The old has become new and the broken will work once again at Golden Goods Thrift and Repair, Yellow Springs’ newest downtown storefront.

Equal parts vintage thrift store and small appliance repair shop, Golden Goods plans to open its doors at 252 Xenia Ave. — the site of the former toy store — on Friday, June 5. Tentative hours will be Wednesday–Sunday, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.

Since assuming their lease earlier this month, proprietors and Kettering residents Nicole Cornett and Austin Wireman have spent the last few weeks packing Golden Goods with all kinds of treasures of yore.

Bright faux fur coats and camouflage crew necks are among the myriad textiles on the racks. Beyond the old wooden end tables, wicker couches and brass furnishings staged in the front are shelves of innumerable odds and ends — sheet pans, blenders, saucers and snowglobes to name a few.

All the way in the back is Wireman’s little workshop, where he’ll fix whatever “walks through the door,” he said.

“He’s just the handiest person,” Cornett beamed. “He can fix anything.”

And that means just about anything — from stalled ceiling fans and busted Sawzalls to suitcase wheels that stopped rolling and vacuum cleaners long kaput. House calls for bigger jobs like washing machines and gas-powered chain saws are also in Wireman’s wheelhouse.

“So, how can we be of service?” Wireman asked. “What do you have in your life or your home we can help you with? What would be beneficial to be rid of? Or can we give it a second life?”

Though not yet open, Golden Goods is already accepting donations — old clothes, baubles and domestic bric-a-brac. Cornett and Wireman requested that folks contact them first before cluttering the Xenia Avenue sidewalk with bags and boxes of whatnot.

“We don’t want this to become a dumping ground,” Cornett said.

As with any thrift store, one would expect prices to be reasonable, but Golden Goods takes it a step further. All items in the store are “pay what you can” — prices are customer determined.

“Everybody values things differently,” Wireman said.

He continued: “And let’s say you come in looking to furnish your house, but don’t have the means to. By all means, we got you. Come and pick out what you need and take what you will.”

Doing business this way is less a money-making approach and more of an ethic for Wireman and Cornett. They said that what brought them into the thrifting business was their lasting dismay with consumer culture, planned obsolescence and waste writ large.

“This is environmental work — saving the world by not throwing each and every thing away all  the time,” Cornett said. “These days, things are built to break. There is just so much that can be repurposed or reused.”

Her partner pointed to the textile industry specifically.

According to the United Nations Environmental Programme 92 million tons of textile waste is produced globally every year. Production doubled in the first decade of the new millennium, while the duration of garment use decreased by 36%. An identified 11% of global plastic waste comes from clothing and textiles, with only 8% of textile fibers made from recycled sources in 2023 — the most recent statistical date.

Bearing in mind that grim data, Cornett said she welcomes all kinds of clothes into her shop — holes and stains are no matter. She’s constantly doing laundry, steam cleaning, power washing, sewing, mending and more.

She and Wireman have been at this kind of work for quite a while. They’re no strangers to social  media market places and online auction websites. They also run another business — Giving Peace — where they help people clean out their cluttered homes, organize closets and prepare for estate sales.

“Our home has basically become the town trading post,” Wireman said with a laugh.

“Right,” Cornett added. “We’ve been operating out of our garage … even our neighbors’ garages, and the kids have started complaining. They’ve been looking for a place to put their bikes for some time, so we figured we needed a thrift store.”

And for the couple, their new Yellow Springs storefront is a longtime dream come true — one that harkens back a couple generations.

“My grandparents had two upholstery shops in Dayton way back, furnishing businesses and homes all throughout the city,” Wireman said. “I grew up watching their relationship and the love they had together and that was something I always wanted — to be in love and to have a business of my own and to work side-by-side with my person.”

“And this is it. We did it,” Cornett said.

Golden Goods Thrift and Repair will open Friday, June 5, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., with those being their regular hours Wednesday-Sunday.

For more updates on the store, search “Golden Goods Thrift and Repair “ on Facebook or Instagram. Donation or repair inquiries can be made via email at info@giving-peace.com or by calling or texting  513-227-5015.

A weeklong series of events centered on immigration and community connection is coming to Yellow Springs this week, anchored by a June 5 speaker event featuring journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and author and University of Michigan public health professor William Lopez.

The programming — organized under the banner “Immigrants Feed America” — grew out of the inaugural YS Speaker Series, produced by Mad River Theater Works. The speaker series — created in collaboration with the YS Library Association and YS Community Foundation — has, thus far, featured writer and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib and poets Ross Gay and janan alexandra.

In convening a third iteration of the series, Mad River Theater Works Director Chris Westhoff said he hoped to again platform writers whose work converges with human connection and social justice, particularly as nationwide crises involving immigrants have come close to home with the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to force Haitians in neighboring Springfield, and elsewhere in the U.S., out of the country.

“I wanted to keep in the direction of bringing alternative or marginalized voices that speak to national and global issues in some kind of way that is also relatable and local,” Westhoff said. “Following everything that was happening in the country with ICE and the way in which it was manifesting itself in our neighborhood in Springfield, that seemed to me something that was worth pursuing.”

The planning phase for the event led him to William Lopez’s recent book, “Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance,” which examines the impacts of immigration raids in Midwestern communities through the lens of public health. Westhoff also hoped to include a second speaker in order to broaden the conversation.

“[Lopez] is coming at it from the perspective of public health, which is really interesting, but I wondered how we could relate it to the humanities — I didn’t know what that was,  so I asked Lopez if I could work on coming up with a pairing that might fit,” Westhoff said.

Westhoff said he reached out to a group of folks that included local resident Jalana Lazar and Village Council member and MAZU owner Angie Hsu for ideas. Fortuitously, Lazar had a family connection to Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of the nonprofit Define American. Famously, Vargas publicly revealed in a 2011 New York Times essay that he was living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant — a fact he had concealed since childhood. He later expanded on that experience in his memoir, “Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.”

“[Vargas’] perspective is super unique,” Westhoff said. “And Define American is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, so he’s looking for ways to lift that up.”

At nearly the same time, Westhoff added, Lopez had already separately contacted Vargas seeking support for his forthcoming book tour, so the project was already on Vargas’ radar.

“[Lopez and Vargas] both were just immediately like, ‘Great, let’s do it,” Westhoff said. “They want to talk about the bigger picture and the role of writing, what that means, how they do it, how they maintain their energy and their spirit and the creative impulse that is also behind the activism.”

Community connectedness had already helped shape the speaker series event, and so more ideas began percolating for growing awareness and participation beyond a single evening. Hsu said she was already familiar with Vargas’ work: “I remember reading his New York Times piece and being so moved by it, and I always say my  first piece of activism was when I was 15 years old, and I went to Boulder City Council to speak in support of Dreamers and the Dream Act.”

With activism and connection in mind, Hsu, Lazar, Westhoff and Vargas began imagining what it might look like to build an entire week of programming around the themes of immigration, identity and cultural exchange.

“[Vargas] said, ‘Well, I would love to support work that’s happening in Ohio — how can we make this not just a talk but a bigger event?’” Hsu said. “It was important to us that these events are about sharing and learning about what is happening in immigration today, but also a celebration — that the work and the coming together are still joyful, still with great passion and hope.”

That philosophy stretches across the week’s lineup, with events including an international recipe exchange, a West African dinner to benefit AfroMeals Foundation and Miami Valley Meals, a week of rotating specials at MAZU prepared by immigrant chefs, a screening of Vargas’ documentary “Undocumented” with Q&A at the Little Art and an all-hands-on-deck community art project. (See sidebar for the full schedule of events.)

Hsu said the mural — planned for Kieth’s Alley — will build on existing immigration-themed artwork created by muralist Pierre Nagley over the last few years. The mural will function essentially like a giant paint-by-number project, allowing community members to pick up a paintbrush and leave something of their own hearts and minds behind on the artwork.

“It’s going to be fully interactive,” she said. “We want kids to come out — we want anybody to join us.”

After the paint has dried, community members will be invited to come back to Kieth’s Alley for a street party, featuring food trucks, the unveiling of the mural and music, including from Haitian producer and performer DJ XLOAD, known for spinning up high-energy remixes in the Haitian music scene.

“I’m in touch with the Haitian Support Center in Springfield … so we also wanted to have an opportunity to invite the Haitian community to come celebrate with us,” Hsu said. “So DJ XLOAD is awesome, and he’s going to be playing — and his wife used to work at MAZU, so when we were trying to figure out a DJ, there was that connection.”

Alongside the public events, organizers are also planning a smaller gathering between local immigration advocates and Vargas and Lopez, aimed at creating space for deeper discussion about immigration issues affecting the region.

The growth of the event from a single evening’s talk into a week of conversation, food, art and just being together has become part of the project’s meaning, Westhoff said — par for the course in a small town, and perhaps a touchstone for how people are coming together all over the U.S. to ward off division and isolationism.

“The degree to which [these events are] utilizing strong centers or anchors in our community and outside of our community to create conversation between activism and art and culture, fundamentally represented by food and storytelling, is amazing,” he said.

Most of us can probably reach for a dozen useful objects in our homes without really seeing them. Their purposes are ordinary, so they disappear into routine.

And if we had to guess who made, say, the coffee mugs that clutter our cabinets, our favorite cereal bowl, the bud vase sprouting green onions in the windowsill, we’d guess they were mass-produced, unless we knew better. We’d probably be right — but the thread of thought would wither as we reached for the cornflakes.

Local resident and potter Naysan McIlhargey is hoping to encourage folks to pick up that thread and  follow it with his upcoming Miami Valley Pottery show, “Mingei.” The show takes its name — and gathers its meaning — from a Japanese philosophy that emerged in the early 20th century centered on the beauty of handmade objects intended for daily use.

“Mingei” will debut as a pop-up show in the former YS Hardware store space on Xenia Avenue, June 1–14 — the first public use of the building since the hardware store closed last year and the property was purchased by the YS Development Corporation through a loan from the YS Community Foundation.

This month, inside McIlhargey’s wood kiln at Miami Valley Pottery, the forms of what would ultimately be more than 100 designs could be dimly seen in the early heat of prefire: bowls, pitchers, bottles, asymmetrical vessels.

Showing the News around his kiln and workshop, McIlhargey introduced the history and concepts inherent to Mingei: Both the word “mingei,” which roughly translates to “arts of the people” or “folk art,” and the concept were developed by philosopher and critic Sōetsu Yanagi, alongside a circle of Japanese potters and craftspeople in the 1920s.

The Mingei movement argued that true beauty was not found in objects made to be observed, but in humble things made sincerely, often by anonymous craftspeople, and used every day. Mingei proposes that beauty should live in ordinary rituals: eating, drinking, gathering, serving and sharing.

The Mingei philosophy at large is laid out in the 1972 book “The Unknown Craftsman,” which compiles years of writing by Yanagi adapted by Yanagi’s friend, British potter Bernard Leach, for English readers. McIlhargey summed up the contents of the book in brief: “The basic concept is that you live with handmade, beautiful things every day, and you use them. And if it’s made by an unknown craftsman, even better, because it’s not about collecting the pot and keeping it on a shelf; it’s about using something that is made to be used, every day.”

Rooted in Buddhist ideas of humility, harmony and freedom from ego, Mingei emerged, in part, as a response to westernized industrialization and mass production, which Yanagi believed had severed people from understanding and relating to the objects that filled their lives.

“Unfortunately, Americans, we’re not so good at it,” McIlhargey said. “Our things are disposable.”

Mingei has become both artistic study and personal practice for McIlhargey, who first learned pottery from local artists David and Keiko Hergesheimer; their own work was deeply influenced, he said, by Japanese pottery. At Earlham College, McIlhargey studied Japanese arts, which awakened a desire to visit Japan.

Last summer, he finally did.

He traveled via the Sister Cities of Dayton program, to Oiso, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, with another potter and three students, including Yellow Springs students Stella Platt and Oskar Dennis. After that formal week, he stayed another two weeks, traveling to museums and the homes of several Japanese National Treasures — including the home of legendary Shōji Hamada, a leading artist of the Mingei movement who authored the foreword of “The Unknown Craftsman,” as well as the home of Yanagi himself.

He also visited Nihon Mingei-kan, the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum, founded by Yanagi, Hamada and Kanjirō Kawai, in Tokyo in 1936. Yanagi writes of the museum’s ethos and purpose in “The Unknown Craftsman”: “The name, Nihon Mingei-kan, is not mere words: it stands for the arts of the people, returned to the people. … It is my belief that while the high level of culture of any country can be found in its fine arts, it is also vital that we should be able to examine and enjoy the proofs of the culture of the great mass of the people, which we call folk art. … The main objective of the folkcraft museum is to allow this to be done.”

McIlhargey said he came back from the trip to Japan with 20 new pieces of pottery picked up along his travels — and the underlying philosophy for the upcoming show. “Mingei” will feature 101 shapes McIlhargey pulled from his own extensive library of books on Japanese pottery, as well as some of the pieces he obtained on his trip — shapes that are between 100 and 1,000 years old.

Ahead of firing, he compiled a workbook with images of each of the shapes he wanted to form, along with notes on materials and queries about how a potter centuries ago might have made a curve, a neck or a foot.

“It was a really intense study to learn, ‘How the hell am I going to do this?’” McIlhargey said with a laugh. “It’s a fascinating puzzle to figure out. How did they do it? Most of it is trial and error — a lot of it is experimental.”

The upcoming show will feature porcelain, stoneware and dark stoneware pieces and, in line with experimentation, some techniques that are new to McIlhargey.

“I’m using glazes I’m not too familiar with,” he said, flipping through the workbook and pointing out a gray shino glaze. “I’ve never done this before, and this is a technique unique to Japan, mostly — a shino over a slip with wax.”

He also noted a green oribe glaze, which he said typically doesn’t work well in the kind of wood kiln he operates.

“So I bricked up the door this time to encourage more air, so we’d have more of an oxidized atmosphere in the kiln to maybe get some greens, because typically the green glazes turn red and purple,” he said. “It’s just a vast world of incredible ceramic.”

In Japan, McIlhargey said, he saw how deeply pottery is woven into daily life, in part, through the tea ceremony — a ritual preparation and imbibement of powdered green tea, matcha — which “pursues the dynamic rather than the static aspect of beauty” and “seeks beauty in the motion of things,” as Yanagi wrote.

“In Japan, food and the tea ceremony, those two things are so critical in everybody’s lives and in part of their upbringing that they understand and cherish pottery, and that’s why they take care of it, and why they use it daily,” McIlhargey said.

The American habit, by contrast, is often to save beautiful things for special occasions — to protect them from daily life. Mingei asks almost the opposite: What if a bowl is most fully itself, most beautiful, when it’s filled?

The question followed the interview from the kiln to McIlhargey’s nearby home, which itself is partly ceramic in that he’s installed inside the house hundreds of tiles he formed and fired.

“And we tiled so many places in our house that there’s nowhere else to tile — so we started tiling outside,” McIlhargey said.

Thus, McIlhargey and his family don’t just live with beautiful things — they live inside them, enveloped by them. Alongside McIlhargey’s tiles, hundreds of pieces of pottery fill shelves and cabinets, many — not all — used regularly. McIlhargey said he still makes space to display rare treasures that are “a little more precious” — such as a pair of 600-year-old pots he and his wife, Jalana Lazar, brought back from their honeymoon in China.

He pointed to some pieces by potter Warren MacKenzie, widely considered an American master of pottery in the Mingei tradition.

“So I’m part of the apprenticeship tradition passed down many generations, but Warren MacKenzie was very close [to Mingei’s foundation] — he worked with Bernard Leach and was best friends with Shōji Hamada,” McIlhargey said.

But most of the pottery in McIlhargey’s house was made by friends and mentors. Far from being “unknown craftsmen,” McIlhargey said most of the pieces were purchased after he “went to the potter’s house and got to know them.”

“So whenever I take the mug down and use it, it’s a conversation that I’m having with my friend down in North Carolina or in Massachusetts,” he said, making the connection to Mingei through intention rather than anonymity: “That’s another part of it — the meaning of the use is heightened. Every pot has a story.”

Stories will inevitably also infuse the pieces that, at press time, have just emerged from the kiln. The “Mingei” collection — and all Miami Valley Pottery firings, McIlhargey said — requires the work of a few dozen people to tend the kiln as it reaches about 2,500 degrees, with folks taking shifts through the night. Ash builds, glazes change and the artist learns to surrender — maybe pots will crack, or maybe they’ll turn out more beautiful than their maker could have planned.

“You learn to be detached and not get too into anything in particular, and just kind of hope,” McIlhargey said.

And hope, in this case, is infused into each pot fired — a hope that, after they’re carried downtown into a space once again made useful, the pots, beautiful as they may be, will be taken home and themselves be made useful.

“Because I’m so passionate about it, I live that way, and I want my customers to as well, because there’s so much joy that you get out of it every day,” McIlhargey said. “I want them to experience it.”

105 years ago: 1921

Fifteen hundred watch basketball victory. “One of the most glorious events in the history of Yellow Springs was when the local high school basketball team cleaned up on the Xenia team in the tournament last Saturday evening before fifteen hundred spectators at Kelly Hall [gymnasium in Antioch Hall, now an auditorium]. The boys were not content to merely win, but they piled up a score of two to one, 9 to 18. … Playing for Yellow Springs were Bausman, Donley, Williams, Shoup, Weiss, LeSourd, Gegner, Hudson, McCallister.”

Lawn fertilizer? “Spreading manure on the lawn is likely to introduce a lot of weed seed.”

80 years ago: 1946

General Motors sells to Morris Bean. “Morris Bean announced yesterday that negotiations with General Motors had been successfully completed for his new company to take over the manufacturing equipment now housed in the Antioch Foundry.”

Spillan development. “L.W. Spillan, representing an estate of which the heirs are himself, his sister and brother, approached the village council Monday night to obtain their reaction to the plans for real estate development which the Spillans are planning south of the village. … More than thirty acres, lying just south of present village limits would be sub-divided and at some future date added to the village.”

Hardware specials. “Deaton’s Feature of the week: Mailboxes. Black, all metal — 59 cents; All glass — $1.50.”

Speed limits rise. “Fifty-mile-per-hour speed limit signs will be back on all highways in Ohio. … The President’s 35-mile-an-hour Victory Speed Limit signs were removed at the close of World War II.”

50 years ago: 1976

Gay awareness. “Members of Human Relations Commission appeared before Council to ask $500 for the financing of a ‘Gay Awareness Weekend’ during which it would bring speakers to Yellow Springs and conduct other programs in an effort to end ‘myths’ about  homosexuality and thus to end discrimination against homosexuals.”

Short Street farmers market. “Village Council voted 3-1-1 Monday to close Short St. the last four Saturdays of July to permit a fruit and vegetable market to operate there. … The vote came after a petition signed by 33 local retail businesses was presented asking the use of Short St. for the market. … [Councilman Robin] Levitt said that the NEWS, the bank, Erbaugh and Johnson, Deaton’s and Weaver’s [Tom’s] had not signed the petition.

Store expands. “Another unused downtown Yellow Springs business building is back in use this week. Baltic Avenue Used Furniture and Antiques moved this past weekend to 108 Dayton St., the former KBS Hardware building. One feature of the new Baltic Avenue will be home-ready antiques restored by local craftsman John Bush, of Bushworks, Inc.”

Route 68 reopens. “The bridge over the Little Miami River on Route 68 at Goes was opened to traffic around noon today. The bridge had been closed since March 1 for rebuilding.”

40 years ago: 1986

Business incubator growing. “In its seventh month of operation, the Yellow Springs-based Miami Valley Regional Small Business incubator is moving along on target. … To date, six businesses have moved into the incubator, which is located in the former Fels House [Sontag Fels building on Livermore Street], and three more are expected by the end of the month. Hopes are to house 25 clients by the end of the year and up to 100 in the future.”

30 years ago: 1996

Omar Robinson dies. “Omar Anthony Robinson … died unexpectedly Sunday, March 24. As a local businessman and real estate developer, Mr. Robinson was responsible for the development of the Omar Estates subdivision. It was the first development built specifically to meet the housing needs of blacks in Yellow Springs, who because of racial prejudice at the time had difficulty finding and financing homes locally.”

Co-housing meetings. “Meetings on developing a co-housing project in Yellow Springs will be held each Sunday at 7 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church.”

Affordable housing needed. “A ‘substantial number’ of people who live and work in Yellow Springs would be interested in affordable housing if it were available, according to the results of a recent survey conducted by the Council-appointed Affordable Housing Task Force. … Forty-six percent said they would be interested in participating in a ‘sweat equity’ program, which involves homeowners in the construction of their own homes.”

25 years ago: 2001

Children’s Center anniversary. “The center marks its 55th year since it was incorporated in 1946 … ‘The needs of the children have always come first,’ said Rae Dewey, who’s been involved with the Children’s Center since it began, first as a volunteer, then board member, then as a consultant. … The center’s forerunner, the Elm Street School, began in 1929. … It was the town’s second nursery school. The Antioch Nursery, begun in 1926, was one of the first in the country.”

Protestors arrested. “Hazel Tulecke and Bill Houston … were arrested for participating in a November 21st protest at the United States Army School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia. … Activists want the school shut down because they believe its graduates are responsible for numerous violent acts throughout Latin America, including the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989.”

15 years ago: 2011

Bill Hooper dies. “William Hooper, well known contractor, former Antioch and Miami Township Trustee and local activist, died. He was 91 years old. … Bill was the developer of Westgate [Ridgecrest & Robinwood Drives and Keystone Court], the second integrated housing development in the United States, in the late 1950s.”

College reboots. “Antioch College continues its forward motion toward admitting new students next fall, announcing this week that the college has hired its first three tenure track faculty members.”

A recent kitchen fire at Mills Park Hotel was quickly contained by Miami Township Fire-Rescue crews last week, according to Fire Chief James Cannell, who praised firefighters’ response as he reported to the Miami Township Trustees during their meeting Monday, May 18.

Miami Township Fire-Rescue was dispatched just before 7 a.m. Wednesday, May 13, to Ellie’s Restaurant at Mills Park Hotel after smoke was reported in the kitchen. Though business was briefly halted, Ellie’s was back in full swing the following day.

Cannell told trustees the fire — caused by a “large bowl of grease still burning in the kitchen” — occurred during an MTFR shift change, allowing the department to respond with additional personnel.

“We were able to get plenty of people out there and get to it very, very quick, and the crew did a fantastic job,” Cannell said, adding that responding personnel were able to keep smoke and fire damage “very, very minimal.”

Elsewhere in his report, Cannell said the department has temporarily dropped to two-person daytime staffing on some days due to a medical issue affecting a member of the crew, though MTFR’s community paramedic Steffinie Brewer has been helping fill staffing gaps. Trustees later approved the hiring of Madison Terry, a certified firefighter and EMT from the Columbus area, as a part-time firefighter/EMT.

During the meeting, trustees also discussed an upcoming transition to a new Township website and email system, set to go live June 1.

Trustee Lori Askeland said the Township is moving from its current “.net” domain to a “.gov” domain, a change she said is aimed at improving both cybersecurity and public trust.

“If you reach a .net or a .org website, you don’t know what that organization could be,” Askeland said, noting that government entities must complete an application process to receive a “.gov” web address.

Under the transition, current Township email addresses and the existing MiamiTownship.net website will continue to function for a limited period of time, though officials encouraged residents to update contact information once the new system launches.

The meeting’s longest and most contentious discussion came near its end, when trustees voted 2–1 to publicly discuss a previously confidential letter from Greene County Prosecutor David Hayes regarding the legality of reimbursing health insurance premiums for Trustee Chris Mucher.

As the News reported last month, trustees voted at their April 6 meeting to end the Township’s practice of reimbursing health insurance premiums for elected officials who opted out of the Township’s group health insurance plan. Mucher said at that meeting that he had accumulated several thousand dollars in healthcare premiums that would previously have been reimbursed by the Township; trustees agreed during the meeting to request that Prosecutor Hayes review the situation and identify any legal options for reimbursing Mucher.

Hayes delivered the requested advice to the trustees in a May 14 letter, obtained by the News via public records request. In the letter, Hayes pointed to ORC 505.601, writing that Ohio law allows townships to reimburse employees or officials for healthcare premiums “with no danger of a legal action” if the township “does not offer a healthcare plan to its employees.”

“Alternatively, the Township may continue to offer healthcare coverage to its employees, but may not offer premium reimbursement,” Hayes wrote.

Hayes went on to explain that Miami Township may elect to continue to pay premium reimbursement while also offering a group healthcare plan and adhere to state law if trustees approve a resolution to authorize reimbursement payments, but that doing so would “potentially violate provisions of the Affordable Care Act and subject the Township to penalties by the IRS.”

Hayes noted that his office found no cases of Ohio townships being penalized by the IRS for premium reimbursements, but that electing to approve such reimbursements “would involve balancing that risk,” and advised trustees to consult an attorney experienced in ACA and tax law before proceeding with any resolution approving reimbursements.

During discussion Monday, Mucher argued trustees should take Hayes’ advice to seek additional legal guidance and maintained that prior boards had used the reimbursement practice for years without issue.

“To this point I have been, for whatever reason, financially punished to the tune of $6,558,” Mucher said.

“It is unlawful to have both a group insurance plan and to be reimbursing people for insurance premiums outside that plan; the letter we got clearly stated that it’s either/or,” Moir said.

Askeland argued that trustees could not retroactively authorize a reimbursement benefit that had never been formally adopted through policy or resolution, and pointed to Hayes’ remark that authorizing both a group health plan and premium reimbursements via resolution would introduce the Township to potential IRS penalties.

“I do not support going to a tax attorney,” she said.

The discussion grew heated at times, with Mucher opining that Moir and Askeland were treating him unfairly, and Moir repeatedly rejecting those suggestions.

“Unfortunately, I see it as being personal, and I believe you’re really doing a disservice to the Board of Trustees, to me personally, and the fluid business of Miami Township at this level,” Mucher said. “I think you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

“I don’t care if you think I should be ashamed of myself,” Moir answered. “You’re asking me to break the law for you.”

Ultimately, Mucher moved that the board resolve to consult further with a tax attorney; the motion expired without a second.

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