All Aboard to Go Backwards!

The crooked conductor on the Twentieth Century Ltd. 

All Aboard for those wanting to go backwards! 

Be sure to vote for the tax increase on Tuesday's 

May 5th election so that we can continue

the same corrupt city government that has got us

in the financial mess we're now in 

and the municipal unions, the police and fire

in particular can continue to dictate fiscal policy

for the city which cannot reduce the number

of police and fire employees because they got

the corrupt politicians to add to the city charter

an amendment that prevents the city government 

from reducing their number even though the city

now has less than half the population it once had.

All aboard! All aboard! Vote to provide

the city government with  millions of dollars

more to misspend on projects like Ameresco  

and  to pay inflated prices for worthless buildings 

such as Marting's and New Century Cable

which have sat empty, rotting, for over

a decade while bankrupt failed businessmen

and lawyers get appointed and elected to public office

where they tell the public to vote for tax increases

so that a failed proprietor of an antique store

can get the city government changed to city manager

so that he can be the acting acting mayor

and tell others how to run the city 

when he was a failure as an antiques store

proprietor who wasn't able to provide  

the city with so much as an antique pot to piss in. 

All aboard! All aboard! Get on the express

train backward to hell, the Twentieth Century Limited,

which  makes stops at the Marting's and the New Century buildings

but avoids Grandview Avenue because of the periodic 

flooding that is the result of city mismanagement.

All aboard! All aboard! Those of you making $50,000

a year will only have to pay an additional $250 in taxes

and those of you making a mean family income

of $23,000 will have to pay even less and those 

who are unemployed or homeless won't have to pay nothing.

So get aboard. The train will be backing out of the station

next Tuesday, May 5th, and if you vote for the increase

we will be backing up to the Twentieth Century, 

maybe as far back as the 1950s when Marting's

was doing a bustling business, when we had a city manager,

and when the Counseling Center did not exist 

and was not attracting thousands of prostitutes 

and drug addicts to Portsmouth and Ike was in the White House.

Below is the business, an upscale antique shop,
that our acting acting mayor and his partner
opened in Portsmouth, which was like opening
a tattoo parlor next to a nunnery in Nebraska.
It didn't make much business sense, which may be why
he  campaigned to bring gambling to Portsmouth,
because high rollers might have frequented
an upscale antique shop, whereas the unemployed
and street people are not into upscale antiques.
Like other business failures, the proprietor
went into politics, where he now presumes
to know just how to run the city,
only instead of peddling upscale antiques
and gambling on the future of Portsmouth
he is now advocating increasing taxes
and urging everybody to get on board
because the train on which he is the conductor
will be backing out of the station next Tuesday
and you better be on board if you don't want
to be left behind and miss those $50,000 a year
jobs for which you'll only have to pay $250
a year in taxes. ALL ABOARD! ALL ABOARD!

O, Little Town of Portsmouth

The Marting Building,  alias the Town Center, All Aglow

As hard as it is to believe, the empty, leaky, moldy, politically radioactive 135-year-old Marting building is  yet again being pushed as the home for city offices in spite of voters having turned it down again and again.



How proudly, how reverently
A gift from Marting’s was given,
For Marting’s imparted unto Appalachia
A little touch of heaven—

A cashmere sweater, a prom dress,
A suit, a shirt, a fancy tie-pin—
“One of Ohio’s good stores,”
A place where even a guy would buy in.

But now in the leaking building
Shineth an unearthly light:
The mold of hundred-and-thirty-years
Glows eerily at night.

O, little town of Portsmouth,
How still thy overdosing politicians lie,
Who paid two million for Marting’s
And gave the city a black-eye.

While the rich whites celebrate
Xmas on the Hill above,
Listening to the caroling
To the birth of the God of love,

The fifty-thousand-watt Weasel,
Full of holiday chatter and mirth,
Is canoodling the Skunk and the Fox,
And a Mike of considerable girth.

O, God above,
Listen to us, we pray.
Cast out the lawyers and developers,
The Philistines of today.

Let the archangel Gabriel,
The great glad tidings tell:
The rich white trash of Portsmouth
Are going straight to hell.

                        R. Forrey, 2009

This poem was originally posted on Dec. 11. 2009. For the 2006 Marting Xmas poem, click here. For more on the Marting building, click here.

.

A-Marting We Will Go, Again!

a twinkle in his shifty eyes and a few tricks up his sleeve. . .

A-Marting We Will Go, Again!

Ho! Ho! Ho!  Santa’s eyes are twinkling.

And reindeer bells are tinkling.

It’s that time of year again, the time of mistletoe and holly,

The  time of Marting’s madness and Albrecht’s folly.

   Like others, when I read  in the Portsmouth Daily Times (26 Nov. 2012: click here) that the Building (or Bilking) Committee is recommending tearing down both the Marting building and the former Adelphia building, and replacing them with a new Municipal Building and a new Justice Center, I thought they’ve got to be kidding.  Has the Daily Times become the Daily Show of the print medium? Is Frank Lewis Stephen Colbert, reporting  preposterous stories  with a straight face? How in the world is Portsmouth going to come up with the money? Isn’t this the city that’s under fiscal watch and isn’t it the seat of Scioto County, the first county that the State of Ohio ever put on fiscal watch?

                                                     

   Perhaps fearing  sticker shock, the PDT article apparently didn’t dare print the estimated total cost of the two building projects,  but if you do the math on the basis of the figures provided—$200 a square foot for each of the proposed 75,000 square feet, that comes out to $15 million dollars, but I’ve been told the $200 a foot is not an estimate but a fantasy. The two existing buildings, for those who might not know their sordid histories, were virtually empty worthless properties that were unloaded on the city and its taxpayers with the  connivance of two crooked city officials: Mayor Greg Bauer in the case of the Marting building and appointed First Ward councilman shyster Mike Mearan in the case of the Adelphia building. The city foolishly paid almost $2 million for the Marting building and in the case of the freaking, leaking, black-molded Adelphia building, the city acquired,  or got stuck with, the  property by doing no more than excusing the delinquent  back taxes and allowing the Los Angeles absentee landlord to claim it was a charitable gift to the city, providing  him a  write off on his income taxes.

   I believe that what has long indirectly driven the downtown Marting nuttiness is Jeffrey Albrecht’s determination to get control, directly or indirectly, of the land on which the Municipal Building sits, right across from his new Holiday Inn.  He has doubled down on his original investment mistake, the Ramada Inn, the Queen of the Rust Belt,  and before the Holiday Inn too proves a financial failure,  he is going to do everything he can to convince the naïve and gullible that the Municipal Building has got to come down, no matter what the cost to taxpayers. The Municipal Building is about the same age as the U.S. Post Office, just up the street, and is of the same design and constructed of the same materials, so why is the one supposed to be at death’s door while the other is an architectural treasure of the city? Because corrupt city officials and greedy developers have been trying  for some time to kill the eighty-year-old gal to get the valuable ground on which she rests. That’s why.

   The history of Portsmouth real estate is replete with examples of well-to-do well-connected owners  unloading overvalued but nearly worthless property on the taxpayers. It goes with the territory.  The Bilking  Committee recommends that all unoccupied, unessential property “be sold absolutely at auction.” Absolutely? At auction? Presumably that  means all unused city property deemed unessential will be sold at auction, positively, post-haste, without question. I think this is  the Jeffrey Albrecht provision in the Bilking Committee’s recommendations. In a  recent article in the PDT, he predicted property would soon be bought and sold in downtown Portsmouth (i.e., in the vicinity of the Holiday Inn), and he said he hoped that property owners would not be greedy and ask too much of buyers. He obviously had not only heard but probably had something to do with the  recommendations the Bilking Committee came up with. Buy  cheap and sell dear is the first law of real estate, but Albrecht wants that law suspended, or reversed,  because he or his  accomplices will be the ones doing the buying. As long as something is built on the Municipal Building site that will create more business for the Holiday Inn, he will be for it, no matter what it is or what it will cost taxpayers. And of course, he wants the Municipal Building to be auctioned off. We know how adept he is reputed to be at rigging auctions because the state attorney general came close to taking legal action against him after shenanigans that took place at a controversial auction in Athens.

   Yes, Santa’s got a twinkle in his shifty eyes and a few tricks up his sleeve, for this is the season of Marting’s madness and Albrecht’s folly.

Devil Shredders

Paper Shredders at work at the Marting Building


The Devil Shredders

“The Devil is running Scioto County.” Governor John Kasich

The devil’s not in hell,

 He’s alive and well

And has been for quite a spell

In our drug-ridden county.

Right now we’re dreading

The devil’s been shredding

Not socks, smocks, and bedding

But documents evidentiary.

Free of all impediments,

The devil’s shredding documents

In all the various departments

Of Marting’s, a virtual mortuary.

“Sensitive documents” galore,

They’re stored on every floor

Of the former department store

That stands now in infamy. 

Finally they found a use

For that poor architectural excuse,

For that useless, decrepit moose

That crooks foisted off on the city. 

That’s were they hid the evidence

That belies their claims of innocence

The notorious ladies and gents

Whose only language is perjury:

Bauer, Baughman, Kalb, Malone—

Clay, Neal, Julia, Carol—the sly flyblown

Souls, the devil’s very own—

Birds of a feather in hell’s aviary. 

Beneath the leaking Marting roof,

The devil’s shredding the proof—

The crooked Foundation head, aloof,

The clerk who goofs off at the grocery,

The shyster-meister of  petty crime,

All slithering in political slime

All groveling in the dregs of time,

The devil shredders of immorality.

                   Robert Forrey