Council members Roxanne Qualls and Chris Seelbach proposed a motion yesterday that would reduce the amount of police layoffs to 25 and eliminate all firefighter layoffs previously proposed in budget plans for fiscal year 2014. The huge layoff reduction comes despite months of warning from the city administration that the city would have to carry out big public safety layoffs without the parking plan, which is currently stalled in court. But it’s come with large cuts and shifted priorities in other areas of the budget, such as reduced funding to parks, health, human services, parades and outside agencies. (For example, the Health Department warned that cuts to its services could lead to more rats and bedbugs.) The motion from Qualls and Seelbach came just in time for last night’s public hearing, which mostly focused on the cuts to parks and public safety. Ohio’s unemployment rate was 7.0 percent in April, down from 7.1 percent the month before, thanks to increases in the amount of people employed and decreases in the amount of people unemployed. The gains coincided with decent job growth throughout the rest of the nation in April, which dropped nationwide unemployment from 7.6 percent to 7.5 percent. But the state gains were fairly mixed, and the amount of construction, professional and business services and federal and local government jobs actually dropped. The mixed, slow growth helps explain why conservative and liberal think tanks seemingly disagree with Gov. John Kasich that Ohio is undergoing an “economic miracle.” The Hamilton County Public Health’s (HCPH) food protection program is apparently the best in the United States and Canada. The Conference for Food Protection awarded the program the 2013 Samuel J. Crumbine Consumer Protection Award, which “recognizes unsurpassed achievement in providing outstanding food protection services to communities,” according to a statement from HCPH. Homophobic Boy Scouts supporters are rallying nationwide today to support the continuation of the Boy Scouts’ homophobic rules.The Taste of Cincinnati and the the Cubs-Reds series may have helped downtown Cincinnati earn the No. 42 spot in Priceline.com’s top 50 Memorial Day destinations. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources confirmed Ohio has been undergoing a boom in oil and gas production in the past two years thanks to developments in a drilling process known as fracking, which CityBeat previously covered in further detail here.Duke Energy hired a new contractor — Southern Cross Co. — to carry out gas and line inspections. Cincinnati-based Kroger developed a new system that will convert food that can’t be sold or donated into clean energy to power one of its distribution centers. Convergys is selling is downtown Cincinnati headquarters as the company goes through big changes. So far the buyer is unknown. Jim Kingsbury, CEO of UC Health since 2010, is retiring. Using an optical illusion to make white people look darker can diminish racial biases, according to a new study. Earth’s super-dense core is weak.