with any of those companies because our teacher took the time to reach
out to them.
Mort said they also bring in college recruiters
to show students college is also possible if they do
not wish to enter the workforce right out of high
school.
Despite their efforts, Mort said many students
simply do not see a future for themselves because
of their socioeconomic background.
They already have these perceptions of failure because of all the social things theyve been
exposed to either by choice or not by choice,
based on where they have to live, Mort said.
Mort said that while schools do their best to
instill a sense of hope for struggling students,
she wishes more businesses would come into the
schools to mentor students interested in pursing a
particular field.
Itd be nice to have business people willing to
spend time with them, take them to their business and stick with them through graduation, she
said. For some students, it takes that extra effort
to show them that they have opportunities.
Reach John Bush at 567-242-0456 or on Twitter @bush_lima

minorities, such as the

MBAC, for several reasons, Ash said.
Historically there
hasnt been the support
and participation to drive
minority-owned businesses from a growth and
stability standpoint, she
said.
The chamber has been
trying to offer more
resources and services
to the minority community for years, Metzger
said. It started when the
chambers minority business committee realized
there was a tremendous
need for minorityowned businesses.
This realization came
when a construction
project was going on at
Lima schools several
years ago, and there were
no minority owned businesses to bid on the work
being done, Metzger
said.
Weve been trying
ever since that time,
since realizing you have
a city that is now (about
26) percent minority,
that we need to do something as a community
to get more individuals
to be entrepreneurs or
owning their own business and we are trying
everyday, Metzger
said. Theres a lot of
obstacles that sometimes
prevent minority owned
businesses from being
established.
Of the approximately
12,000 black residents,
there are about 51 black
owned businesses in
Allen County, Ash said.
She got the information

Jobs
From page 1A

In 2014 in Lima, about

16 percent of whites were
without jobs compared
to 28 percent of blacks,
according to 2014 U.S.
Census figures. Those
figures include people
who are no longer in the
labor market.
The study and ranking
doesnt surprise Patton,
as the perception is
there, he said, and he
thinks a lot of the issues
boil down to communication.
We have availability
to place people in all different types of jobs,
he said. A lot of times
people dont understand
whats available.
Climbing the ladder
Its not that simple, say
some African-Americans
in the work force.
After college, Derek
Richardson, 37, started
at the bottom, working
first for ServiceMaster
and then going into
insurance adjusting, selling insurance and then
working in banking for
several years before starting recently at Spherion.
He was placed in his
current job through
OhioMeansJobs Allen
County, and hes an
account manager at
Spherion in the Bellefontaine office.
The Lima native went
away to college and came
back because he always
felt attached to Lima
and wanted to be here
to try to make it a better
place, Richardson said.
Looking back, he realizes he hasnt had as
much opportunity as
others.
There just naturally
arent as many opportunities as you would find in

Danae King | The Lima News

Portia Ash is the director of the Minority Business Assistance Center office at the Lima/Allen County
Chamber of Commerce. Its goal is to increase the amount of minority owned small businesses in
Allen County.

from a study by Dunn,

Bradstreet and Hoover,
she said.
I think you always
hope for more, Ash
said of the number. You
want to see more. You
want to see more growing, stable businesses
that are more reflective
of the overall population
of the area.
Encouragement
The original black
entrepreneur in the city
was Walter Potts, of
which the entrepreneur
center at the chamber
is named. Its goal is to
identify and advance
opportunities to support
economic development
and expansion of small
and minority businesses, according to the
chambers website.
That center was what

a larger city, Richardson

said. It makes it that
much more important for
you to put yourself in a
position to be qualified
for the jobs.
Bryan Risner feels as
a black person you have
to work harder and be
better than the person
next to you, especially
when interviewing for a
job.
He worked his way up
at the Lima location of
a cell phone company
until he couldnt go up
anymore.
He was promoted a
few times and then, after
he kept interviewing for
supervisor jobs and not
getting one, he realized
out of all the managers,
he was the only one who
was an African-American.
I was never going
to go somewhere, said
Risner, now 39. If youre
not the right color you
were frozen where you
were at.
Risner and Richardson
have different experiences when it comes to their
employment, education
and family background,
but both say they have
seen discrimination
and they know negative
attitudes toward black
people exist in the business world.
When Risner worked
at the cell phone company, there were five black
people on the regional
level of the company,
which really isnt a lot,
he said.
That is something
that a lot of people dont
realize that you deal with
or have to experience,
Richardson said, always
being the only one or one
of a few.
Sometimes its a
big deal, Richardson
said, like when youre
climbing the ladder and
there isnt a lot of repre-

helped Frank Cage establish his business, Cage

Designs.
Jesse Pope, former
coordinator of the Walter
C. Potts Center, helped
Cage with one-on-one
counseling, encouragement, and helping his
business become certified as a Minority Business Enterprise.
Cage said he believes
the resources to support
entrepreneurs like himself are available in Lima,
but the reason theyre
not getting to the people
who need them is twosided.
Theres a lack of
communicating those
resources to individuals
that may need it, he
said. And theres a lack
of innovation to be an
entrepreneur.
When it comes to

the communication of
resources, the referral
system is huge, according to Keller, of the Small
Business Development
Center at Rhodes State
College
The center tries to
reach African-American
small business owners by
networking with agencies that have a relationship with the population,
Keller said.
Minority businesses
and entrepreneurs fill a
void in the community,
Keller said. Ethnicities
provide special interests
that theyre good at and
they each have unique
gifts and talents that
we want to explore and
encourage for the good
of all society.
Reach Danae King at 567-242-0511
or on Twitter @DanaeKing.

Charity
Upshaw is
working on
plans to open
A Closer Eye
Homecare
Services
soon. She
said starting
a business is
not equal
for AfricanAmericans.
Danae King | The Lima News

sentation from your own

people in management
roles.
In his experience,
some companies and
managers dont care
about race when hiring, they just want the
best person for the job.
But hes also heard local
people say theyll never
hire a black person.
Lets not be naive that
(discrimination) is not
happening and that there
isnt an element thats out
there, Richardson said.
He thinks the solution is not about placing blame, but about
education and personal
choices.
Entrepreneurship
Charity Upshaw, a
36-year-old Lima native
who is striving to start
a business, says she has
faced discrimination
while trying to find a
building in which to run
her home-care service.
Landlords, theyre
hesitant, not sure. They
dont know your character. Its just the way of
the world, Upshaw said.
That could discourage
someone from offering a
wonderful service.
Upshaw is working
on a business plan and
plans to open A Closer
Eye Homecare Services
soon. She said starting
a business is not equal
for African-Americans,
though being in the
workforce as someone

elses employee wasnt

for her either.
She has been discriminated against in previous employment and
educational experiences
and said the only thing
people can do is prove
themselves.
Dont give up; keep
trying until your break
through comes, Upshaw
said.
Access
The issue of access
is important, says Portia Ash, director of the
Northwest Ohio Minority Business Assistance
Center.
As you look at quality
of life and the experience of living in various
communities, obviously
work and access to jobs
and access to capital
and availability of jobs
is important, extremely
important, in terms of
the thriving communities, she said.
Jed Metzger, president
and CEO of the Lima/
Allen County Chamber
of Commerce, agreed.
We need to work
together to find a way
that we can start whittling away at those
negative factors that are
preventing the minority
community from having
the same or equal lifestyle as the white population does, Metzger said.
Reach Danae King at 567-242-0511
or on Twitter @DanaeKing.