Rasor for Stow

It has been two days since I challenged the Good Ole Boy Network to present to me a benefit that Stow residents have received from a government-owned golf course, rather than having it privately owned.

No one has responded.

While we wait for this revelation, please read Gina Mace’s article in the Beacon Journal about the golf course debate.

Sara Drew, who claims to be a former high school debater, piled fallacy on top of fallacy on Thursday, and you get a sense of that reading her quotes (i.e. slippery slope, non sequitor). And she mentions the golf course’s revenue conveniently without saying its costs have consistently exceeded revenue (and isn’t that all that matters for a business?).

In my two months in office, I have realized why almost every one of my colleagues has been elected… Almost everyone. I have to keep reminding myself that turning this city around can’t happen in just one election cycle. We need to wash out the people who — although they may be nice folks — demonstrate an utter lack of business sense and care very little about taxpayers’ interests.

In the past few weeks, several people have told me that I have made the council meetings more entertaining for them.

That’s not my goal. My goal is to hold our politicians accountable for lying to us, for spending our money on fluff, and not using any logic.

Tonight was no different. We discussed the budget, which — as it stands — will rob $1 million from our capital improvements fund, $515,000 from our unencumbered fund (i.e. money that is there to protect our bond rating), and puts its faith in a possible $750,000 bailout from Stow Municipal Court.

I don’t dispute that the administration worked hard to compile it. Policy-wise, however, it should be unacceptable to every family in Stow.

We are fudging the numbers by taking money from funds that are supposed to protect our long-term interests, not rescue us for unconscionable overspending. I have no problem telling you how it is: The mayor proposed a budget deficit of upwards of $2.2 million. If we get money from the court, it’s $1.5 million. Either way, with a total budget of under $30 million, that is awful planning.

You’ll hear the mayor say that every city is going through this. First, that’s untrue (see Munroe Falls). Second, our problems are man-made. WE decided to bring the courthouse to Stow that costs us $1 million a year. WE decided to buy a golf course that costs us $400,000 a year. WE decided to buy a tour bus that cost $100,000. WE decided to upgrade the payroll ordinance so that 11 managers earn more than $80,000.

This is a man-made problem. Our politicians created it. Now, somehow, we have to dig ourselves out. And it will require VERY difficult decisions. Jim Costello mentioned some of the unpopular options, such as cutting police or closing a fire station. John Earle talked about the possibility of someday putting a tax levy on the ballot. Thanks to our mayor and the Good Ole Boy Network’s negligence, the situation is dire.

One proposal, however, is easy to swallow. We own Fox Den Golf Course. Why? Council was told that it was going to be sold to a housing developer. They bought it for $5.5 million. We will pay about $375,000 per year on the loan until year 2032. We will also pay any operating losses it sustains, which amounted to $5,000 in 2007, $95,000 in 2008, and $17,000 in 2009.

Conservatively, we can assume it will cost residents $400,000 per year until 2032, when realistically many residents will have moved or died.

Now consider that we aren’t paving our roads, our snow plow program is woefully underfunded, and our police response times are double the national average.

Considering all this, I proposed that we start to take bids on selling the course, with the deed containing a restriction that it must remain as a golf course.

Sara Drew came out vehemently against my idea. She was concerned that we won’t be able to sell it. Janet D’Antonio was worried that the market value is too low to justify a sale.

They both ignored my point. We need to see what is out there — to extend feelers by accepting bids. I’m not proposing a sale to the first bid. I’m proposing that we gather information to check if a sale is feasible.

Look, folks, we have tough decisions to make. There have been whispers of raising taxes. The mayor has already proposed a giant program to tax landlords. We heard about possibly cutting our safety forces.

Selling the golf course, meanwhile, is a win-win proposition. We don’t sacrifice any services or “quality of life” by putting the golf course in private hands, rather than having the government run it. Nothing.

You may be a member of the Good Ole Boy Network. You may think I’m just another rabble-rouser. But I challenge you to tell me ONE benefit that the average Stow resident receives for this golf course being owned by the government, rather than by a private individual. I promise to post your answer on this Web site.

You might be wondering why I’m so vocal at council meetings, despite being in office for only a couple months. It’s simple. I care about my city. I see a very bleak picture, which has been falsely colored by a mayor who wants to paint the most positive picture possible in order to keep dissenters quiet and stay out of the newspapers.

I know that Matt Riehl and Joe Hickin share my concerns. I call on my other colleagues (particularly John Pribonic, Jim Costello and Janet D’Antonio) to join this effort, rather than opposing it. We can turn this city’s finances and services around, but it will require everyone to share a realistic perspective on what must be done.

I truly appreciate those who have sent encouraging e-mails and called to express their support. Web traffic has spiked to the same level as the week before the election, which tells me that more people are paying attention. Holding politicians accountable in Stow begins now.

Council will meet tonight to potentially pass the 2010 budget. The meeting starts at 6 with two committee meetings before getting into the council meeting itself.

The current budget proposal is woefully inadequate in many areas and has several major flaws. For one, we are assuming that the municipal court will bail us out for $750,000. Two, even with that assumption, we are using $515,000 of unencumbered funds. Three, we aren’t rotating vehicles or fixing our roads. Four, we aren’t replacing the police officers who have retired/been lost from a force that is embarrassingly small for this city’s size. Five, higher level management and elected officials are not being asked to help out financially.

There are a lot of problems with this budget. I will be proposing ways to fix it. These meetings should be interesting, and they should reveal who is really interested in the taxpayers, and who is out for their friends and personal interests.

Here are some notes I took during the meeting…

– Union concessions have saved about the city about $170,000 so far. I am personally grateful for such generosity.

– Fox Den LOST money in 2009, and I’m not just talking about the payment on the loan. In 2009, it brought in $1.372 million. Expenses were $1.389 million. That is a loss of $17,000 in operating expenses. But you can’t stop the analysis there. Stow paid $371,828 on the loan in 2009. That is a total loss of almost $400,000. These numbers are indisputable. To correct the mayor’s repeated untruth: Fox Den DID NOT make money in 2009 — not by any standard.

– John Earle, giving his presentation, rightly said: “Citizens are not more in jeopardy than when there is fresh snow.”

– He added that money from the Cell Tower Fund will be used to pay down the general fund deficit. So when your politicians claim it’s OK to buy a tour bus when we aren’t paving roads because it came out of a specific fund, you know better. The Cell Tower dollars are no different than any other dollars. This is proof.

– We are going to balance the budget in 2010, but it will be the wrong way (according to this proposed budget, anyhow). We are taking $1.1 million from the capital improvements funds, which means we won’t be buying new safety vehicles/snow plows or paving roads with our usual money (grant money, of course, may help alleviate that somewheat). Additionally, we are robbing our unencumbered funds account of $515,000. This is our emergency money. Given the stance Janet D’Antonio has taken on these important funds, I can’t imagine she’ll support it.

– I asked about the court. Because it is the most catastrophic error in our city’s history, the court is the giant elephant in the room. In 2010, it will run a projected deficit of at least $1 million. Let me emphasize something: That is your tax money that will pay for it!

– While we might get another $750,000 bailout from the judges, that is speculative. We don’t have a commitment. I told John Earle that we need a commitment in order to budget effectively. Consider this: What if the money never comes? Next fall, we have to pull another $750,000 from our unencumbered funds. If we knew in advance, we could plan accordingly from the beginning.

– The mayor refused to give me specifics about what we’re doing in Columbus to fix the court debacle. She told me to meet in private with her. Apparently, this is something not fit to speak about in a public meeting. This is the kind of garbage that ticks me off… The more the public knows, the better! That is why I’m writing this blog. The more you know, the better decisions you will make at the polls. Then again, maybe that’s not good news for the Good Ole Boys Network.

– Lt. Titus of the police department added some cogent thoughts… “It is very hard to get across the city in a timely manner in an emergency,” he said, pointing to the 2,300 stops and 800 arrests on his shift last year. If he has a call for a shoplifting or security alarm going off, then two of the four officers on patrol are occupied, and “you only have two officers for the entire city. You get what you pay for. For some of us on the road, it’s not enough.” Amen. Let’s protect our citizens first. Our “quality of life” initiatives second.

– Given all of this bad news (and worse policy), I had to get on the soap box for a moment. Here is the gist of what I said:

We aren’t rotating our vehicles. A police car breaks down on the way to a robbery. Does anyone think that won’t catch up with us? We aren’t fixing our roads. Does anyone think this won’t catch up with us?

This is about priorities. Quality of life is nice. In an era of prosperity, it can attract people and businesses to town. When we aren’t doing the main tasks of a city, however, it will keep people and businesses OUT of town.

We need to shift our entire paradigm in this city. There won’t be easy decisions. These are the decisions that the residents elected us to do. I’m not going to support a budget that doesn’t give our roads, vehicles, and police their proper funding.

We will meet Thursday at 6 to discuss the budget. Between now and then, I plan to comb through the proposed budget and find $1 million to cut.

Tomorrow at 7, by the way, is the meeting on the Comprehensive Plan.

Kudos to Munroe Falls for closing 2009 with a budget surplus (link).

They budget conservatively, according to the city’s mayor Frank Larson.

One day, I am confident, Stow will budget conservatively. But that day is not present because we have the most wildly spending mayor in the city’s history.

The Charter Review committee continues to look at removing term limits for the mayor. I urge them to reconsider. After six years, this mayor thinks she can do no wrong. Here are two news clips from today’s paper for proof:

The mayor told the Stow Sentry she didn’t make a mistake by delaying the opening of the interchange. WOW! There was not a SINGLE person I spoke with who agreed with her rationale. She even retreated on her position, but she refuses to admit a mistake. What arrogance!

The mayor now says she wants to speak with landlords and residents about her proposed Landlord Tax. This is two weeks after Matt Riehl proposed speaking with these people, and the mayor disagreed, saying, “You need something in place first, then ask them what’s good and what’s bad.”

When I was running for office, I tried not to bring the mayor into the campaign, because I wasn’t running against her. Now that I’m in office, and I see what goes on behind the scenes, I’m confident her wasteful spending, arrogance, lack of substance and untruthfulness cause a bulk of the problems with this city’s government.

This isn’t a small town anymore. It needs a mayor who will provide better governance.

Shawn Porter, a 2007 Stow High grad, won the NABO Junior Middleweight Championship in a unanimous decision on national TV Friday night.

It took 10 rounds, but Porter won on the cards against Russell Jordan. Still undefeated, Porter gave up seven inches to the 6-foot-3 Jordan. The judges scored the fight 97-92, 97-92 and 100-89. In other words, it wasn’t very close.

Congrats to Porter! Stow now boasts two world class athletes. Ryder Cup golfer Ben Curtis is the other.

Stow police dog Nero has won one of 15 awards for courage from the Red Cross.

The other 14 went to human officers, which shows the magnitude of German shepherd’s act at the gas station robbery this summer.

More police dog news is forthcoming…

The Efficiency Committee met tonight, and we had a productive meeting.

First, we agreed on a mission statement:

A systematic review of the current organizational structure with the goal of reducing expenditures while retaining, if not, expanding the level of essential city services.

Second, I proposed two major (and perhaps radical) ideas for saving money:

1) Cut the mayor’s salary, and allow him/her to earn it back by balancing the budget, with a 60-40 ratio between operating budget and capital expenditures. Because our charter does not allow council to cut the mayor’s salary during the current term, it could not take effect for another two years.

2) Cut all leadership salaries enough to pay for a new snow plow truck every two years. I really can’t tell you details beyond that. It’s a lofty goal, but it’s something we should take on, as leaders in the community.

Third, we debated the questionnaire. Once again, the mayor showed her reluctance to have employees report potential waste to council. But my fellow committee members and I fought against that. John Pribonic, Jim Costello and I decided that we will each meet with one of the elected department heads to craft questions that will make this questionnaire effective for each department. Soon thereafter, we will discuss the questionnaire during the Committee of the Whole, provided that Janet D’Antonio does not object.

The public hearing on the Landlord Tax is postponed, the Stow Sentry reports.

The mayor tipped off the media to this before I heard it from Public Improvements committee chairman John Pribonic. I’m not sure how she has the ability to cancel our meetings (if that’s the case), but it’s irrelevant.

The fact is, the mayor heard loud and clear that this city is fed up with bureaucracy and high taxes. There will be a hearing, the mayor says, but it will be after the legislation is revamped.

Here are two nuggets I would like to see remain in the next concoction:

1) We need a registry of vacant buildings. With it, Economic Development Director Mike Weddle would be much more effective in telling prospective business owners where they may locate in Stow.

2) We need better mechanisms for correcting structural defects on rental property. Let’s put teeth into our existing zoning/building codes. Let’s get the bad landlords to comply through serious fines whenever a tenant’s safety is at stake. But for goodness sake, let’s not punish the good landlords with the bad.

Shawn Porter, a recent graduate of Stow-Munroe Falls High School, will fight on national TV for the junior middleweight championship. Porter is a top 20 boxing prospect nationally.

The match is Friday night on ESPN. Good luck, Shawn!