THE BLADE: TOLEDO, OHIO ■ SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 2019
SECTION B, PAGE 3

priest was at Sa­cred Heart Par­ish in Mont­pe­lier, Ohio, more than 25 years ago.

Father Beaver served as pas­tor at Sa­cred Heart from 1984 to 1994.

The Wil­liams County Pros­e­cu­tor’s Of­fice and the Mont­pe­lier Po­lice Depart­ment re­cently closed a joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion into the priest at the re­quest of the ini­tial ac­cuser; a po­lice re­port in­di­cates that the ac­cuser has main­tained through­out the in­ves­ti­ga­tion that he does not want to pur­sue pros­e­cu­tion against the priest. The two ad­di­tional al­le­ga­tions were made in the course of the agen­cies’ months-long in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In No­vem­ber, the Wil­liams County Pros­e­cu­tor’s Of­fice re­ceived a let­ter from a state in­mate in­di­cat­ing that he too “was a vic­tim of Fr. Beaver in the spring/​sum­mer of 1980.”

The writer states that his fam­ily made sev­eral at­tempts to open an in­ves­ti­ga­tion with the Toledo Po­lice Depart­ment and Lu­cas County Pros­e­cu­tor’s

Of­fice at the time, but that “no ‘of­fi­cial’ in­ves­ti­ga­tion was brought … for these hor­ren­dous acts that Fr. Beaver com­mit­ted against me.”

Father Beaver served as as­so­ci­ate pas­tor at Most Blessed Sac­ra­ment, Toledo, from 1979 to 1981, and St. John the Bap­tist, Toledo, from 1981 to 1984, ac­cord­ing to di­oc­e­san records.

Lu­cas County Pros­e­cu­tor Julia Bates said the writer has in­di­cated that he wanted the al­le­ga­tion on record, but does not want to pur­sue an in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The al­leged in­ci­dent is also be­yond the stat­ute of lim­ita­tions, she said.

“Noth­ing is hap­pen­ing at this point,” she said. “He doesn’t want any­thing done with it, and we try to re­spect [peo­ple’s wishes], es­pe­cially if it can’t be done, any­way.”

In Decem­ber, ac­cord­ing to a Mont­pe­lier Po­lice Depart­ment re­port, an in­di­vid­ual re­ported to the Huron County Pros­e­cu­tor’s Of­fice that his sis­ter had been abused by Father Beaver in the late 1970s.

Father Beaver was or­dained in 1976 and served at St. Paul the Apos­tle in Nor­walk, Ohio, from 1976 to 1979, ac­cord­ing to di­oc­e­san records.

Ac­cord­ing to the Mont­pe­lier po­lice re­port, the ini­tial ac­cuser was 8 or 9 years old at the time of the abuse. While he does not want to pur­sue pros­e­cu­tion against the priest, he does want au­thor­i­ties to work with the di­o­cese to have the priest be re­moved from min­is­try.

The re­port doc­u­ments at least two peo­ple who vouched for the priest’s char­ac­ter to Mont­pe­lier po­lice Chief Dan McGee in the course of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It also ref­er­ences a re­view of his per­son­nel file, which re­port­edly in­cluded “a large amount of pos­i­tive feed­back from peers” and “NO di­rect com­plaints or al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct” prior to the al­le­ga­tion in 2018.

The re­port also notes “pe­cu­liar writ­ings” in the priest’s per­son­nel file, such as a let­ter to Bishop Leo­nard Blair in 2010 on the topic of “ban­ished priests for sex­ual mis­con­duct.” Father Beaver wrote that he “would ac­cept them with grace, and noted in­vit­ing ‘ban­ished’ priests to live with priests in good stand­ing of­fers pow­er­ful wit­ness to the gos­pel. ‘It hurts [him] to see priests who have been rightly and

justly banned to be treated as lep­ers,’” ac­cord­ing to a po­lice write up on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, which par­tially quoted the let­ter.

The Dio­cese of Toledo’s in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion will de­ter­mine his fu­ture in min­is­try.

“Now that the civil au­thor­i­ties in Wil­liams County have de­ter­mined they will not pur­sue the case, the di­o­cese, ac­cord­ing to our pol­icy, will be­gin a ca­non­i­cal pro­cess which in­cludes a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” Kelly Donaghy, a di­oc­e­san spokes­man, said Mon­day. “The find­ings ... will be pre­sented to an in­de­pen­dent Review Board which will then, based on the facts, pres­ent a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Bishop re­gard­ing Father Beaver’s suit­abil­ity for min­is­try.”

Father Beaver de­nied the al­le­ga­tions in an ini­tial state­ment through the di­o­cese in Oc­to­ber. He was serv­ing as pas­tor at Res­ur­rec­tion Par­ish in Lex­ing­ton, Ohio, since 2005, and St. Mary of the Snows Par­ish in Mans­field, Ohio, since 2010, when he was placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave.

Con­tact Nicki Gorny at

ng­orny@the­blade.com

or 419-724-6133.

Priest
Continued from Page B1

that when po­lice of­fi­cers stop some­one with a sub­stance and they don’t quite know what it is, they can test the sub­stance with the hand­held de­vice rather than send it off to a lab and find out days later,” Mr. Brown said Fri­day in Toledo.

The sen­a­tor was joined by Mayor Wade Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz and Lu­cas County Sher­iff John Tharp dur­ing a news con­fer­ence to pro­mote the leg­is­la­tion, which has bi­par­ti­san sup­port. Sher­iff Tharp said if it passes, he would ap­ply for grant fund­ing for Lu­cas County, where 153 peo­ple died of fa­tal drug over­doses in 2017.

The de­vices would help of­fi­cers ac­cu­rately charge of­fend­ers based on the type of drugs pos­sessed, he said, as well as pro­tect of­fi­cers han­dling un­known and dan­ger­ous sub­stances.

“Old-school is that the of­fi­cer car­ries a small kit. ... They would put the sub­stance in the small kit, shake it up, and if it turns pur­ple then it would be co­caine,” Sher­iff Tharp said. “But then you’re touch­ing the sub­stance. And we know that carfen­ta­nil, if you have a wound in your hand, carfen­ta­nil ends up go­ing into the wound and it can put you in the hos­pi­tal.”

In Au­gust, a Toledo po­lice of­fi­cer had to be ad­min­is-

tered the opi­oid over­dose-re­vers­ing drug nalox­one af­ter com­ing in con­tact with what was later iden­ti­fied in court doc­u­ments as fen­ta­nyl. Po­lice of­fi­cials have said these types of in­ci­dents are not un­com­mon.

Along­side Mr. Brown, Mr. Kaps­zuk­ie­w­icz said the opi­oid cri­sis has taken a toll on pub­lic safety re­sources. More than 90 per­cent of the calls to the Toledo Fire & Res­cue Depart­ment are for med­i­cal emer­gencies, and many of those are from “an opi­oid and drug ep­i­demic that has crip­pled our city, our state, and our coun­try.”

Across Ohio, the opi­oid ep­i­demic is still rag­ing. Unin­ten­tional fa­tal over­doses have in­creased for eight straight years, with 4,854 deaths in 2017 — a ma­jor­ity of which in­volved opi­oid use. Ohio Depart­ment of Health fig­ures for 2018 are not yet of­fi­cial.

“We know that law en­force­ment is one part of solv­ing the opi­oid pub­lic health cri­sis. We know that equally im­por­tant parts are scal­ing up treat­ment and ed­u­ca­tion and pre­ven­tion, and we don’t do that nearly well enough,” Mr. Brown said.

“We need the Pres­i­dent to en­gage and we need the Con­gress more in­volved, in terms of dol­lars and chang­ing the law.”

Con­tact Liz Skalka at

lskalka@the­blade.com,

419-724-6199, or on

Twit­ter @liz­skalka.

Opioids
Continued from Page B1

Systems, Inc., said he ex­pects to sub­mit a re­port next month to the city of Toledo and TMACOG, which hired him for $50,000 to study the train con­cept’s fea­si­bil­ity.

But at first glance, he told Fri­day’s gath­er­ing of Toledo-area trans­por­ta­tion and plan­ning pro­fes­sion­als, a pas­sen­ger route run­ning north from Toledo past Detroit Met­ro­pol­i­tan-Wayne County Air­port and then branch­ing east and west for Detroit and Ann Ar­bor, re­spec­tively, could work as long as train speeds make it com­pet­i­tive with the time it takes to drive.

At a top speed of 79 mph, a train could travel from Tole- do to Detroit in 82 min­utes. Boost­ing its speed to 110 mph would cut that to 73 min­utes, and the air­port could be reached in 48 or 42 min­utes, re­spec­tively, Mr. Met­calf said. Mar­ket anal­y­sis sug­gests the slower train could carry 4.25 mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year by 2030, and the faster ver­sion may at­tract 5.06 mil­lion rid­ers, he said.

Along with serv­ing cur­rent travel and com­mut­ing mar­kets be­tween Toledo, Metro Air­port, and Detroit, such a train could also in­duce land de­vel­op­ment south of Metro — in­clud­ing near a po­ten­tial stop in Mon­roe, Mich. — and boost de­vel­op­ment near its Toledo sta­tion, Mr. Met­calf said.

Among world air­ports that have train ser­vice, the worst per­form­ers’ trains at­tract about 5 per­cent of their ground trans­por­ta­tion mar-

ket, the con­sul­tant said.

A train to Metro could prob­a­bly cap­ture at least 6 per­cent of its mar­ket — in­clud­ing both trav­el­ers and air­port work­ers — and per­haps close to dou­ble that if the sta­tion could be de­vel­oped in­side the air­port in­stead of off to the south­west near Eureka Road and I-275, where rail­road tracks al­ready run, he said.

The tracks that now be­long to CSX Trans­por­ta­tion Corp. are the most fa­vor­able route be­tween Toledo and the Detroit area be­cause of their prox­im­ity to the air­port, Mr. Met­calf said.

If CSX could be per­suaded to re­route its cen­tral Detroit traf­fic via other tracks, he said, the two-track line past the air­port could be di­vided so that one track is ded­i­cated to pas­sen­ger trains while the other is used by the re­main­ing freight busi­ness.

But if not, Mr. Met­calf said, the best op­tion would be to build ad­di­tional track in the CSX cor­ri­dor to ac­com­mo­date pas­sen­ger trains.

At Wayne Junc­tion, north of the air­port, the CSX line crosses the cur­rent Am­trak pas­sen­ger route be­tween Detroit, Ann Ar­bor, and Chi­cago, where the con­sul­tant said con­nect­ing tracks could be built for Toledo ser­vice to ei­ther Detroit or Ann Ar­bor.

Mr. Met­calf’s ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes work on rail proj­ects in Great Brit­ain, Ire­land, and Can­ada as well as the United States, and fea­tures plan­ning for rail ser­vice through the tun­nel un­der the English Chan­nel.

Con­tact David Patch at

dpatch@the­blade.com

or 419-724-6094.

Trains
Continued from Page B1
Teacher accused of selling donated truck
Whitmer instructor on leave

A Whit­mer High School teacher is on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave af­ter be­ing ac­cused of sell­ing a ve­hi­cle that had been do­nated to the school, ac­cord­ing to a Toledo po­lice re­port.

Mark White, 55, a teacher in Whit­mer’s au­to­mo­tive tech­ni­cal pro­gram, is ac­cused of list­ing the 1998 Chev­ro­let pickup and other parts for sale on Face­book. A post cre­ated by the teacher’s son-in-law, David Fer­gu­son, sought $1,000 and asked pro­spec­tive buy­ers to con­tact ei­ther of the two men.

A sec­ond post asked for $1,500 for the pickup, which had been do­nated by Owens Com­mu­nity Col­lege to the high school auto pro­gram,

ac­cord­ing to the re­port.

When Wash­ing­ton Lo­cal Schools of­fi­cials were made aware of the posts, Mr. White told them he sold the truck to an un­known per­son for $450 and planned to give the money to the school. He said the money was in his desk, but when school of­fi­cials went to re­trieve the money, it was not there.

School of­fi­cials put Mr. White on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave Mon­day, the re­port states.

Calls left for dis­trict of­fi­cials were not im­me­di­ately re­turned Fri­day morn­ing. When reached by phone, Mr. White de­clined to com­ment while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing.

— Lau­ren Lind­strom

BLADE STAFF
THE BLADE/REBECCA BENSON
From left, Yedidyah Ephrain, 15, Shane Koepfer, 17, and Dylan Logan, 17, work on computers at Maumee High School.

Finan­cial de­tails re­leased Fri­day show an es­ti­mated $720 mil­lion in­crease in over­all state fund­ing to 610 dis­tricts in the next two years, grow­ing from $6.85 bil­lion in fis­cal year 2019 to $7.56 bil­lion in fis­cal year 2021.

The pro­jec­tions are based on stu­dent counts sup­plied by the Ohio Depart­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion and val­u­a­tion pro­jec­tions pro­vided by the Ohio Depart­ment of Tax­a­tion.

Toledo Pub­lic Schools, the larg­est dis­trict in Lu­cas County, would con­tinue to re­ceive about $179.5 mil­lion an­nu­ally and $8,240 per stu­dent un­der the new plan, while neigh­bor­ing dis­tricts would see their fund­ing grow over the next two years.

TPS Trea­surer Ryan Stech­schulte said he was “very sur­prised” to see no change in fund­ing for the dis­trict es­ti­mated un­der the pro­posal.

“They have been pro­mot­ing that this fund­ing for­mula will get fund­ing to the dis­tricts that

need it most, es­pe­cially dis­tricts with a high rate of pov­erty, so we don’t un­der­stand how we will not be re­ceiv­ing any ad­di­tional in-

crease in state fund­ing over the next two years and pos­si­bly the next four years,” he said.

Mr. Stech­schulte said dis­trict of­fi­cials need time to di­gest the fig­ures and bet­ter un­der­stand how the pro­jec­tions were cal­cu­lated. TPS of­fi­cials will be at­tend­ing a re­gional meet­ing Tues­day in Al­len County to learn more.

Maumee City Schools stands to see its an­nual state fund­ing grow from $4.79 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2019 to $6.17 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2021. Per-stu­dent fund­ing is pro­jected to in­crease from $2,242 to $2,887 dur­ing the same pe­riod.

Dis­trict spokes­man Nancy Sayre said dis­trict of­fi­cials are tak­ing a look at the pro­posed al­lo­ca­tions and fig­ur­ing out what is be­ing funded un­der the new for­mula and what is not. Even though the dis­trict would

re­ceive in­creased fund­ing un­der the new plan, they’d still need to lean on lo­cal lev­ies to op­er­ate.

“We have al­ways pro­vided

ser­vices and ed­u­ca­tion be­yond what the state pro­vides fund­ing for, so it’s ap­par­ent that lo­cal rev­e­nue will still be needed un­der the new model,” she said.

School lead­ers ap­pre­ci­ate the law­mak­ers’ ef­forts to make the fund­ing for­mula more un­der­stand­able, she added.

Per­rys­burg Schools Su­per­in­ten­dent Tom Hos­ler served on the work­ing group that helped shape the new K-12 fund­ing pro­posal. He said the state’s cur­rent school fund­ing model doesn’t make sense, and the new plan is fair and eq­ui­ta­ble and achieves some­thing that ed­u­ca­tional lead­ers and law­mak­ers have been try­ing to do for gen­er­a­tions.

“It an­swers the ques­tion of what should go into a child’s ed­u­ca­tional ex­pe­ri­ence in Ohio in the 21st cen­tury, and it

puts a dol­lar to it,” he said.

No dis­trict would lose fund­ing in the next two years, but some schools — like TPS — wouldn’t see a fund­ing in­crease, ei­ther.

Mr. Hos­ler hasn’t looked spe­cif­i­cally at the TPS data, but he said some schools have been re­ceiv­ing fund­ing over the years based on a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion that has since shrunk. Con­versely, other schools are capped at a set amount even as their stu­dent pop­u­la­tion grows. The new plan would fac­tor in a dis­trict’s true stu­dent count.

“One of the things that it does is it takes into ac­count what is hap­pen­ing in your school dis­trict,” Mr. Hos­ler said.

There’s no guar­an­tee the pro­posal will be fully funded. The House is work­ing on its ver­sion of the bud­get, which then goes to the Senate and likely will face fur­ther de­lib­er­a­tion.

The fi­nal bud­get must reach the gov­er­nor’s desk by June 30.

Con­tact Sarah Elms at

selms@the­blade.com,

419-724-6103, or on

Twit­ter @BySar­ahElms.

Schools
Continued from Page B1
Hosler
Stechschulte
TODAY’S DOG LOG

Dogs killed

Dogs killed March 28 un­der the di­rec­tion of Rich­ard Stew­art, di­rec­tor of the Lu­cas County Canine Care & Con­trol:

Breed and de­scrip­tion; rea­son; in­take type and date with lo­ca­tion found if stray. Dogs killed for poor be­hav­ior on body-han­dling and re­source-guard­ing as­sess­ments are scored on a scale of 5, with higher scores be­ing more ag­gres­sive. Dog-ag­gres­sion as­sess­ments are not scored:

“Pit bull,” brin­dle and white male, li­censed; bite his­tory; sur­ren-

dered March 22 by Sue Henne­man, Air­port High­way, Toledo.

“Pit bull,” brown and white male, un­li­censed; owner re­quested eu­tha­na­sia (bite his­tory); sur­ren­dered March 28 by Eld­win Ot­trix, Pu­laski Street, Toledo.

Ger­man shep­herd, gold fe­male, un­li­censed; owner re­quested eu­tha­na­sia (13 years old, large tu­mor on ab­do­men); sur­ren­dered March 28 by Wil­liam Fenter, Broad­way Street, Toledo.

Go to to­le­doblade.com/​do­g­log terms for a glos­sary of the terms used in the dog log.

Births

Mercy Health

 St. Vin­cent Med­i­cal Center

Alaina Krontz and Berry Marsh, Toledo, boy, March 23.

Ka’Shyra John­son, Toledo, girl, March 28.

ProMed­ica Toledo Hos­pi­tal

Ch­aquale Kemp, Toledo, girl, March 25.

Sh­weta Goel and Deven­dra Suman, Maumee, boy, March 26.

Deonna Mur­dock, Toledo, girl, March 27.

St. Luke’s Hos­pi­tal

Kae­lyn John­son, Toledo, boy, March 28.

Mar­riage li­censes

Lu­cas County

March 26, 2019

Fre­drico Van Zyl, 69, re­tired, and Tammy Espin­oza, 52, re­cep­tion­ist, both of Toledo.

Ja­son Ostrosky, 43, self-em­ployed, and San­dra Se­bas­tiano, 46, of­fice clerk, both of Toledo.

Cet­ron Mays, 38, and LaJuana Batey, 42, both of Toledo.

March 27, 2019

James Good­win, 42, of Sharon, Okla., and Melissa Wilk­er­son, 36, pa­tient rep­re­sen­ta­tive, of Syl­va­nia.

Ri­cardo Tre­vino, 66, ma­chine op­er­a­tor, of Toledo, and Syl­via So­telo, 63, school coun­selor, of Adrian.

Mat­thew Wil­liams, 25, au­di­tor, and Lynd­sey Huner, 26, nurse, both of Toledo.

Al­ex­an­der Ger­hard, 26, bar­tender, and Lau­rel Ma­son, 24, grad­u­ate stu­dent, both of Toledo.

Tyler Mur­phy, 25, en­gi­neer, and Kate­lynn McCoy, 26, teacher, both of Syl­va­nia.

Di­vorces granted

Lu­cas County

Jen­ni­fer Whi­taker from Cory Whi­taker.

Kar­rie Sc­heid from Robert Sc­heid, Jr.

Robert Sc­heid, Jr., from Kar­rie Sc­heid.

Katie Nolan from Brian Nolan.

Taron Banks from La­tory Jor­dan.

Kim­ber­leigh John­son from Chris­to­pher John­son.

Dis­so­lu­tions granted

Lu­cas County

Caryn Malo­ney and Nolan Ro­senk­rans.

Sarah Hayes and Ken­neth Hayes III.

Su­san Nye and Jamie Nye.

Carol Sob­czak and Leo­nard

Hood, Jr.

Shane Davis and Tif­fany Davis.

Brenda Reecer and Steven Ree- cer.

Jose Cum­pian, Jr., and Shan­non Cum­pian.

Rachel Agu­bo­sim and Chi­nonso Agu­bo­sim.

Adam Swiger and Kris­tina Swiger.

TODAY’S LOG