Each week WAKR's Ray Horner profiles a local business. This week's Business is Hospice of the Western Reserve. Elizabeth McIntyre, Chief Marketing Officer, joined the Ray Horner Morning Show.

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik talked to Ray Horner on Thursday, about the new Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza and statue, as well as Akron's new police chief, and this week's big high school softball tournament at Firestone Stadium.

Find out more, listen now.

Malik spoke at the dedication of the new plaza, and was on hand for the statue's official unveiling, on Wednesday.

Famed abolitionist and women's rights advocate, Sojourner Truth, is best known for her "Ain't I A Woman" speech, which she delivered in Akron at a Women's Rights rally, in 1851.

The new Sojourner Truth Legacy Plaza, is located at the Summit Medina United Way building, at37 North High Street, in downtown Akron.

The statue was created by Akron-based artist Woodrow Nash.

Mayor Shammas Malik speaks to crowd just before Sojourner Truth statue is unveiled in downtown Akron.

Open to the public seven days a week from dawn to dusk, the Plaza was designed by landscape architect Dion Harris of Summit Metro Parks, with construction management done by The Ruhlin Company. At its center, the Plaza features a design inspired by an impala lily, the national flower of Ghana, Truth’s ancestral homeland. There, on a plinth of black granite, stands Nash’s life-sized bronze sculpture of Truth, surrounded by pillars representing the long-demolished Old Stone Church. A path winding through the Plaza displays important dates in Truth’s life, beginning with her birth as Isabella Baumfree in 1797, continuing through the day she left slavery in 1826 and her years as an activist and orator, before ending in 1883, when she passed away at age 86 in Battle Creek, Michigan.

The Plaza also features a mural by local artist Derin Fletcher, inspired by a famous 1864 photograph of Truth. Fletcher’s mural occupies the southeast wall of the Plaza, alongside a metal sculpture of an impala lily designed by another local artist, Alexandria Couch.

The Akron School Board has voted to ask taxpayers to approve a new tax levy and bond issue, in November.

It has been 12 years since voters last approved a levy to support Akron Public Schools, which in that time have seen enrollment drop for various reasons, including some students transferring to private schools, and using taxpayer dollars in the form of school vauchers, to pay for it.

In addition, the State of Ohio has reduced funding, costs have gone up, and North High School; which is one of the only ones in the city actually seeing an increase in students, is extremely old and in need of more than just repairs.

According to a press release from Akron Public Schools, the 7.6-mill operating levy would help fund the district's daily expenditures, and the 1.3-mill bond issue would pay for a new $85 million building for North High School.

The operating levy would cost homeowners $266, and the bond issue $45 per $100,000 of assessed value annually. The bond issue would last the life of the district's loan, which would be 35 years. The levy would be continuous.

The bond issue and the levy would begin collecting in January 2025 and bring in a total of $27 million annually. About $5 million of that would go toward North High School.

APS Chief Financial Officer Stephen Thompson has told the board and the public several times, "Let me remind you that the district does not benefit from rising property values in its existing levies — even though taxes have increased, the school district isn’t getting additional money from homeowners."

A 1970s Ohio law freezes tax rates at the point they were when first approved. In Akron's case, that was 2012.