(News archive photo by Aaron Zaremsky)
Village Council skeptical on banning conversion therapy in Yellow Springs
- Published: November 3, 2025
Just as the U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to rule against a Colorado law that bans conversion therapy — a dangerous and unscientific practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression — some Yellow Springs residents have recently asked: How can Village government prevent the practice from ever happening here?
At the most recent Village Council meeting, Monday, Oct. 20, several villagers floated the idea of Council one day passing a law that bans conversion therapy within Yellow Springs limits.
“I’m here tonight to ask Council to take real action, not just to make a statement,” local resident Alissa Paolella said during the citizens concerns segment of Monday’s meeting.
“Ban the harmful and discredited practice of conversion therapy on minors in Yellow Springs. It’s not therapy. It’s abuse,” Paolella said. “Choosing not to act now would send the wrong message. It would say to our LGBTQ youth, ‘We’re waiting to see if you deserve protection,’ and I can’t accept that. I’m asking for a ban with consequences.”
A handful of other villagers echoed Paolella.
“To me, it’s like legal torture for children,” Scott Osterholm said.
“The messaging is very cruel — that you’re not who you are, so be the right kind of person,” April Wolford said. “I really think you should consider [a ban] as a law.”
Those sitting at the Council dais were uniformly opposed to the practice of conversion therapy, but were skeptical about the logistics of implementing a resolution or ordinance banning the practice in Yellow Springs because of the suggested difficulty in upholding a ban, and penalizing those who break it.
“The problem boils down to enforcement,” Village Solicitor Amy Blankenship said.
“Some of the communities in Ohio that have enacted these bans do have criminal penalties on them, but a lot of those communities have civil penalties on them,” Blankenship said. “We don’t have a civil fines or civil citations process here in the village. We also don’t have a human relations council, where it’d get kicked to if it’s an unlawful discriminatory practice.”
Ohio municipalities with anti-conversion therapy legislation on the books include Akron, Athens, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Cuyahoga County, Dayton, Kent, Lakewood, Lorain, Reynoldsburg, Toledo, Westerville and Whitehall.
More than 20 states in the U.S. have banned the practice statewide — Ohio is not among them — but that could change if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group, representing a Colorado resident who objected to a state law that outlawed conversion practices for minors, citing an infraction of free speech.
The LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign notes on their website that conversion therapy, sometimes known as “reparative therapy,” renders youth “especially vulnerable” to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness and suicide as a result of exposure to the practice.
Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, have in the past denounced conversion therapy.
Acknowledging both the harm of conversion therapy as well as the challenges in enforcing a ban on the practice, some Council members broached the possibility of authoring a symbolic piece of legislation in the coming months — something that speaks to “who we are and what we represent,” as Council member Carmen Brown suggested.
This move would fall in line with past Village resolutions — such as a municipal “ban” on fracking and injection wells, a call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the support of same-sex marriage — that function more as codified gestures, rather than enforceable laws.
But for Village Clerk Judy Kintner, there’d be a difference between those resolutions and a ban on conversion therapy that she believes would be unenforceable.
“I don’t like giving the illusion of safety when there’s not safety,” she told Council members. “Doing a Gaza ‘thing’ probably didn’t make anyone in Gaza think they were safer. This [a conversion therapy ban] might, and it wouldn’t.”
Earlier in the discussion, two Yellow Springs school board members — Rebecca Potter and Judith Hempfling, neither of whom spoke on behalf of the whole board — spoke in favor of a municipal ban on conversion therapy.
“There have been a lot of policies that have come from the state regulating schools on these issues, including one that would allow groups to come to these schools,” Potter said. “I’d be interested in finding out how this legislation could help the district navigate that … and how it could assist YS Schools to protect students.”
Hempfling spoke more broadly in favor of the ban.
“Whether it’s difficult to enforce is not a reason to not support it,” she said. “Do the research, set aside the legalities and do what’s right.”
At the tail end of the discussion, Council Vice President Gavin DeVore Leonard suggested revisiting the matter at a later meeting, and mused about the challenges of a small local government in responding to broader existential threats to Yellow Springs’ progressive ethos.
“It’s an interesting balance for all of us to figure out,” he said. “What do we do about things that we care about, but can’t enforce? There are some things that make sense to do, but where do you draw the line?”
In other Council business, Monday, Oct. 20—
Establishing a CRA, enacting a TIF
Before the regular meeting began at 6 p.m. on Oct. 20, Council held an hour-long special work session regarding the eventual establishment of a villagewide community reinvestment area, or CRA, as well as offering a tax increment financing, or TIF, incentive to an ongoing development project in the village.
As the News has reported in the past, a CRA and TIF are economic development tools that Yellow Springs has at its disposal to incentivize the kinds of new development and redevelopment projects local leaders wish to see, and determine where those projects occur.
CRAs are a property tax reduction tool overseen by the Ohio Department of Development — administered by county and local governments — that abate property taxes on the county auditor’s appraised value of structural improvements made to a parcel, that can reduce the property owner’s development costs in exchange for their physical contribution to the community.
TIF is an economic development mechanism that exempts property owners from real property taxes on the increased property value created from new builds or remodels. Unlike CRAs, taxes collected under TIF can be funnelled back into the community to fund public infrastructure improvements.
Before Council members at their work session were two draft pieces of legislation:
• An ordinance that would establish a CRA covering the entirety of Yellow Springs municipal limits, that would allow for the offering of tax abatements for the remodel of residential dwellings with two or fewer units, new construction of single-family detached homes with a sale price less than $400,000, new construction or remodel of residential dwellings containing three or more units, and more.
• A resolution that would authorize a TIF agreement with Iron Table Holdings, LLC — the development company owned by local resident and comedian Dave Chappelle — to exempt 100% of the taxes on the incremental improvement value of the recently renovated Union School House — 91.3 WYSO’s soon-to-be new headquarters — for up to 30 years. If enacted, those “exempted” property tax dollars would still be paid by Iron Table Holdings on the parcel, located at 314 Dayton St., but would be directed to the Village to create “public infrastructure improvements” directly surrounding the property. Under the drafted agreement, the local school district would still reap taxes from the property.
In the work session, Council members heard again from public finance attorney Tyler Bridge, of Dayton-based Bricker Graydon, who explained the nuances of both draft pieces of legislation, and who emphasized the Village and Council’s ability to craft and refine those pieces of legislation to meet their specific development goals.
At a regular meeting in the coming weeks, Council will publicly and formally review those pieces of legislation. The News will provide updates as they are made available.
The next regular Village Council meeting will be held Monday, Nov. 3, at 6 p.m., in Council Chambers in the John Bryan Community Center.
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