SHEFFIELD TWP. — A Sheffield Township trustee was charged with disorderly conduct yesterday evening after he refused several times to turn down loud music at his home and argued with sheriff’s deputies.

Deputies were called to the home of the trustee, David Newsome, and his wife, Melissa, about 4:30 p.m. at 5340 Broadway. A Sheriff’s Office report noted a deputy had been called to the same home for a noise complaint about 11:45 the night before.

When advised of the complaint, Melissa Newsome, who is a member of the Clearview school board, told deputies there is no noise ordinance in Sheffield Township, according to the report. The report noted that she was correct but was advised of the Ohio Revised Code law about disorderly conduct.

Newsome also demanded to know who called the Sheriff’s Office, and deputies told her it was an anonymous caller. To that, she responded, “It was the lesbian across the street,” the report said.

David Newsome, who appeared intoxicated, then approached deputies, told them he is a township trustee and reiterated that Sheffield Township does not have a noise ordinance, the report said. When deputies told him he could be charged with disorderly conduct if the noise continued, Newsome told them he would turn the music up even louder, the report said.

Deputies told him not to and left the scene about 4:45.

About 7:10 p.m., a deputy traveling on South Broadway again heard loud music coming from the area.

Deputies found David Newsome to be extremely intoxicated and very argumentative, the report said.

According to the report, deputies told Newsome he was being given a professional courtesy and to turn his music down.

As partygoers were trying to talk Newsome into letting his wife talk to the deputies, he informed deputies that he and another trustee were instrumental in facilitating a contract between the township and the Sheriff’s Office to fund a deputy to patrol the township, the report said.

Newsome then demanded to know who had called them, and he was told to contact the Sheriff’s Office to get that information. Newsome responded by telling deputies to bring that information to the call next time, the report said.

According to the report, deputies could see no resolution was in sight and decided to charge Newsome with disorderly conduct.

He was given a court date for Thursday, but continued to argue with deputies and refused to sign the summons, the report said.

Melissa Newsome had to plead with her husband to sign the summons, and he finally did, the report said.

Last weekend, Melissa Newsome had to be LifeFlighted to a Cleveland hospital after she was hit by a car crossing the road near their home.

David Newsome said he and his wife had left a birthday party and were crossing South Broadway from the east side of the road to go home when the northbound vehicle hit her.

An investigator with the Highway Patrol found that Newsome was at fault for the crash, and she was charged with pedestrian in the roadway.

Kalo

ELYRIA — Lorain County Commissioner Ted Kalo was attacked by a dog during the commissioners’ meeting this morning.

The large grey dog was supposed to be featured during a regular segment in which one of the commissioners introduces a dog being housed at the Lorain County Dog Kennel. The idea is to get the dog adopted out to a new owner and the program has proven highly successful over the years.

Kalo was approaching the dog when it came at him and the commissioner lept back. He said he wasn’t injured by the animal, which only managed to bite at his clothes.

“Must be a tea party guy,” Kalo, a Democrat, joked as he sat back down.

Commissioner Lori Kokoski said the dog had been hit by a car and was recovering from surgery.

AVON LAKE — Ford Motor Co. will invest $128 million in the Ohio Assembly Plant to add production of medium-duty trucks and motor home chassis to the plant under the terms of a proposed new contract between the automaker and the United Auto Workers.

The stacks of Ohio Assembly plant rise behind a parked Ford Econoline van Tuesday in Avon Lake. (CT photo by Bruce Bishop.)

The E-Series van, which Ford plans to phase out by 2014, is now the sole product line being built at the plant, which sits in portions of Avon Lake, Sheffield Lake and Sheffield. The medium-duty trucks are now manufactured in Mexico, while the motor home chassis is built in Detroit.

Ohio Assembly, which has roughly 1,700 hourly workers and 100 management employees, is currently on a two-week shutdown.

The proposed contract, which would last through 2015, still needs to win approval from Ford’s approximately 41,000 union members across the nation.

Nick Gallogly, a former union leader at Ohio Assembly who now works as a national UAW representative, said the proposed contract would be a boon to workers and the local economy.

“It’s great that Ohio Assembly is getting the $128 million investment and job retention,” Gallogly said.

He said Ford had promised to introduce a new line to the plant under the terms of the last contract, which was ratified in 2007. The company renewed that promise in 2009 when it sought and received concessions from the union, but exactly what the new line would be wasn’t made public until Tuesday.

Gallogly said he was glad to see Ford keep its promise to bring a new product to the plant.

“It’s finally come together,” he said.

Ford and UAW officials declined to discuss whether the investment will mean new jobs at Ohio Assembly.

Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans said the company has committed to hiring 12,000 new workers through 2015 under the terms of the contract. About half of those new workers will be on the job by the end of 2012. The only specifics Ford has given so far is that about 1,800 workers will be hired at the company’s Louisville, Ky., plant, she said.

Evans also declined to discuss when the improvements would take place in Avon Lake. In total, Ford announced it would invest $16 billion into its U.S. operations over the next four years, about $6.2 billion of which will be dedicated to upgrading the company’s plants.

Mixed reviews

Brian Penson of Amherst, who’s worked at the plant for six years, said from what he’s seen of the contract so far, he plans to vote in favor of it. He said he was excited by the prospect of a $128 million upgrade to the facility and believes it will mean more jobs at the plant.

“It all seems like it would be a good idea,” he said.

Despite his enthusiasm for the investment, Penson said there’s some skepticism among the plant’s workforce that Ford will follow through on the investment. He said the company promised a new product line four years ago and it’s only delivering now.

Other Ohio Assembly workers, who asked that their names not be used, bluntly said they would vote against the proposed contract.

One worker, who’s been at the plant for nearly 24 years, said given the quality of the vans built at the plant, the assumption was that the Transit, which is seen as the replacement for the E-Series vans, would be manufactured in Avon Lake.

But the UAW said the Transit will instead go to Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant, which will see an investment of more than $1 billion from the automaker.

“We didn’t really get the reward, we got the pacification prize,” the worker said.

He also said executives and management have continued to receive bonuses in the millions of dollars, while the signing bonus for veteran workers is only $6,000. Ford workers with less than one year of service would get a $5,000 bonus if the contract is approved.

Another veteran worker, who’s been at the plant for 15 years, said he, too, plans to vote against the contract because it doesn’t go far enough to restore benefits union members have given up in recent years as Ford struggled to deal with the recession. And while workers hired after September 2007 will see their pay increase over the life of the contract, older workers won’t get a raise, he said.

“We’ve been left holding the bag, and we’re the ones building the vehicles they’re selling,” he said.

Under the terms of the contract, instead of cost-of-living pay increases, workers would get $1,500 annually to offset the rising cost of getting by. Longtime production workers would receive a $50,000 incentive if they retired, while skilled trade workers would be paid a $100,000 incentive to leave the company.

A third worker, who’s been at the plant for 23 years, said he doesn’t plan to vote for the contract because he doesn’t believe Ford is investing enough in Ohio Assembly’s future.

Officials pleased

Local officials, however, praised the new contract and the $128 million investment.

“It’s good for workers, it’s good for the economy and it’s good for Sheffield Village,” said Sheffield Mayor John Hunter, a retired Ford worker who once served as union president.

Lorain County Commissioner Lori Kokoski said the investment shows that Ford is committed to maintaining a presence in Avon Lake.

“They continue to invest money in the plant and I hope they stick around for a long, long time,” she said.

There’s also the possibility that Ford will receive tax breaks and other incentives from both state and local governments to help facilitate the upgrade to the plant, state Sen. Gayle Manning, R-North Ridgeville, and Avon Lake Mayor Karl “K.C.” Zuber said.

The Ohio Department of Development referred questions about a possible incentive package to the JobsOhio program, but a call to that organization wasn’t returned Tuesday.

Ford received a $75 million incentive package when it began producing the Ford Escape in Avon Lake in 2003, but it moved production of the SUV to another plant only a few years later when it shuttered the Lorain Assembly Plant and consolidated Econoline production at Ohio Assembly.

State Rep. Matt Lundy, D-Elyria, said that although he’s not directly involved in drafting an incentive plan, he expects that there will be one, particularly since Avon Lake relies on the Ford workers to fill the city’s coffers through income taxes.
It was that way back when he was an Avon Lake city councilman in the 1990s.

“It was kind of every day you were walking on eggshells wondering about the future of the plant,” he said.

Tuesday’s announcement tells him, he said, that Ford remains committed to Ohio Assembly, something he credits to the plant’s workers and the vehicles they produce.

“You can provide all the incentives you want, but if the workers aren’t building the quality product, the company isn’t going to make the investment,” Lundy said.

Highlights of the proposed contract

• Ford workers will get at least $16,700 over the four-year contract in the form of a $6,000 signing bonus, $7,000 in lump-sum and inflation protection payments and at least $3,700 in profit-sharing this year. That’s more generous than GM’s agreement, which guarantees workers at least $11,500.
• Ford plans to add 5,750 U.S. factory jobs under the deal, on top of 6,250 it announced earlier this year, for a total of 12,000 jobs by 2015. It also pledged to invest $4.8 billion in its U.S. factories. When combined with $1.4 billion in investments previously announced, Ford plans to invest $6.2 billion by 2015.
• If they agree to the contract, Ford’s 41,000 hourly workers will get $1,000 more as a signing bonus than the $5,000 bonus GM workers got. The GM deal also gives most workers profit-sharing payments instead of annual raises and promises 6,400 new or retained jobs.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

ELYRIA — The elaborate rope rescue of a 51-year-old man who was seriously injured one week ago after falling 25 feet onto a cliff near the Black River has prompted the Elyria fire chief to call for new legislation that would charge victims for their rescues.

On Monday, Fire Chief Rich Benton talked about the Sept. 26 rescue in terms of its monetary cost to the city and used it as an example to illustrate cases that go beyond normal rescues and end up costing the city money. In those cases, he said, the city should move to recover the costs from the at-fault party.

“This case was outside the norm of what a typical response from the Fire Department should be,” Benton said. “He was in a part of the city that is closed after dark, trespassing and getting into a situation that a reasonable citizen would not in the normal course of a day.”

Joseph Hurlbut of Elyria was rescued in a process that took about two hours using ropes and a basket.

“It tied up all of the firefighters for more than two hours and cost more than $2,000 in overtime to cover the stations while they were tied up on this call,” Benton said. “It’s not fair for taxpaying residents to have to pay for this kind of rescue. We have to establish a policy that if you are in the act of breaking the law, you will have to pay the cost of the rescue.”

Hurlbut, who authorities believe was intoxicated, was charged with criminal trespassing.

Benton said he does not think cost recovery should extend to residents who are injured or in need of fire assistance for a motor vehicle accidents or fires, which are covered through their tax dollars, he said. However, he said he would imagine that some costs could be assessed to insurance companies.

Assistant Fire Chief Bob Dempsey said several factors made the rescue of Hurlbut more difficult. It was dark and it was initially hard to find Hurlbut, who had fallen down a hill and broken his leg while walking with a friend on a trail behind the Police Department, near West Avenue and Kerstetter Way, Dempsey said.

Hurlbut fell shortly after 5 a.m. onto the riverbank and became wedged in between some rocks.

“Essentially we needed two different rescue systems and two groups of guys to do the work. It was very labor intensive,” Dempsey said.

An entire shift of 17 firefighters was needed to utilize two different rope and pulley systems. The first rescue involved bringing Hurlbut from the riverbank to the trail he fell from and then a second rescue had to be used to pull him from the trail to Forest Street, where LifeCare was waiting to take him to the hospital.

“It went well given the location of the victim and the conditions of the darkness, but this was a very treacherous area that required a careful and deliberate operation,” Dempsey said.

Elyria Law Director Terry “Pete” Shilling said the city is well within its rights to seek recovery for services rendered. And, although there is nothing on the books now, he said, the idea has come up before.

“The only thing we have tried to go after is recovery from people serving time in jail,” he said. “But it was determined those people couldn’t pay anyway.”

Shilling said the matter likely will be referred to the Finance Committee for further discussion. He said he will research similar legislation in other cities to determine how Elyria should proceed if Council moves in that direction.

“We charge for lot mowing, a service we render when residents do not, so I don’t see how we could not extend that to other areas,” he said. “But whatever is charged has to be reasonable. It cannot be an outrageous penalty.”

The practice of billing for services rendered is not unusual and is gaining popularity nationally as first responders are grappling with tight budgets and decreasing revenue.

But it is not a way for departments to make money or balance budgets, said Mike Rivera, co-founder and chief business development officer for Fire Recovery Inc., a California-based company that bills insurance companies for service rendered by fire departments on behalf of fire departments.

“For over 20 years, fire departments have been billing, and it is nothing new,” he said. “This is not a source of revenue that can be counted on, but merely cost recovery.”

Rivera said almost always, a resident is not billed. Typically, it’s the insurance company of the at-fault driver in a car crash or the property owner in the case of fire.

“I know of very few fire departments that bill actual residents,” he said. “I can’t speak for all companies, but my company is not a collection agency. We look at insurance policies and bill when it’s applicable. The reality is taxes are down and fire departments do not have enough to cover their expenses. They are running in the red, and wouldn’t taxpayers rather have insurance companies pay? And insurance companies pay us 90 percent of the time.”

Shilling said in the event a person does not have insurance, but is facing criminal charges related to their rescue, a judge could award restitution to the city, which could recover the costs.

Contact Lisa Roberson at 329-7121 or lroberson@chroniclet.com.