"Something There Is That Doesn't Love A Wall"

And the Wall Came Tumbling Down

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” Robert Frost wrote in one of his unforgettable poems. Because the walls stand in the way of their roots growing in that direction, roots are among the things that don’t love walls.

Sometime  early in the morning a few days ago, the wall at the northwest corner of Washington and 4th Street collapsed, sending bricks and large cinder blocks on the sidewalk. Because the roots had finally had enough of the tall brick wall, the wall had to make way for the roots that had undermined it. The wall is part of the property at 633 4th Street, which is currently owned by Dr. Alain Asher, the heart surgeon who recently moved to Arizona. The previous owners of the property and the lovely, landmark house on it, had neglected the tree.

If the wall had collapsed during the day, a pedestrian or the elderly man in a motorized wheelchair who passes there almost daily could have been injured. More menacingly, if the towering dying tree shown in the photo above fell  in the direction of Washington Ave.—which with its roots exposed on its eastern side is the direction it likely would fall—it will probably hit the utility pole, and the tree and pole could fall on one of the many passing vehicles with such force that anyone in the vehicle could either be killed or seriously injured. Every hour that the tree remains in its current precarious position poses a serious public danger. Until that ancient, dying tree is removed, Washington Street should be cordoned off in that block and traffic detoured.

The situation at the northwest corner of Washington and 4th Street reminds me of the situation that existed in the southwest corner of Tracy Park when the city allowed Kiwanians to build a playground  in the southeast corner of the park, near trees that were in danger of falling on the playground because  some of their roots would be cut during the construction.    In spite of warnings from concerned citizens, the playground was built and within a couple of years a tall tree fell directly on the slide that children often used during the day and on a bench that parents sometimes sat in to keep an eye on their kids. Fortunately, the tree on the southeast  corner fell late at night and no one was injured.

The incompetent Jim Kalb was the mayor back when the Kiwanis playground was built, and he is mayor again. The more things change, the more morons end up being mayor of Portsmouth. But we now have a city manager, whom some people believe is not a moron, so maybe something will be done promptly to end the hazardous situation at the northwest corner of Washington and 4th. I will forward this post to his office.

Kiwanis Playground and Fallen Tree

The Cover-up: An Update on 633 4th Street

Since I last wrote on the fallen wall at 633 4th Street (see article above), there have been developments. Dr. Alain Asher, who now lives and practices medicine in the Southwest, tried for several years to sell the house. That attempt failed and to make matters worse the wall fell under pressure from tree roots  in late October of last year,  making a sale all the more difficult. In addition to the falling wall, the exhorbitent price he paid the Clayton Johnsons $440.500 for the property, which was almost twice what the Auditor's Office valued the property at, which was $244.150. So Asher paid almost $200,000 more than  the Auditor's valuation. If the property had been on the Hill, that would have been one thing, but 633 4th is in the heart of the Boneyfiddle district where the value of property, already low because of chronic poor Portsmouth housing market,  is falling further because of the presence of the Counseling Center, which has been attracting drug addicts from the tri-state area for decades. The reported crime rate in Boneyfiddle is high; the unreported rate is appreciably higher because residents often do not report petty crimes because it is a waste of time.

One of the new developments at 633 4th is that Asher  has reportedly leased the property to a doctor at the Southern Ohio Medical Center. Coinciding with the leasing of the house, the fallen wall is being rebuilt, but nothing is apparently being done about the tree whose exposed roots bulldozed the previous wall. One of the purposes of the new wall is to cover up the old problem of the huge trees at the northeast corner of the property. Asher is not prepared, perhaps is not financially able, to pay for the huge costs that would be associated with removing those trees, and in particular the tree whose roots are exposed. But by allowing him to cover up what is a hazardous situation with a new wall,
the city bears some of the moral and financial responsibility for any injuries or deaths that might result should that tree, sooner or later,  fall. The fact that we now have a city manager makes very little difference. He is surrounded by and collaborates with the same kind of crooked city officials who previously got away with cover-ups in the past. Jim Kalb is still the incompetent crook he had always been and he will soon be joined on the city council by Jo Ann Aeh  who deserves the title Coordinator of Corruption for the role she played in the past as the city clerk.

Relevant Posts: "Kiwanis Playground: Deathtrap for Tots?" Click here

                             "The Hole Truth": click here

http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2013/03/kiwanis-playground-deathtrap-for-tots.html
http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2009/09/test-playground.html

Kiwanis Playground: Deathtrap for Tots?

The huge Copper Beech hardwood tree that crashed upon the Kiwanis playground

     Frank Lewis has outdone himself in shamelessness in his report in today’s  online Portsmouth Daily Times on the huge tree falling on the Kiwanis playground (click here). Because he is so skillful in covering up the crookedness of Portsmouth, Lewis could work for a hundred years for the PDT and he would never be fired or made to feel unwelcome as editors and reporters have in the past. He spends a good part of his story providing John Johnson, the president of the Portsmouth Kiwanis Club, and Kiwanis Ohio District Governor Donald Parker, with the opportunity for taking bows for the Kiwanians for the wonderful work they did in building “this wonderful playground,” “this world renowned playground.” What chutzpah! What a crock! The truth is the playground was and is a potential deathtrap for tots, not only because of falling trees but also because of the heavy vehicular traffic that swirls around it. 

     The city and the Kiwanis Club were warned about the potential consequences of how and where the playground was built, and they can thank whatever gods may be, or their lucky stars, that one or more children was not killed or badly injured when the tree fell. Surveying a bench the tree had obliterated, Jack Tackett of the Portsmouth City Service Department is quoted by Lewis as saying, euphemistically, “If somebody had been sitting on that bench they would have been in trouble.” Would have been in trouble? They probably would have been dead. If only one child had been killed or injured, the city and Kiwanis could have been sued. Kiwanis’s claim that they now have no legal responsibility for the playground overlooks their culpability in this project from the start.  

     The real heroes in this mess is the couple who called everybody’s attention, including my own, to the problem of the rootless trees. Naturally, they were viewed as trouble makers, as what Steve Hayes of WNXT calls CAVE people, that is, Citizens Against Virtually Everything, including apparently deathtraps for tots. That’s how critics of the city are treated by the local media, as cave people.

     For my side of the story, read my 2009 post, “The Kiwanis Playground: The Hole Truth” (click here). Also read “Burning the Midnight Oil,” my 2009 post on Mayor Kalb’s email answer to my open records request for official documents related to the playground agreement between the city and the Kiwanis Club (click here). That was the email in which Kalb called me “a worthless piece of shit” and worse, the email that went viral. My blog crashed when the number of hits to “Burning the Midnight Oil” approached 450,000 in 48 hours. For the  country and the world, Kalb may have confirmed the worst stereotype of  the ugly American, if not the ignorant redneck. The world was astonished:  “What kind of a city would have such a crude ignoramus as mayor?” 

Kalb supplied me with an undated document that I suspected had been produced after the fact. I strongly suspected that the playground had been built without proper authorization, which would have made the whole project  a violation of Ohio law. I challenged both the city and Kiwanis to say that the written agreement was drawn up and signed before the project was begun. I got no answer from Kalb.  I visited the then president of the Portsmouth Kiwanis Club. I went with someone who knew Dr. Hamm-LaValley, who assured me the doctor of dentistry was an honorable woman. I was prepared to drop the whole matter if Dr. LaValley had an explanation of why the letter she signed was not dated, but she declined to talk to me. Immediately below also is a previous letter of intent, signed and dated 18 December, 2008, under the official Kiwanis letterhead. Below that is a copy of the undated agreement letter, signed by Dr. LaValley, which I suspect is undated because it was written after, perhaps well after construction of the playground began. That may be why it has a faux letterhead and is not written on either city of Portsmouth or on official Kiwanis stationary:

Dated playground letter of intent with Kiwanis letterhead

Undated Kiwanis letter of agreement with stark letterhead.

Finally, when the playground was dedicated, I wrote an open letter to the children of Portsmouth about the playground, trying to explain the controversy (click here).

Mayor Kalb: Burning the Midnight Oil

Because of the confusion over where the Kiwanis Playground was supposed to be built in Tracy Park, I requested, under Ohio’s Public Records laws, a copy of the agreement between the city and Kiwanis from Mayor Kalb. I made my request on Thursday, September 24, at 3:30 PM, and he replied by email late Saturday night, or rather very early Sunday morning. Always burning the midnight oil, he emailed his response at 1: 47 AM. My email and Kalb’s response follows:


--- On Thu, 9/24/09, rforr1@roadrunner.com wrote:

From: rforr1@roadrunner.com
Subject: Freedom of Information
To: portsmouthmayor@yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, September 24, 2009, 3:30 PM
To: James Kalb, Mayor

Under Ohio's Open Public Records Law, I am requesting a copy of the written agreement between the city and the Portsmouth Kiwanis Club for a playground in Tracy Park. A week ago, on Sept. 18th, 2009, at a public meeting in Tracy Park,in response to a question, Rick Morgan of Kiwanis publicly acknowledged that such a written agreement existed, but neither he nor you have yet made that agreement public. Please notify me by email when I can pick up a copy of that agreement.

Thank you.

Robert Forrey

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: City of Portsmouth
To: rforr1@roadrunner.com
Subject: Re: Freedom of Information
Priority: Normal. Date: Sunday, September 27, 2009 1:47 AM
To: Robert Forrey

Per your public records request;

You are correct in stating that at the meeting in the park the fact was "acknowledged that such a written agreement existed". What I don't understand is why you feel that a confirmation of this fact would necessitate a publication or distribution of the mentioned document.

As you requested, a copy of the document has been prepared for you to pick up at my office. Our regular office hours are from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday through Friday.

If there is anything else that I can do for you, which is required by law, don't hesitate to call my office. If it isn't required by law then don't bother asking, because I think that you're a worthless piece of s**t and I wouldn't p**s on you if you were on fire (my opinion). You're a poor, lonely, jealous, old man with aspirations of being a writer. You write your lies and uneducated opinions on people and issues from behind the safety of your slobber stained keyboard with the hope that somebody will read them that doesn't know you and believe that you're more than the pitiful, broke-down, lizard-looking thing that you are, in my opinion. Get a life old man. On second thought, don't bother..............

I do have a question for you. Do you have family and if so do they even like you?

Looking forward to your next Internet issue of "FORREY'S FOLLIES".....NOOOTTTTTT

With little respect for you,
Mayor James D. Kalb

Now that's freedom of speech at its best, in my opinion.

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In closing, I want to point out that the last sentence above ("Now that's freedom of speech at its best, in my opinion") is by Mayor Kalb, not by me. I have refrained from expressing my opinion in this post because I feel, while he has every right to express his opinions, his reply to my public records request speaks for itself, speaks volumes in fact, about what kind of person we have as mayor. R.F.








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