How much does loyalty cost at UT?

1/23/2005

Eight bite-size Lemmon Drops to nibble on while waiting to climb aboard the Ben Roethlisberger bandwagon:

  • Well, what do you know? Money doesn t buy happiness, or job loyalty, even though University of Toledo President Dan Johnson insinuated that it would.

    Let s rewind to June. The university board of trustees, acting on Mr. Johnson s recommendation, approved a $21,683 raise for Provost Alan Goodridge, boosting his annual pay to $210,233. (The timing of Mr. Johnson s request was awkward, you ll recall, because UT had just announced it would be increasing tuition and fees by 9.9 percent.)

    UT and Mr. Goodridge lived happily ever after, right? Well, not exactly.

    Less than six months after receiving the raise, Mr. Goodridge applied to become chancellor at Louisiana State University. He lost out to former NASA Administrator Sean O Keefe.

  • If the Ohio Turnpike s unionized toll collectors and maintenance workers go on strike, Teamsters Local 436 may regret playing hardball especially if it has to deal with an embarrassing internal backlash.

    It is my belief that the Teamsters are posturing themselves to show just how powerful they are, a toll collector said in an enlightening e-mail. They are playing chicken with our livelihoods.... A great many of our workers feel that the fact-finder report was indeed fair and don t think the turnpike commission will or should, for that matter budge on concessions. As reasonable people, we would be ashamed to strike.

  • Raise your hand if you stared in disbelief at this headline in Thursday s paper: 4 TPS buildings $5.4M over budget.

    Talk about a worst-case-scenario start for the $821 million program.

  • Won t you please reconsider, Macaroni Grill?

  • If I were to make a list of favorite people whom I ve crossed paths with during my 20-year newspaper career, Art Barrie s name would be near the top. The former Toledo radio personality, who died last week at age 91, was a true gentleman.

    We would chat on the phone occasionally, and just last month I stopped by for a visit. A voracious reader, he always impressed me with his knowledge of current events, particularly on issues pertaining to seniors.

    His dry sense of humor was endearing. One time I asked how he and his wife of nearly 70 years, Marguerite, were doing. His response was, in retrospect, rather poignant.

    We re doing OK, he said. We re just trying to delay the inevitable.

  • Southwyck Shopping Center s demise is getting painful to watch. The Gap and The Gap Kids will close Tuesday, and more vacancies are expected at the end of the month.

  • The safest political prediction of 2005? It s not that Carty Finkbeiner will enter the mayoral race. Instead, it s that Toledo Mayor Jack Ford s read my lips -type quote We will worry about 2006 in 2006 will be used against him in television ads.

  • It wasn t my intention for last week s double dose of pusillanimous to turn into a homework assignment, but about a dozen readers mentioned in e-mails that they looked up the meaning.

    Thanks for getting me off my butt to walk to the bookcase to check the definition of pusillanimous, Harold wrote. Surprisingly, the dust on the Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories didn t set me off on a five-minute sneeze-a-thon.