Welcome to Auburn Township in Beautiful Geauga County Ohio

UPGRADES TO THE GEAUGA COUNTY SAFETY CENTER (JAIL) PER ROLL CALL APPROVAL BY THE “STATUTORY GROUP” AT 9:45 am -COMMISSIONERS’ MEETING OF APRIL 1, 2025

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

At approximately 9:45 am the Statutory Group, consisting of the three currently serving Geauga County Commissioners (Dvorak, Brakey, and Spidalieri), Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand, Clerk of Courts Sheila Bevington, and Court Magistrate Randy Taylor, showed up during the April 1 public meeting to review before-demolition-and-after-renovation representations of the Safety Center’s area known as Visitation Room. The information was presented for approval by a representative of the Geauga County Maintenance Department.

On two occasions within 10 minutes, those in attendance were informed that the information in the packet presented to the six representatives of the Statutory Group were not a public record, once by Acting County Administrator Linda Burhenne and once by the Maintenance Department representative. The demolition, installation, and refurbishing plans of the former Visitation Area into a smaller Visitation Area and a 364 square foot office area could provide a threat the security of the Sheriff’s Safety Center if distributed as a public record.

When asked for questions or concerns, Sheriff Hildenbrand, with tongue-in-cheek took aim at his perception of the exorbitant cost-estimate of $150,700 to demolish ten very outdated video-phone-stations and the ceiling above them, to create just three such video-phone-stations, and a second room of 464 square feet that will serve as office space. Both areas will have new ceilings. Emphasizing that he could paint the whole area for about $5 instead of the estimated $7000, he was equally blunt about judging the $3000 ceiling work as pretty outrageous, and he had similar criticism for the cost estimate of “two steel partitions,” and “$3000 for 2 new phones” with apparently “very valuable cable to install.”

Although the Commissioners’ Room was silent, many of us found Sheriff H’s plain speech very refreshing and right at our level during these inflationary times. Bravo, Sheriff H!

It turns out that the $15,700 is a cost estimate submitted by the County Engineer’s Office. If no bids come in within 20% of that estimate, the whole job will have to be bid out again.

Sheriff H. was particularly loquacious on April Fool’s Day, explaining that technology has progressed so quickly that the Safety Center Phone Centers are a real signal of yesteryear. In fact, he continued, the Safety Center never ever experienced ten phone “visitors” at one time, not even in the beginning, and especially not in today’s world.

The stress on the more efficient utilization of the area as two rooms instead of one room is to better deal with mental health needs within the Safety Center.

Thinking ahead, Commissioner Brakey asked if the $15,700 estimate included the cost of any possible necessary building permits and was assured of that possibility.

It turns out that Probate Court Judge Timothy Grendell had also been invited for input, but neither he nor his representative had responded to the opportunity. Therefore the affirmative vote was 6. The roll-roll results were to be sent on to the Office of the Geauga County Auditor.

ELON MUSK REVEALS DOGE'S NEW TARGET — MEMBERS OF CONGRESS WHO GOT 'STRANGELY WEALTHY'

Monday, March 31, 2025
Updated March 31, 2025, 11:52 a.m. ET

Ryan King | New York Post

The world’s richest man is dying to figure out how lawmakers on Capitol Hill got “strangely wealthy” despite their comparatively modest public salaries.

Speaking at a town hall in Wisconsin Sunday night, Elon Musk suggested that his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will investigate how certain members of Congress have achieved generational wealth.

One attendee at the town hall had asked Musk if DOGE had uncovered evidence of funds wired from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

“They’ll [the government] send the money overseas to one NGO [non-governmental organization], then they’ll go through a bunch of them, and then I’m highly confident that a bunch of that money then comes back to the United States and lands in the pockets of the people you just mentioned,” Musk replied.

“But it is a circuitous route. It doesn’t go directly, but let’s just say that there’s a lot of strangely wealthy members of Congress where I’m trying to connect the dots of, ‘How do they become rich?'”

Rank-and-file members of Congress make $174,000 annually. Last year, Musk — whose net worth is pegged at $330 billion by Bloomberg — helped kill legislation to raise congressional pay, then later supported an increase as a means of fighting corruption.

Scores of lawmakers who have spent decades in Congress are millionaires.

Two of the wealthiest include former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has a net worth of about $250 million, and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whose personal fortune hovers around $552 million.

Pelosi’s wealth largely comes from her and her venture capitalist husband Paul’s lucrative investments in companies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Netflix.

Scott’s personal fortunes largely stem from his work co-founding HCA Healthcare, a company that runs hospitals and other medical facilities around Florida, and Solantic, an urgent-care clinic chain. His work on both of those companies predates his time in the Senate.

“How do they get $20 million if they’re earning $200,000 a year?” Musk further pondered. “We’re going to try to figure it out and certainly stop it from happening.”

Musk swung through Wisconsin on Sunday to rally support for Brad Schimel, a conservative Waukesha County judge, in the closely watched election for the state Supreme Court.

During his visit, Musk handed out $1 million checks to two Badger State voters. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has encouraged Wisconsin residents to sign his petition against “activist judges” to get prize money.

“I should say that the reason for the checks is that it’s really just to get attention,” Musk explained about the prize money.

“And somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court race pits Schimel against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, with the winner having outsize sway over issues such as state abortion laws and redistricting.

Control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is seen as politically valuable given the ongoing battles between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the GOP-controlled state legislature.

USDA PAID TO STUDY QUEER FARMERS, LATINX MASCULINITY, MORE ON TAXPAYER DIME

Sunday March 30, 2025
By Casey Harper | The Center Square

U.S. taxpayers have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars in recent years to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for research on LGBT issues, the kind of funding now under scrutiny by the Trump administration.

The research relies on conducting interviews – in one case for $373 per Zoom call – to explore a researcher's hypothesis of widespread discrimination.

For instance, one taxpayer-funded research grant studied “queer farmers quality of life in Pennsylvania,” federal records show, one of several grants of its kind.

The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Projects – a federally funded research arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture – paid $14,997 for the 2018 grant.

While this grant is relatively small, there are others, and critics argue the spending is a distraction from helping farmers and lowering food prices, which soared during the Biden administration alongside this kind of research funding.

The aforementioned 2018 queer farmers grant went to Pennsylvania State University for a project titled: “Sexuality and Sustainable Agriculture: Examining Queer Farmers' Quality of Life in Pennsylvania.”

The grant proposal says the topic is “woefully understudied.”

“The deeply entrenched assumption of heteronormativity in farming has excluded queer farmers from full inclusion and benefits from agriculture, even within sustainable agriculture,” the grant’s proposal abstract said.

The graduate student who assisted with the project, Michaela Hoffelmeyer, presented the findings to the Rural Sociological Society Annual Meeting in Richmond, Virginia.

Her research highlighted some of the challenges faced by queer farmers, reporting that "findings suggest that transgender, non-binary, and women farmers faced additional hurdles" but create support networks to overcome those challenges.

Hoffelmeyer has since gone on to join the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, where she has become a voice in the media and public policy on LGBT issues.

Hoffelmeyer says on the university website that she applies "feminist, queer, and labor theories" in her research to "inform agricultural programming and policy on how to make shifts to support viability, well-being, and sustainability.”

The faculty advisor for Hoffelmeyer’s project, Penn State University Assistant Professor Kathleen Sexsmith, oversaw another taxpayer-funded project along the same lines.

LATINX GENDER IDENTITIES

Sexsmith's 2021-2024 grant for $14,923 was awarded during the Biden administration and was titled: “Farming as a Latinx: Analyzing how ethnic and gender identities shape Latino/a participation in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania.”

The grant proposal points to the shift from white farmer in the U.S. to Hispanic farmers because of immigration and takes a moment to consider Hispanic masculinity.

“How do rural Latin American masculinities become reproduced or reshaped in the U.S. as they establish themselves as sustainable farmers, and how does is it impact the ability of women and men to meet sustainable agriculture goals?” the grant’s proposal abstract reads.

The researcher conducted 40 interviews over Zoom, averaging about 45 minutes, putting the taxpayer cost at about $373 per Zoom call.

"Initially, the project aimed to interview farmers directly, but due to the difficulties in accessing this hard-to-reach population, the focus shifted to institutional perspectives," the report said.

The researcher said in the final report that Hispanic farmers suffer from systemic discrimination.

QUEER FARMERS' RELATIONSHIPS

Another $15,000 grant in the federal database is titled: “Gender, Sexuality, and Social Sustainability: Exploring Queer Farmers' Relationships, Ethics, and Practices in the Midwest.”

That 2022 grant went to the University of Notre Dame in response to a grant proposal promising to develop “a more comprehensive understanding of queer farmers' experiences.”

The proposal for that grant posited that “we still have much to learn about the specific ways that narratives which posit heterosexuality and cisgender identities as ‘normal’ continue to uphold hegemonic power dynamics within alternative agriculture.”

The research's final report said "findings show that queer farmers often struggle to find safe, supportive work or learning opportunities as a result of how other farmers, customers, and community members perceive their gender or sexuality, and even though many queer farmers having family connections to farming, they struggle to secure access to land because their family’s agricultural or social values don’t align with theirs."

The faculty advisors for all three projects did not respond to a request for comment or declined to comment to The Center Square.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order upon taking office banning federal funding for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion projects, initiating a purge within the federal government.

Since then, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have been combing through federal spending records, exposing controversial taxpayer-funded projects, many of which the Trump administration has since terminated.

Musk and the Trump administration have faced legal challenges to these cuts, but the administration’s cost-cutting momentum has been fueled by examples of all kinds of controversial federal spending, particularly on DEI and LGBT issues.

The USDA said in a news release in February that it had “begun a comprehensive review of contracts, personnel, and employee trainings and DEI programs.

“In many cases, programs funded by the Biden administration focused on DEI initiatives that are contrary to the values of millions of American taxpayers,” USDA added.