City Seal Snafu

Our officious First Ward councilman Kevin W. Johnson, didn't like the mayoral form of government, so he sneakily got the change back to the misnamed city manager form of government, creating a snafu that will take years and years to resolve. I mean just who if anybody is governing this city? Then Kevin W.  decided he didn't like the tasteless city seal and proposed a contest to get a new one. Well, now that's turned into a snafu  too, and Kevin W. and acting mayor Jim Kalb proposed postponing picking a winner. Jim Kalb is not satisfied with the candidate seals. He would like to see some changes. "But to me, personally there’s just some changes I’d like to see made on them," Kalb said, "and that’s something I think that this council ought to have time to discuss instead of just picking a favorite tonight and settling for that.” What does Kalb have in mind? Maybe the following is the one  he favors:

The word is Kalb doesn't like the one below :

And what about Kevin W.? Which seal may he be holding out for? It's rumored that Kevin W. feels the most tasteful seal by far is the following:

In a telephone survey he did in area codes 270, 502, 606, and 859, Snuffy Smith claims that the seal below was the overwhelming favorite:

Snuffy's Take on Jim Kalb's Open Letter

Jim Kalb composing his open letter to Kevin W. Johnson

Iffen you red Drek Aillen’s Cock-n-Bull Opin Litter, now reed Jim Kalb’s  to the failed antic deeler Kevin W. Johnson. Summite suspeck Ol’ Jim din’t rite the litter cuz it lax the redneck shit-and-piss retrick that made Jim  the most famus Appleashen in the whirl fur 48 ours a few yeers back. Sumuthers mite suspeck Jim didn’t rite it cuz it haz finnishin’ skool wurds like “therefore,” “ultimately,” and “abide” wen all he haz iz a vacational edjication. Weather itz by Jim or his bitter haff wif the govinment krazy chek. Iffen you aint red Jim’s Appleashen masterpiss, just klick here.

Jims open litter iz not so much a litter az a chronicul of govinment cunfusion, cullusion, and dilusion in witch Jim cumplanes Kevin always kept him, that iz Jim, out of the loop privyusly but iz trying’ to suck up to him now that Kevin iz on the sity man’gers shitlist.

Bee that az it may, Jims litter to Kevin W. begins,

             "Hello Vice President Kevin W.”

He leaves  off  hiz last name witch iz suposed too bee sarkastick  like you wood begin a litter to the president, “Hello President B’rack Husane,” leavin’ off hiz last name Obummer.  Summite say iffen he rit the litter hisself he cud cum up with sumthin’ better like, “Hello Vice President Kevin W. who  I woodn’t piss on if you waz shit on fire.”  But la-dee-da Jim sez insted, "I copied this correspondence to all concerned because, well, that’s just the proper way to do things (in my opinion)." Wat Jims  reely doin' ritin’ fancee-dancee like this iz makin' fun of kweers who rite like that. Then Jim  sez supersillyous, “I don’t know if you have ever read the Charter, you don’t understand the language in the Charter or you just flat out refuse to abide by the Charter and other laws/rules governing Council.” Jim leckturing Kevin W. on vilelating the chatter iz ironick cuz Jim iz the biggist vilelator of the chatter in the anals of Porchmuth like he did on the Martin’ bilding and the Kiwanis Playground. Hell, there aint nobuddy who vilelates the chatter more’n Jim.

Jim also ‘cuses Kevin of subvertin’ the Design and Review Bored. Speekin’ of bored, don't we have more than enuff bored fellas in sity govinment and nobuddy more so than Jim, as shone in the  classick schnapshot of him  ketchin’ twenty winks during a counsil meatin'.

As fur Kevin’s dilutions of grander, Jim in hiz litter quotes an emale in witch Kevin rote, “As you know, Derek is called by our fire or police Chief whenever there is a fire, homicide, robbery or a bear in the city. I have asked to be called as well; as the Mayor (or Acting Mayor, in my case, effective July 1) I should be aware of such activity.” In uther wurds, Kevin W. wants to be in the loop as much az he wants to keep Jim out of the loop. If theres a bear or a bare-ass stewdent running up Chillyclothy street, Kevin W. wants to be woked up and tolled about it.

Then in a kleer warnin’ to Kevin W.,  Jim kwotes the city chatter like it’s the Bibull, the furst commandmint being you better follow the chatter or you cud end up convickted: “Any violation of the provisions of this section by a member of the Council shall be a misdemeanor, conviction of which shall immediately forfeit the office of the member so convicted.” Of coarse our currant sity man’ger wuz prevously convicted of lying under oath about givin’ a buddy of his a no-bid contrack for gravil or sumthin’ butt he waz hired anyway. In fakt, I think one of the kwalifications fur the job waz you gut to have  a please record or at least to have been a bankcorrupt.

Jim allso cumplains in his litter ‘bout Kevin tellin’ Drek to take a vacation. Kevin tellin’ Drek to take a brake iz like Hitler rekomending that Muscleenie becuz he’s virgin on a nervuss brakedown shood take a long vakation and leeve Itally to the Nasties. “Not your call Kevin,”  Jim sez in his opin litter. “The City Manager is perfectly capable of scheduling a vacation for himself when he feels the need.”

Here’s the hippocritical enden of Jims opin litter to Kevin W. “Since you took a seat on City Council I’ve witnessed a loss of confidence that Portsmouth residents have in their city government. I’ve seen nothing from you but hidden agendas and a failure to follow the laws and rules governing the city. I’ve watched you speak for City Council as a whole without being asked. You thrive on controversy and you constantly share information with the media before it is ever discussed by Council. Now allow me to ask a question of you: Do you plan to continue your actions on City Council as you have to this point? If you have no intentions of changing, would you consider making it easier on everybody and cheaper on the City and just resign your seat on Portsmouth City Council?”

Jims  crittersizin’ Kevin W. Johnson on vilelating the city chatter iz ironick cuz like he did on the Martin’ bilding and the Kiwanis Playground, Jim iz the biggest  vilelator of the city chatter in the hisorry  of Porchmuth. Hell, there aint nobuddy who haz ever vilelated the chatter more’n Jim.

Iz this what sity managemint govinment in Porchmuth haz cum too? The bankruptured, incompitent Kroaker clerk a-lying with the convickted sity man’ger aginst the Connivin’ Actin’ Mayor affective July 1? Guvnor Kasick haz got it rong. It aint the devil whose in controll in Porchmuth, itz the lawyers and develuppers that pulls the strings of the underhanded, bankruptured and incompetint politishins of witch the out-to-lunch Jim Kalb is the epitymee. 

Political Puppets of Portsmouth

Derek Allen's Cock-and-Bull Open Letter

Cock and Bull, Matt Sesow

We have  come full circle. As a result of the familiar fraud of musical chairs made possible by four-year terms, one of the most incompetent and dishonest mayors in Portsmouth history,  Jim Kalb, is mayor again, at least in name. Because of the current crisis in Portsmouth’s city government, concerned citizens should read City Manager Derek Allen’s “Open Letter to the City Council,”  which is bundled with  his July 14, 2014 city manager’s report, located on the city’s website. (See link in Appendix A, below or click here  for the report and then scroll down seventeen pages.) Allen’s Open Letter confirms  the suspicion that instead of being part of the solution, Allen, as city manager, is part of the problem. He is very ambitious, but as city manager he has, statutorily, virtually no power.  As city manager, Allen has  lots of responsibilities but very little authority. His primary responsibility, as city manager,  is to carry out the policies and directives of the city council. If Allen is worn to a frazzle after only six months, it may in part be because in addition to his many responsibilities he is also a commuting city manager who still makes his home in Piqua, Ohio, some two and half hour drive  from Portsmouth. He doesn't commute every day of course, but even weekend commuting would be tiring.

The city manager form of  government is a misleading misnomer; it should be called the city council form of government. But Allen appears to think that as city manager he has quite a bit of power.   As he writes in his Open Letter, "I stated that there was a methodical plan to be installed and that I knew the steps to ensure success. I intended to implement changes to turn Portsmouth around and cease people laughing at this community." One of the steps that would "cease people laughing" at Portsmouth was having a city manager form of government and hiring a leader like himself to be city manager. "The city," he wrote, "had no other choice but to turn the operations over to a professional [himself] in order to reverse the present course or face failure and financial collapse." Instead of being the servant of the city council, he often sounds in his letter like its master. "On February 4, 2014," we read in his letter,  "each council member received a list of my 2014 goals and objectives . . ." They received his goals and objectives?

Allen is sure he knows how to stop people laughing at Portsmouth because he recently was a village administrator in Delta, a small  community of about three thousand people in the northeast corner of Ohio, a community, he claims, people used to laugh at until he turned it around.  What is odd about his claim is that Delta had and still has a mayoral, not a city manager form of government, and what is odder still is that  he was not the mayor of Delta but  only the village administrator, who worked for the mayor.  If there was a dramatic turnaround in Delta, shouldn't  Dan. D. Miller,  who was and still is mayor,  get at least some of the credit? But credit for what? I have made a cursory examination of  the per capita income and population data for Delta and it does not appear that any dramatic turnaround has taken place  in the last five years or so. The most newsworthy thing that's happened in Delta in the last year  was the breakup of a big cockfighting ring that was operating in the area. As many as fifty people were arrested and as many as seventy roosters were confiscated. It was a big story in Fulton County.  Google "Delta and cockfighting" and see for yourself. I suspect that the turnaround that Allen allegedly  single-handedly brought about in Delta may be a cock-and-bull story.

I predicted when the city manager form of government was proposed several years ago that it would not, because it could not, succeed. But I did not think it would implode so fast. I think Allen's days (including as many extemporaneous vacation days he can squeeze in) are numbered, and no matter the circumstances under which he leaves, it is going to cost the city money that it cannot afford, anymore than it could afford to expend the money it did for the costly  job search that led to Allen's hiring, and for that we have our officious, underhanded First Ward councilman Kevin W. Johnson to thank. Johnson is the begetter of the cockamamie idea of returning to the city manager form of government that proved such a failure in the past.

Allen was not very open in his Open Letter about his experience as the Assistant City Manager in Pequa, Ohio, where he was fired, arrested, convicted, fined, and given a suspended 90-day suspended jail sentence for dereliction of duty in public office. Allen had problems in other jobs, but Portsmouth residents were kept in the dark about them by the city council and by the underhanded chair of the search committee, Kevin W. Johnson. My recollection is that we learned only after he was hired that Allen had a criminal record.  Johnson was like the crooked conductor who doesn't announce the true destination of the train until after it has left the station. In reverting to the city manager form of government, as I pointed out in an earlier post (see "The Crooked Conductor" below), we are historically going in the wrong direction. According to a relatively recent scholarly study of the subject, cited in that post, the misnamed city manager system is giving up the ghost. If  Johnson is the crooked conductor in my train metaphor, Allen is the fast and loose engineer who writes five-page cock-and-bull open letters when he should have both hands on the throttle.

Kevin W. Johnson says, "All aboard!"

Appendix A

Previous River Vices posts on the subject of city manager

Barry Feldman (click here)
Gerlach Against City Manager (click here)
City Manager: Repeating the Same Mistake (click here)
Vote No on City Manager (click here)
City Manager Search (click here)
Snuffy Smith on City Manager (click here)
Kevin W. Johnson: The Crooked Conductor (click here)
City Manager Valentine (click here)
Kalb: The Dopiest Councilman of All (click here)

                                                                        
                                                                    Appendix B            

Allen's Open Letter to Portsmouth City Council

Top Ten Posts: 2004-2014

“If I only had a brain.”

Below are the ten River Vices posts, in order of frequency,  that received the most hits in the last ten years. In the case of #1, my counter crashed when the number of hits for Mayor Kalb's redneck rhetoric approached 450,000 after it was picked up by the Huffington Post and Gawker as well as websites abroad. Instead of being embarrassed by the notoriety he brought to Portsmouth, Kalb is proud of the international recognition he received. “If I only had a brain,” the Scarecrow sang in The Wizard of Oz.  Two of the top ten, #2 and #5, relate to Mayor Murray. #5 illustrates the difficulty outsiders (in this case an English woman) find in adjusting to and being accepted in Appalachia. The slapdash #3 is the biggest puzzle to me because I don't understand why it had so many hits. One of my personal favorites, which just missed being in the top ten, was “Canning the Can-Can Man,” about the WSAZ reporter, Randy Yohe, which you can read by clicking here.

Top Ten Posts: 2004-2014
           (click on number for link)

1) Kalb: Burning the Midnight Oil 

2) Recall of Mayor Murray

     

3) Billboard from Hell

4) Jesse Stuart 

5) Jane Murray: The Lady’s Not for Burning 

6) Kiwanis Playground: The Hole Truth

7) Portsmouth’s Red Light District: Clayton Johnson 

8) Portsmouth Daily Times: Prostitution Culture                 

                                                              

9) Frances Trollope 

10) Tom Bihl                                             

Sh*t Heel Jim Kalb

Depicted above in a Portsmouth sewer is the then redneck  mayor Kalb who in a 2AM  email to me in 2009 wrote that, “I think you're a worthless  piece of s**t and I wouldn't p**s on you if you were on fire.” 

As Eskimos have many words for snow,

River rats have even more for sh*t.

In sewers, rats prefer to go with the flow

Like the politician Kalb, the nitwit, 

Who leads excrementally, from behind,

Which puts him, linguistically, in a bind.
Whenever  he’s at a loss  for words,
The dope has to resort to p*ss and t*rds.
To piss or not to piss, what in tarnation!
Verbal diarrhea or constipation?
Among the rats  he’s a really big deal
But excrementally only a shit heel.

                               Robert Forrey, 2012