News

Walnut Hills residents who want to keep a YMCA facility open in their neighborhood have until today to respond to a deal that will do that. 

A couple Cincinnati Council Members worked on the agreement with YMCA officials. 

Wendell Young said it keeps the Melrose Y open for two more years with additional hours and funding. 

In 2015, the community can take over the facility if it doesn't like the Y's plan for it.

A bill that would effectively block grocery stores from selling wine and liquor—and ban wine and liquor sales in new pharmacies—was approved Thursday in a state House committee.

Under the legislation, grocery stores could still sell alcohol from an adjoined structure with a separate entrance. 

Current law does not allow people younger than 21 to enter a place which sells wine and package liquor, which has prevented sales in grocery stores in the past.

Cincinnati City Council member Cecil Thomas, who can't run for re-election this year because of the city's term limits law, told WVXU this morning he plans to leave council "within a month or two" and wants his wife, Pam Thomas, appointed to replace him.

"If (Pam Thomas) wants it, I would absolutely back that,'' said Thomas, a Democrat and former Cincinnati police officer.

Pam Thomas ran for Hamilton County clerk of courts last fall, winning 48 percent of the vote against Republican incumbent Tracy Winkler. She won the city vote overwhelmingly.

J. Kenneth Blackwell and Jerry Springer - political polar opposites who served together on Cincinnati City Council in the 1970s - will share the stage March 12 for Beyond Civility's "Side-by-Side" discussion series.

Springer, a former councilman and mayor who went on to international fame as a TV talk show host, is a liberal Democrats. Blackwell, a former state treasurer and secretary of state who ran unsuccessfully for Ohio governor in 2006, is a conservative Republican.