An Ohio school was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to put an end to punishing a student refusing to stand and receive the Pledge of Allegiance. Roxanne Westover, 17, says that she is an atheist and considers the pledge to be more religious than patriotic.

Because Westover refused to participate in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance, she says she was sent to the principal's office at Hubbard High School several times.

On Tuesday, the ACLU wrote to school district officials arguing that students have right not to say the pledge as a matter of free speech.

Superintendent Richard Buchenic says that he told the ACLU that the matter has been "dealt with."

Carrie Davis, ACLU of Ohio staff counsel, says that Hubbard High School intends to follow a district policy that states students are not required to recite the pledge.

Cuyahoga County has paid MMPI another $1,240,799 in addition to the monthly fees of $333,333.33, according to figures from the County Auditor’s department.

The monthly fees have cost County taxpayers some $2.3 million to MMPI. As I noted earlier, MMPI collects this each month as a fee and give no details of spending for the monthly check. The added $1.2 million went for other tasks performed for or by MMPI.

In addition, the County itself has spent $611,801 of the sales tax monies collected since January 2008. The total collected as of the end of October was $74,454,985.70.

The breakdown of the County’s expenditures is $61,517 in salary, $9,839 in benefits and $540,365 in contracts associated with the Medical Mart and Convention Center project. I am seeking a breakdown of the $540,000 payments.

The three payments made to MMPI, the Chicago firm contracted with to build and operate the Med Mart and Convention Center by County Commissioners Tim Hagan, Jimmy Dimora and Peter Lawson Jones, were in the amounts of $125,185, $385,129 and $730,485, according to the County Auditor.

Local Blog-artist The Chef's Widow is providing a giveaway for Clevelanders, urging citizens to shop locally for the holiday season. The contest is derived of an interesting concept called the "3/50 Project".

The idea is simple: over the span of 3 months, try to spend at least $50 of your everyday shopping at a local, independently-owned merchants in the Cleveland area. Sounds simple enough, but the statistics regarding the positive effect it has on our city is quite surprising.

As explained at the Project's main website, "If half the employed population spent $50 each month in locally owned independent business, it would generate more than $42.6 billion in revenue [per the U.S. Labor Department as of 2/6/09]".

It continues, "For every $100 spent in locally owned independent stores, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures".

As a Cleveland-based independent news source, it seems only fitting that Cleveland Leader gets behind such an interesting idea and help spread the word. To participate in the Chef Widow's contest, all the details can be found on her blog which features some great prizes just in time for the Holiday season.

I find the way MMPI bills Cuyahoga County for its monthly “fee” an example of bad management taken to extreme. The billings tell the County nothing of what MMPI does for its healthy fee.

Here’s what the entire “invoice” from MMPI says as a description of what it did for $333,333.33 – or a penny shy of $1 million every three months:

“Const. Mgmt/Developer fee - $333,333.33. Total due $333,333.33.”

That’s it. Pretty much a blank sheet of paper.

No mention of what work might have been done. No mention of how many people did what. No mention of money paid out by MMPI. No mention of hours worked. Not a shred of documentation. Nothing. Nada.

Now that’s the way to be able to bill a client. Sweet.

Just take our word for it, says MMPI. We’ve been giving you $333,333.33 worth of service this month. And on every 15th of the month the bill comes. And we pay. Now, since March, MMPI has pocketed $2.3 plus million. So every quarter another $1 million goes from the County to MMPI on a fee basis.

You’d think that Tim Hagan would have learned the lesson from Gateway when he and Mike White allowed the construction of the arena to go forward BEFORE they got the signature of George and Gordon Gund on line to occupy the Gateway arena.

As part of the Championship City Pilot program, the NCAA has teamed up with the “We Run This City” Youth Marathon Program as well as the John Carroll University Volleyball Team and local Elementary Schools as an effort to get the community involved with the Championships this week. These initiatives will also provide unique opportunities for youth from around the Greater Cleveland area to get involved in sports.

Boys and girls from eight local schools will participate in the “We Run This City” marathon program where finishers will run a one-mile race after the NCAA Cross Country Championships at Highland Hills Golf Course on November 21, 2009. All participants will receive an event t-shirt, a completion certificate and ribbons will be awarded to the winners. During the Championships, race youth participants will be divided into four groups and will rotate around the course and hear speeches by a student-athlete, coach, former Olympian runner and medical staff. The ‘We Run This City” Youth Race will begin at 1:00pm with the awards presentation to immediately follow.

Fierce finger pointing continues unabated in Cleveland as law enforcement and social service agencies, family members, governmental departments, religious institutions, and an entire community attempts to place blame on each other for perhaps the most heinous ongoing crime spree ever perpetrated in the city’s history. The body count of drug-addicted black women currently stands at 11, and now the FBI is involved as attention turns to the vacant house next door to where the first bodies were found. People are praying that no more bodies are discovered, but there is still a long list of Cleveland women missing.

Even Mayor Jackson has a personal connection to the crime since his niece has come forward and admitted that she lived with the alleged killer, Anthony Sowell, for a time last year. The official and community focus, however, still seems to be stuck on exculpation rather than prevention of future tragedies of this kind.

The city prosecutor recently stated that when one woman, Gladys Wade, came forward with charges against Sowell of a attempted rape a few months ago, a city detective said that she wasn’t a credible witness — in spite of blood splatters in the home and other documented evidence. The police chief is now countering that statement by saying that it was the prosecutor, not his detective, who didn’t want to move forward on the case.

I talked with MMPI’s Mark Falanga after a three hour Council briefing to ask a simple question. Did MMPI expect to build a private medical mart on public land at no cost?

MMPI’s Falanga told Council that among a number of possibilities examined, MMPI wanted to build its Medical Mart on the Mall area between City Hall and the County Courthouse overlooking Lake Erie. Well, who wouldn’t, especially for nothing.

Falanga kept saying that the County was paying the City of Cleveland $20 million, as if that answered my question. The $20 million was for convention center and public auditorium. The latter Falanga has tossed out as useless or worse.

The site originally expected to house MMPI’s Medical Mart was on private land that had to be purchased. MMPI failed to make a deal.

I asked Falanga that since MMPI was rejecting the purchase of private land at St. Clair and Ontario was he now proposing to build it on private government land, the Mall, at no cost. He told Council members that the owners wanted $24 million, a budget breaker, for the St. Clair site.

But he wouldn’t answer my question. He kept dodging it by referring to the $20 million deal between the county and city.

A cost for the city land hardly got mentioned by city officials.

I guess I’m just stupid. I don’t get it. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson wants to tax garbage to raise $13 million a year. Then he wants to tax non-profits to raise $5 million a year.

But residents already pay taxes to have their garbage picked up. Non-profits don’t any pay taxes. Seems to be a contradiction right there. Don’t you go after those that don’t pay taxes rather than those that do?

But there’s more.

Most Cleveland residents are not doing that well. Many of them you would call low income. Non-profits may be having some money problems but there’s plenty of money there.

Example: The Cleveland Clinic, likely the biggest of non-profits, had $3.4 BILLION in revenues in 2007, latest IRS report available.

Example: University Hospitals had net assets of nearly a billion, $994-million, in 2001, latest I could find.

Example: Cleveland Museum of Art has net assets of $873 million.

Example: Cleveland Foundation – assets of $1.49 billion.

Example: Gund Foundation – Assets of more than a half of billion dollars.

So from these behemoths you’d get $5 million a year but from working and unemployed stiffs you’d get $13 million? And you know the $9.25 garbage monthly fee will soon be $12, then $15 and then more.

The Akron Zips soccer team were rewarded for their 20-0 season today with the top seed in the NCAA Soccer Tournament. The Zips will play the winner of Steson and South Florida in the 48 team field. The Zips will have home field advantage and the game will be held on Sunday at 4 p.m. at Lee Jackson Field.

"We're very excited; this is what we've worked hard for all year long," said UA head coach Caleb Porter. "Our vision when we started this journey three months ago was to win the national championship. In order to do that, you have to put yourself in the best position possible going into the NCAA Tournament.

"Our players dug deep all year. They learned lessons and got battled-tested but they also got results. And by getting results, you put yourself in the best position possible with the seeding. With the No. 1 seed, we've paved our way the best we possibly could. Now the fun starts."

The Buckeye State and the Big Ten will be represented by Ohio State (4th seed). No other MAC school was awarded a bid into the tourney but the Big Ten will have Indiana, Michigan State, and Penn State all in the hunt for a national title.

The 2009 College Cup will be held at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C., on December 11th and 13th and will feature the semifinal and championship rounds.