Thumbs up to some ‘lost’ voices

Here are this week’s “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” selections:

“He has made Fairfield a better place to live.” Those words were from Betsy Hope, executive director of the Fairfield Community Foundation, who recently nominated her foundation board’s president, John Brunner, for the Sterling Citizenship Award. Last week, Brunner received the award — named in honor of the late Fairfield mayor and Rotarian Sterling Uhler — at the Fairfield Rotary’s annual changing of the guard ceremony. “John has contributed so much to this community and in so many sectors — as a counselor, as an educator, volunteer and a leader,” Hope said. The award goes each year to a Fairfield or Fairfield Twp. resident who possesses the qualities of service above self, concern and caring for others, civic responsibility, vision, leadership and standing up for one’s convictions. Fairfield Rotary made an excellent choice this year.

Congratulations and good luck to Jeff Centers, who was recently named the permanent director of Butler County Children Services last week. Centers has been the agency’s finance director since 2006 and has twice served as its interim director, and was chosen for the director’s job over 56 other applicants after Michael Fox retired in March. The agency is one of the county government’s most important, working to ensure the welfare of Butler County’s abused and neglected children. Centers has big shoes to fill because Fox, a former state representative and county commissioner, was one of the county’s most influential and vigorous officeholders. We wish Centers well in this challenging job and hope he continues efforts to make Children Services as open and transparent as possible to taxpayers.

Another major personnel change in Butler County came this week with the retirement of longtime agricultural extension service agent Steve Bartels. He will be missed by area farmers and by other readers of this newspaper, who learned much through his regular columns on agricultural issues, dating back to his early days in the OSU Extension Office in the 1970s. We offer a thumbs up to Bartels for his long service to Butler Countians. You can offer your own good wishes at a reception July 12 — from 2 to 5 p.m. — at the extension office at 1802 Princeton Road, Hamilton.

Their voices may have been silenced by Miami University’s decision to turn over its radio station, WMUB-FM, to Cincinnati Public Radio earlier this year, but we were still pleased to see that our former peers in the WMUB newsroom were the recent recipients of seven awards by Public Radio News Directors Inc. for their excellent work in 2008. Cheri Lawson, Tana Weingartner and Gary Scott — names familiar to regular listeners of the “old” WMUB — were among the winners. We offer our congratulations to them and want them to know that their daily newscasts are still missed by area listeners.