LIMA — In the first of three Lima mayoral candidate forums organized by the Lima Black Ministerial Alliance Thursday at Second Baptist Church, Mayor David Berger fielded questions related to topics ranging from police relations to economic development and minority hiring. One topic that was visited multiple times, however, was how engaged the minority community is with local media, a debate that was stemmed by a comment from Berger.
“Some here may debate this, but in the black community, folks here don’t read the paper, so you didn’t see the headline in June when The Lima News said on a Sunday morning that 1,500 jobs were available,” he said. “You often don’t watch the news on WLIO and you often don’t listen to the radio. And I’ve asked folks over and over how they get the news, and they say, ‘I get it at church,’ or ‘I get it from my friends.’”
Several ministers on the panel took issue with that statement, with the Rev. Dennis Ward, the president of the ministerial alliance, taking an impromptu poll in the church asking which of the minority members in attendance read the newspaper, to which multiple hands were raised.
“You say you don’t have data to answer a question (on sentencing comparisons between white and African-American offenders),” the Rev. Arthur Butler of Providence Missionary Baptist Church said. “You didn’t have quantitative data about blacks reading the paper, but you said what you did. That disturbs me.”
Other topics discussed included police practices as they related to minorities, examining the Lima Police Department’s pinpoint policing policy.
“Since 2008, violent crime has decreased 30 percent in our community, so we are making progress,” Berger said. “Pinpoint policing has been characterized by some as racial profiling. It is not. It is geographic targeting. It’s putting the police resources where the hot spots are. It is putting police resources where the data says things are going on.”
Berger also emphasized the work of initiatives like MakerFest and the work of Ohio Means Jobs in connecting people with jobs in the community in an attempt to counter the impression that there were no opportunities for minorities in the city, as well as advocating again for the change in the civil service rule from its current policy of interviewing the top 10 candidates to pass the civil service exam for each available position to interviewing all candidates who pass the exam, saying it will encourage more minority hiring.
“No one who passes the test should be excluded from an interview,” Berger said.
The ministerial alliance will continue its forums the next two Thursdays with the other two mayoral candidates: Keith Cheney and 6th Ward Councilman Derry Glenn.
“We want to hold each candidate accountable, and the only way to do that is to ask questions,” Ward said.
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