Our Jughead Mayor

Mayor Kalb at work at Kroger's

A national debate is raging over whether candidates for the presidency and vice presidency have the experience to qualify them for high office. Being a Harvard Law School graduate and president of the Harvard Law Review and a community organizer and state senator and then Senator from Illinois does not qualify Barack Obama for being president? And being a mayor and then governor of Alaska does not qualify Sarah Palin for being vice president of the United States? Excuse me America, but how would you feel if the only experience the highest executive officer in your municipal corporation, the mayor, was as a failed grocery clerk? How would you feel if your chief executive was a Jughead whose chief concern in life is with what “wheels” he’s driving. If you try to find the mayor in his office some Friday, chances are he’s off on some weekend motorcycle rally. Don’t look for him Thursdays, either, because he hasn’t completely given up his day job as a grocery clerk at Kroger’s, which he drives to on Thursdays in the city car he is so ashamed of.

If you do find Kalb in his office, chances are, when he is not stewing over the inadequacy of the salary he is receiving for being the city’s part-time mayor, he’s stewing over the indignity of having to drive a city automobile that is not commensurate with his importance as the chief executive officer of Portsmouth. On August 29, Frank Lewis reported in the Portsmouth Daily Times that “Some questions in the community have prompted Portsmouth Mayor James Kalb to respond with answers as to why he will be driving a new 2008 model car earmarked for Portsmouth Police Department under the capital improvements budget.” Now that he has, with the help of the City Solicitor, put Captain Queeg in dry dock, Kalb has eliminated his chief rival in the Car Wars that has raged in city government for the last couple of years. Portsmouth city government was not wide enough to accommodate both Mayor Kalb and Police Chief Horner, two men with extremely low ethical and very high vehicular (i.e. testicular) standards.

As reported by Frank Lewis, Horner told Kalb “I know you have put yourself in for a car, but we've got this seized vehicle, this (2005 Chrysler) 300, and if you look at it and you like it, we'll put new wheels on it and everything, and it will still belong to the police department, but you can drive that for the mayor's office.” A seized 2005 Chrysler 300 doesn’t have the cojones of a seized Cadillac Escalade, which was what Horner was driving, but the mayor swallowed his pride and accepted the Chrysler 300 because he “felt it would be a proper car for taking visiting officials around in.” The only standard Kalb has for cars he drives around is whether or not his car is going to impress the visitors he hauls around our run-down drug and prostitute plagued city.

The Shame! The Shame!

Kalb drove the seized Chrysler 300 for a couple of weeks, but then Horner told him that Scioto County Prosecutor Mark Kuhn said it was against the law for the mayor to be driving a seized vehicle. Frank Lewis reported that Kalb got upset. “Here I am without a car,” Kalb complained, sounding like a seven-year-old, “and they're getting all of their cars . . .” Actually, Kalb was not without a car. He had available to him as mayor a 1999 Ford Victoria, but he told Lewis, “It's not a bad car, but it's not something I would want to pick up a ranking official in. It's got holes in the seat, and the carpet is threadbare.” How dare anyone expect the mayor of Portsmouth to drive visitors around in a 1999 “Vic” with holes in the seat and a threadbare carpet! And think of the humiliation when he drives to his second job Thursday mornings at Kroger’s, and those other grocery clerks who have so little respect for him whisper behind his back about the Ford with the threadbare carpets that he has driven to work in. The shame! The shame!

Kalb's Ford Victoria, which he is so ashamed of, parked next to Kroger's on a Thursday Morning

Kalb told the PDT he believes “the mayor of a city should have a car at least as new and that runs as well as other cars being utilized by city employees. Sixty percent of the employees in the city are driving nicer vehicles than the mayor is driving,” Kalb said. “I would think that position (mayor) would require a decent car to drive.” Kalb may not have had a clue that a huge rock was being heisted from the Ohio, but he’s figured out the percentage of people under him who have cars better than his. What formula does he use to come up with that sixty percent? What weight did he assign to the age, the mileage, the condition, and how threadbare the carpet is? Since he spends so little time at his computer, accept to read Moe’s Forum, how did he do all the calculations to figure out who has a better car than him? Is he getting help from the city council math wizard David Malone? Is that who helps him decide how to rank a 1999 Ford Victoria, a seized Cadillac Escalade, and a seized 2005 Chrysler 300?

Kalb got even with Horner. The police department had on order two new cars, a Ford Crown Victoria and a Dodge Charger. As chief executive officer, the mayor has first dibs on any new car, provided it is not a seized vehicle. “Sure,” he told the PDT, “the mayor can take any car in the city and drive it if he wants.” Having already lost face by driving the 1999 Ford Victoria, Kalb wanted no part of the 2008 Ford Victoria. He chose the Dodge Charger.

Former City Building Committee stenographer (and Councilman Mike Mearan’s employee) Heather Hren got very good mileage when she drove a sub-sub-compact Chevy Aveo in transporting illegal drugs from Columbus to Portsmouth, and Mearan, who rented the Aveo for her, should be commended for thinking of fuel efficiency first, as he also does for himself when he scampers around town in his motor scooter. Jughead’s buddy Archie Andrews, growing up in the 1940s, drove a 1916 Model T Ford and was proud of it, but the generation of Potheads who never came of age in the 1960s got their priorities all mixed up and think the car, or the cycle, makes the man.

Kalb acts as if he is doing this for us, the citizens of Portsmouth. It is our dignity that he is protecting by driving around in the newest, biggest, snazziest car in the city fleet. You see, we are supposed to be thankful he doesn’t have to feel ashamed to be driving ranking visitors around Portsmouth in a car that is in the lowest fortieth percentile.

I recently received an email from somebody who claimed, “I was a classmate of Mayor Kalb in high school and when I found out recently he was the mayor of Portsmouth I could not stop laughing. This guy was an irrelevant goof, a petty criminal.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the emailer’s memory, but others in Portsmouth have told me the same thing. I am embarrassed, as a citizen of Portsmouth, not that Kalb had to drive ranking visitors around in a 1999 Ford Victoria, but that ranking visitors had to drive around with him, because Kalb probably graduated not in the fortieth but the fifth percentile of his class. I would guess ninety-five percent of his classmate had a better academic record than him. If Kalb got what he deserved, and what he’s worth, he would be driving Archie Andrew’s jalopy, with Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, not some ranking visitors, along for the joyride.

Nuts Over Blogs

In the last couple of years, as I see it, Portsmouth’s Police Chief Charles Horner has been acting as squirrelly as Captain Queeg, who was a character in the 1954 Oscar-showered movie The Caine Mutiny. Queeg, played brilliantly by Humphrey Bogart, was captain of the Navy destroyer U.S.S. Caine, who became obsessed with the strawberries that he was convinced were being pilfered by somebody on the ship. Never mind that a war was going on, Queeg wanted to find out who had been taking more than their share of strawberries from the ship’s stores. He became obsessed with strawberries the way Horner is with local websites. Horner long ago surrendered in the war on drugs, because he had bigger fish to fry – barely literate bloggers, some of whom were also geriatric domestic terrorists.

Queeg called a meeting of his officers at 1 AM to get to the bottom of the missing strawberries. In an equally bizarre incident, early on Wednesday, May 4th, 2008, at the corner of Market and 4^th Streets, Horner gathered a crack team consisting of himself, a half dozen police officers, the Chief of the Portsmouth Fire Department, someone from the Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco Agency, and two drug sniffing dogs. Horner had assembled this pit crew in an attempt to bust Portsmouth businessman Lee Scott who, among other exasperating things, had been criticizing Horner for years on “Moe’s Forum,” a popular chatroom on a local website.

Internal Investigation

According to an internal investigation report issued by two retired law enforcement officials, after assembling his crack team on Market Street, “Chief Horner then ordered investigators to maintain a log of all individuals who were at the scene of the Scott vehicle search. In particular, Chief Horner wanted the names and actions of those allegedly associated with local websites and The Shawnee Sentinel.” A resident of 4^th Street, I was one of those across the street, and since I am associated with a local website, and have posted about a half dozen blogs on Horner, I was presumably one of those Horner ordered his officers to keep a log on, whatever that means. Is a log anything like a blog? But the only action I was taking that afternoon was trying to snap a photo of Horner, but he was camera shy and kept hiding behind one of the police vehicles. Claudette Ferguson told me she had been trying to get Horner’s picture for some time, but he wouldn’t show himself. He was acting very peculiar, like Captain Queeg.

Market St., May 14, 2008: Horner's Final Botched Drug Bust

Horner had complained a few years earlier that websites were “crucifying” his family. What he was apparently referring to was Doug Deepe-John Welton’s report in The Sentinel that Horner’s son had been arrested for dealing drugs, and that a judge had later ordered all information related to the young Horner’s case expunged from court records. The Portsmouth Daily Times, typically, had not reported on Horner’s drug arrest, certainly not on the front page, which that newspaper reserves for important news, like the mayor’s daughter rescuing a duck from a drain, Portsmouth being mentioned in a nationally syndicated cartoon, and councilman Malone announcing a campaign to clean up Portsmouth’s streets, not of drug dealers and prostitutes but of litter. Hold the presses!

Horner had lost the war on drugs, and is it any wonder when his own son was on the other side? Because local websites focused on drug dealers and prostitutes and the chief’s failure to reduce their numbers, Horner became obsessed with those websites, including not just the pioneering Sentinel but the invaluable websites of Councilman Bob Mollette and his wife Teresa. It was obvious Horner was tracking the Mollettes’ websites compulsively, but he was also monitoring “Moe’s Forum,” and there were rumors he adopted a pseudonym and participated anonymously in the threads on that chatroom. I doubt that, but a lot of things I once couldn’t believe about Portsmouth,and America, have turned out to be true. When upholders of family values like Senator Craig turns up with his pants down in an airport bathroom, who is to say who you might be exchanging words with in a chatroom?

Car Wars

Being police chief in Portsmouth is a highly stressful occupation. Working for a mayor who learned nothing in trade school except how to be a tool can be a demoralizing experience. Competing with a failed grocery clerk for who has the most impressive eight-cylinder gas hog would take a psychological toll on anyone but especially on someone who has as much pride and as little common sense as Horner. How long could anyone drive a hand-me-down Cadillac Escalade from a busted drug dealer who did not graduate from high school and not suffer a severe loss of self-esteem? The rumor that there is a struggle currently going on between Mayor Kalb and the police department over who is going to get the new red Dodge Charger is the kind of turf war that has given Horner the equivalent of mental turf toe. If the whole city suffers a loss of prestige when Mayor Kalb has to drive an unsexy white city sedan to work each Thursday morning at Kroger’s, where he still works part time, how much more humiliating is it for Portsmouth when its well-spoken chief of police, not half as dumb as the mayor, has to drive a pre-owned Escalade?

It is clearer now, in retrospect, that for the sake of his mental health, Horner should have ignored local websites. Instead he provided them with lots of publicity and gained them readers they would not otherwise have had. I have no idea how many of the 127,000 hits River Vices has had can be attributed to Horner. But I do know that addiction to the internet has become a serious problem in America, not just for teenagers but for compulsive shoppers, out-of-pocket-money gamblers, Solitaire addicts, and compulsive-obsessive law enforcement officials. Horner may suffer from IAD, (Internet Addiction Disorder) and his lawyer may already be laying the groundwork for his client to retire with a mental disability. The unspecified medical condition Horner has cited as his reason for not previously talking to the internal investigators may escalate by August 27, the date at which Horner is supposed to answer questions in the mayor’s office. If Horner does retire non compos mentis, it will be a red badge, or perhaps I should say, red Dodge of courage. Like Captain Queeg cracking under wartime pressure and wandering in strawberry fields forever, Horner may be about to become a disabled veteran of the war against bloggers. That he may be guilty of obstruction of justice, insubordination, intimidation, and lying, as the internal report suggests, does not come as a surprise to this blogger. Victims of IAD cannot help themselves. The internal report points out that Horner drove one of his officers to a nervous breakdown. No one in city government has as much drive as Horner, but since he doesn’t have a brake, he’s a menace. According to the internal report, Horner “caused the officer significant mental anguish which resulted in that officer being hospitalized for anxiety-related issues.” Because of those blasted blogs, Horner may be headed for the same hospital, and other city officials may follow, because Horner is not the only one in city government who is nuts over blogs.

24/7 Blogger Surveillance Room

Marting Scam: Stage Two

The by now notorious Marting building

On August 11, 2008, the corrupt Portsmouth City Council put the finishing touches on stage two of the plan to defraud the citizens by passing an ordinance that proposes to spend untold millions of dollars to renovate the 125-year-old empty Marting Department Store. The first stage of the City Council’s and then Mayor Bauer’s plan ended in failure when the Mollettes hired Attorney D. Joe Griffith and challenged the legality of the sale of the Marting Building to the city, and Judge Marshall ruled that sale invalid. Our current out-to-lunch mayor, Jim Kalb, and Councilman Marty Mohr turned right around and sold out the citizens by making another deal with the Marting Foundation in which the city once more took the worthless building off the hands of the Foundation and absolved them of any culpability for operating illegally in the original sale. The city further agreed to onerous conditions that had to be met before the city would get back any part of the $2,000,000 that the Foundation had taken out of the pockets of the taxpayers. The city recommitted itself to spending millions of dollars to turn the Marting Building into city offices.

Mearan and the Black Mold

The voters showed their disapproval of the plan to use the Marting Building for city offices by an almost three to one margin in the May 2006 election. That did not stop the City Council and Mayor Kalb from promptly proceeding with stage two of their plan. To facilitate stage two, a Portsmouth lawyer who in my opinion is a shyster, Mike Mearan, was appointed to the city council and then appointed to chair the City Building Committee, whose mission was to recommend what the courts and the voters had already rejected: turning the Marting Building into city offices. But Mearan’s coming on board had a big price tag for Portsmouth taxpayers, because he had a client, Dr. Singer, of Los Angeles, who owned a another piece of worthless property in downtown, the so-called Adelphia building, blighted with black mold, which he wanted to unload on the city. So instead of recommending one building for city offices, the City Building Committee, under Mearan’s chairmanship, recommended two buildings, making the project about as twice as costly as it had been the first time around.

The city proceeded illegally in the second stage as it had in the first. Mearan had an obvious conflict of interest in being a member of the City Building Committee, and his chairing of that committee made his conflict of interest blatant. Just as the meetings between the Marting Foundation and city officials had been a violation of Ohio’s Sunshine laws, Mearan’s voting on questions related to possible sites for city offices was a violation of provisions of the Portsmouth City Charter and of sections of the Ohio Revised Code regarding conflicts of interest. I have requested copies of minutes of City Building Committee meetings from the city clerk, the mayor and Mearan, but no minutes have been produced, apparently because they were not kept in the first place. The failure to keep minutes of Building Committee meetings was another apparent violation of state law that had occurred in stage two.

Adelphia Building: This Property is Condemned

Stage two of the Marting scam is even more illegal than the first, and more costly because of the addition of the Adelphia property (shown here) and putting the issue on the ballot next November does not change that fact. The voters have already rejected the Marting Building by a nearly 3 to1 margin. Who needs to render a judgment now are not the voters, who have already spoken, but the courts, as Judge Marshall did on stage one. It is the courts, now, who must make our ethically challenged city officials understand that just as a historic old rock cannot be stolen from Kentucky, old leaking moldy buildings cannot be unloaded on the taxpayers of Portsmouth.

Loan Shark?

John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark

The recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic by the International Criminal Tribunal for crimes against humanity and the indictment of Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska for receiving an unreported $250,000 gift from an oil company suggests the machinery of justice is at work at the international and national level. But the mistreatment of the 70-year-old Karol Craft and her son in the county, state, and municipal courts raises the suspicion that in Ohio it is the Halls of Injustice, not the Halls of Justice, that sometimes prevail.

According to Mrs. Craft, the injustice for her started in the halls of the Scioto County Courthouse, on the third floor, on Feb. 9, 2006. Mrs. Craft’s son was facing jail for nonpayment of child support. Under those high-pressure circumstances, Timothy Lyons' attorney Michael Mearan brokered a “disastrous” deal by which Mearan’s former business associate, Joe Lester, loaned Mrs. Craft and her son $3,000 at $1,000 interest so her son could pay his back child support. The loan was to be paid back in six months. Mrs. Craft’s home, which was valued at $57,500 by the County Auditor, was put up as collateral. When Mrs. Craft could not pay Lester’s loan, she lost her house to Lester’s assignee. (In addition to the $4,000 Mrs. Craft and her son owed Lester for the loan, Mearan added an additional $1,700 to the their indebtedness, for a total of $5,700, making it even harder for them to repay Lester’s loan.

The hastily written handwritten document Mearan drew up listed $3,000 on one line for Lester and on the next line an additional $1000 for him, presumably as interest.

$1,000 is 33% of $3,000, but since the O.R.C. stipulates that interest is calculated per annum, the interest on Lester’s loan was actually 66%. As a reader of RiverVices who works in the banking industry pointed out in an email he sent to me at rivervices@gmail.com, the Ohio Revised Code limits the percentage of interest that can be charged on a loan. Ohio Revised Code 2905.21-H defines criminal usury as “illegally charging, taking, or receiving any money or other property as interest or an extension of credit at a rate exceeding twenty-five per annum or the equivalent rate for a longer or shorter period . . .” (At the time Lester made the loan, the legal limit was 21% interest.) The website Usurylaw.com claims that if a personal loan agreement above the O.R.C. interest limit “is brought before a court in that state, the agreement will be declared illegal. The net effect of such a judicial declaration is that the loan agreement will be voided. Once voided by the court, it no longer is enforceable. In other words, the borrower will no longer be obliged to make payments pursuant to the loan agreement. The borrower is off the proverbial hook.” If this statement is correct, the whole long process by which Mrs. Craft lost her home was illegal from the start. The question of whether Mrs. Craft and her son subsequently signed a deed transferring their property to Joe Lester or his assignee would be moot.

If Mrs. Craft could take Mearan and Lester to court, as Karadzic and Senator Stevens are being taken to court, she might presumably find a measure of justice. But lawyers cost money, a lot more than she gets from Social Security each month. After talking with a minister, she came up with the idea of appealing to the public by placing collection jars in stores and businesses, but the sheriff’s office told her raising money that way was panhandling, which is against the law.

Mrs. Craft holding collection jar

Against the law! If only she can raise the money to hire an attorney to take her case, perhaps she can get the courts to enforce the law against criminal usury. There is a more familiar name for criminal usury: it is called loan sharking. Whether Mrs. Craft was a victim of criminal usury, or loan sharking, is something that could, that should, be settled in court.

Dirty Deeds?

Original scribbled "contract." 

The story of the dirty deeds begins, in my opinion, in 1952 when the parents of Karol Craft bought a parcel of land at what later became 1555 Dogwood Ridge Rd., in Wheelersburg. The property was located next to the Sacred Mission Church. Karol Craft’s father, a carpenter, built a home on the property, with the assistance of his wife, who was handy with tools. In the decades that followed, according to Karol Craft, the Sacred Mission Church showed an interest in acquiring her land.

As long as she was not in financial difficulties, Mrs. Craft was not interested in selling any part of her property. But on one occasion, when she needed money to help pay taxes, she sold part of her land, in the rear, to the Sacred Mission Church. But she rejected subsequent offers from the church because she thought the church wanted too much land for too little money. But a serious financial crisis occurred in 2006. Mrs. Craft’s son Timothy Lyons had fallen way behind in support payments for his two teen-aged children. Facing possible jail time, he appeared in court, along with his mother, on Feb. 9, 2006. As a result of her son’s appearance in court on that date, Mrs. Craft would lose her home. She lost it, she and her son claim, through trickery and deceit on the part of Mike Mearan. Mrs. Craft and her son do admit to signing, in the court hallway, the hastily drawn up hand-written "contract" on Feb. 9, 2006, which is shown above. But they deny vehemently signing any"deed" that day.

The "contract" was not enough, apparently, to transfer the title from Mrs. Craft to Joe Lester or his assignee. Mearan needed to get Mrs. Craft and her son to sign a deed, which he had apparently failed to do on Feb. 9. But Mrs. Craft and her son refused to sign anything after that date. They concluded they had been hornswoggled and stampeded in the court hallway on February 9, being pressured by Mearan, to take one example, to accept a $3,000 six-month loan from Joe Lester for which they had to pay $1,000 or 33% interest. Because he could not get Mrs. Craft to sign on the dotted line, Mearan or someone else resorted to forging their signatures on the deed to make the transfer appear legal, or so Mrs. Craft and her son now believe. In a letter to the Disciplinary Counsel, Timothy Lyons wrote, "On the 22nd of December, 2006, [Michael Mearan] did wrongfully file with the Scioto County Recorder a forged deed that conveyed our home to Attorney Michael Mearan’s assistant, Terri Chandler. Neither I nor my mother signed this deed.” Lyons offered no proof of forgery, other than his and his mother’s certainty that they had not signed a deed transferring ownership of their property to Mearan’s assistant on February 9, 2006. The Counsel of the Disciplinary Committee of the Ohio Supreme Court was requested by Timothy Lyons to investigate. The counsel did an investigation, though how thoroughly he did it remains an open question. Mrs. Craft claims the counsel never spoke to her or her son. As far as I know, no analysis of the signatures of Mrs. Craft and her son on the original deed was ever done.

That Mearan served as one of the two witnesses on this deed seems poor judgment on his part. If Terri Chandler was holding the property in her name for Mearan or for Mearan's former "business associate" Joe Lester, Mearan's serving as one of the two witnesses of the signing of the property over to her by Mrs. Craft and her son seems questionable. The other witness, whose name is hard to decipher, is yet to be confirmed.

The original copy of this deed is not at the office of the Scioto County Recorder. A clerk there told me earlier this week that, at Mearan’s request, the original had been sent to him. Any determination of forgery would presumably require an examination of that original copy, as it would also require the testimony of the second witness, who claimed to have seen Mrs. Craft and her son sign over their property to Terri Chandler. The Disciplinary Committee Counsel concluded Mearan had not violated a disciplinary rule but that “it was a disastrous decision for Attorney Mearan to encourage Mr. Lester to contract with you,” that is with Timothy and his mother (emphasis added). Mrs. Craft agrees that Mearan's decision was disastrous.

Like her parents, Mrs. Craft worked hard her whole life, including at Williams Manufacturing, while living in the family home in Wheelersburg. But today she does not have a home or bed to call her own. Occasionally, she has had to sleep in her 1990 Chevy pick-up. She told me she had applied to the Portsmouth Municipal Housing Authority, where Mearan is one of the directors, but she was told the PMHA has a long waiting list. The suffering Karol Craft is experiencing is evident in a photo (shown below ) that I took of her recently in Tracy Park. She appears to be still in a state of shock and disbelief. As she approaches her 70^th birthday, she tries to bear up and find some solace in her religious faith. She has not returned to the site of her former home on Dogwood Ridge Rd. since she was forced out of it. If she did go back, she would find the house her parents had built with their own hands about fifty years ago is no longer there. The Sacred Mission Church eventually acquired the property and bulldozed the house.

Mrs. Karol Craft at Tracy Park, trying to make sense of it all.

American Dreams, American Nightmares

I began to hear early on that I was risking my life by criticizing the over-privileged who control Portsmouth. I heard more than once, usually jokingly, but sometimes seriously, “They’re going to take a contract out on you.” Contract? Portsmouth is not a town where people take risks, especially not in business. Just look at the contracts a local developer has with Shawnee State University for student housing. For the over-privileged few, almost all the risk has been wrung out of doing business in Portsmouth. They are born with abatements in their mouths. I doubt anyone would take a contract out on me or others unless they got some kind of government assistance. Unless Rob Portman finds some more pork in the budget of the Dept. of Agriculture, it ain’t going to happen. I don’t think they’re going to risk their own money to get rid of anybody. I don’t think our local wannabees are going to engage in such high risk business as knocking people off. However, I would be very worried about being murdered if I were a drug-addicted pregnant prostitute in Portsmouth.

I grew up in a Boston suburb that was known as the Crime Capital of New England, where gangsters occasionally rubbed each other out to gain a competitive advantage. After getting to know more about the low lifes of Portsmouth, I have gained some respect for the hoodlums of my boyhood. They were professionals, not amateurs. They were entrepreneurs, not sponges. They didn’t pose as philanthropists while picking the pockets of the people. They weren’t hypocrites who fed on government pork while spouting the myth of free enterprise. They didn’t have a city building committee that conspired to unload worthless buildings on the public. They didn’t have a city building committee with a drug-addicted employee of Mike Mearan as stenographer, a twenty-four-year-old woman who subsequently got arrested for transporting drugs from Columbus to Portsmouth. Not long after that, she was arrested for purse snatching in the parking lot of the local supermarket, and as a result ended up in the Franklin County jail. The gangsters in my hometown didn’t control the local newspaper and get a veteran reporter fired for daring to report that an arrested drug dealer happened to be employed by the largest car dealer in the city. They didn’t keep the news of a robbery at knife point at a local supermarket out of the local newspaper because the newspaper depended for its survival on the advertising revenue from the supermarket, which probably didn’t want customers to get the idea shopping there could be dangerous. I have been told that when the Daily Times reported on Heather Hren’s purse snatching it was not specified that the parking lot where it had occurred was Kroger’s.

Shyster

As my readers in Portsmouth might know, because the Portsmouth Daily Times reported it on the front page, local lawyer and First Ward councilman Michael Hugh Mearan is suing me for $125,000 for libel for expressing my opinion that he is a “shyster.” Merriam-Wesbster defines a “shyster” as “a person who is professionally unscrupulous especially in the practice of law or politics.” Since Mearan is both a lawyer and a politician, I can’t think of a better word for him. In my opinion, Mearan is a shyster. My previous posting, “Mearan’s Conflict of Interest,” gives a detailed account of why I believe he is a shyster.

Shyster is derived from the German word scheisser, which means defecator or shitter. Shyster may sound like a Yiddish word, but it isn’t. I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, where I learned The Joys of Yiddish. Growing up, I sometimes heard kucker, which is the Yiddish word for shit head, but it is not my opinion that Mearan is a kucker. It is my opinion he’s a shyster. I have a constitutional right to express my opinion of people in public life. I live in the First Ward, making Mearan my councilman, and I think I have a right to express my opinion of him.

Disastrous Decision

I believe Mearan’s suit against me is the first step in his attempt to silence his critics in the blogosphere. I am not the only blogger criticizing Mearan. Portsmouth’s dean of the blogosphere is Austin Leedom, a 75-year-old veteran of the Korean War and a former deputy sheriff. Mearan recently sent Leedom a certified letter, of the kind he previously had sent me, warning he will take legal action against Leedom unless he publicly retracts criticism of Mearan’s mishandling of the legal problems of Mrs. Karol Craft a 69-year-old widow who had the misfortune to find herself being represented by Mearan. The Disciplinary Counsel of the Ohio Supreme Court determined that Mearan had not broken the law in representing Mrs. Craft, but the counsel informed Mrs. Craft’s son that it was (emphasis added) “a disastrous decision for Attorney Mearan to encourage Mr. [Joe] Lester to contract with you . . .” Tell me, what recourse does a client have when her lawyer gives her “disastrous” advice that results in the loss of her home? For many Americans, owning a home is the fulfillment of the American Dream and losing that home is often a nightmare. We have to go back to the novels of Horatio Alger, the creator of the rags-to-riches version of the American Dream, who was born in my hometown, in 1832, to find a more blatant example of a poor old widow living the nightmare of being bamboozled out of the family homestead. As a result of that “contract” with Lester, Mrs. Craft lost the house when she couldn’t repay the loan and the 33% interest she was being charged. “When the young man [Craft’s son] and his mother couldn’t come up with the money [to repay the loan],” John Welton wrote in the Sentinel, “attorney Mearan moved in for the kill and took over the house.” (Do a Google search using the names “Mearan Welton” and you will see what John Welton, aka as Doug Deepe, has written about Mearan.) The value placed on Mrs. Craft’s house in her dealings with Mearan was $5,700. Joe Lester claimed he made the loan to Mrs. Craft only under persistent pressure from Mearan, his former business partner. Mrs. Craft’s property was reportedly worth around $50,000 at the time. Currently owned by the church next door, the property is valued on the county auditor’s website at $60,550. But when I recently drove out to Wheelersburg, to 1555 Dogwood Ridge Rd., I discovered that the house has been bulldozed and there is nothing but an empty lot. Development is taking place in the area, so the true value of the land is possibly considerably more. Maybe it could even be described as “prime real estate,” which is what our doofus Mayor has called the site of the present Municipal Building.

Meshuge

I confess to being mystified at why Mearan would decide to take anyone to court on the issue of his reputation. It strikes me as a disastrously unwise decision. To hold all the people who could testify to Mearan’s reputation, the court would have to convene in Spartan Stadium. In my opinion, the only word that does justice to this situation, in which American dreams have turned into American nightmares, is meshuge.

* * *

For background on Mearan's "disastrous" treatment of his client Karol Craft, go to Teresa Mollette's informative website:

http://portsmouthcitizens.info/blog/?page_id=128

I have created an email account for those who might want to contact me about this case.

rivervices@gmail.com

Mearan's Conflict of Interest

Robert Forrey addressing City Council

In his actions as a member of the Portsmouth City Council and as chairman of the City Building Committee (CBC), City Councilman Michael Mearan appears to have violated Sect. 160 of the Portsmouth City Charter, “Oath of Office,” and Section 161 of the Charter, “Financial Interests in Contracts, etc.,” which states, “No officer or employee of the City shall have a financial interest, direct or indirect, in any contract with the City or be financially interested, directly or indirectly in the sale to the City of any land, materials, supplies, or services except on behalf of the City as an officer or employee [emphasis added].” In addition to violating Sect. 161 of the City Charter regarding conflict of interest, Mearan also appears to have violated Sect. 102.03 (A) (1) of Ohio’s Ethics Law, which states, “No present or former public official or employee shall, during public employment or service or for twelve months thereafter, represent a client or act in a representative capacity for any person on any matter in which the public official or employee personally participated as a public official or employee through decision, approval disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or other substantial exercise of administrative discretion.”

The “Donation”

On the agenda of the March 14, 2005, meeting of the Portsmouth City Council was the following item: “Ord. authorizing the Mayor of the City of Portsmouth, Ohio to accept a deed to the real estate generally known as 807 Washington Street, Portsmouth, Ohio.” At the same meeting, according to City Council minutes: “Mike Mearan – 812-6th Street, an attorney representing Herbert Singer who is offering the former Adelphia building to the City. Mr. Mearan said . . . that the intent of Dr. Singer is to give this property to the City for the City to use. He supported the idea of using the building for a Police Department but acknowledged that would be a decision for Council. Mr. Mearan said that in order for Dr. Singer to take advantage of certain IRS regulations the City could not sell or lease the building because that would set a value on the property and would restrict the amount Mr. Singer can claim as a donation to the City. Mr. Mearan stated that with the understanding that the City would accept the property and use it for City purposes, with a restriction of ten years after which if the City wants to get rid of the building or do whatever they want with the building they could do so.” In a letter to Mayor Kalb, the same day, March 14, Mr. Mearan wrote. “I am hopeful that Council will approve the ordinance to accept the deed to the Adelphia building. As we have previously stated, for Dr. Singer to receive a favorable tax ruling the property must [underlining in original] be used by the City for city related purposes. This restriction would be applicable for a period of no less than ten (10) years.”

807 Washington St., aka "Adelphia building"

At that same March 14, 2005, meeting, the city accepted Dr. Singer’s offer and formalized the transfer of the property to the city in ordinance Number 20-2005. That ordinance contains the provision that “said property to be used for city-related purposes for a minimum period of 10 years.” (A copy of the ordinance is in the City Building Committee’s “Final Report,” which can be found on Councilman Mollette’s website http://mollette.info/ under “CBC-Marting.”) In addition to the tax advantages he would derive if the city used the property for city purposes for a period of ten years, Dr. Singer derived another financial gain from the transfer of the property to the city. Dr. Singer had been delinquent in paying his city property taxes, which amounted to almost $18,000. (See Ord. 11-2006.) In the arrangement that Mr. Mearan worked out with the city, Dr. Singer did not have to pay the city the nearly $18,000 he owed in back taxes. The city signed a Warranty Deed to the property dated Aug 23, 2005. (“Final Report.”) It should be emphasized that Dr. Singer’s “donation” of the 807 Washington St. property had financial strings attached, strings that would enable Dr. Singer, in Mr. Mearan’s words, “to take advantage of certain IRS regulations,” regulations that would qualify Dr. Singer for a tax break of an unspecified amount.

Mearan Appointed to Council

At the June 12, 2006, Council meeting, to fill a vacancy, Mearan was appointed to City Council and took the oath of office: “I solemnly swear that I will obey the Constitution and laws of the United States and of the State of Ohio, that I will in all respects observe the provisions of the Charter and ordinances of the City of Portsmouth and faithfully discharge the duties of the office of [City Council].” In his maiden speech as councilman at that June 12, 2006, meeting, according to council minutes, “He [Mearan] stated one of his goals to be trying to determine what is best with regard to relocating the municipal building in a way that won’t cost the citizens any money.” In view of the contingent and provisional nature of the agreement between Dr. Singer and the city of Portsmouth regarding the 807 Washington St. property, and given. Mearan’s role as Dr. Singer’s attorney in creating that agreement, Mearan, as a member of city council, should have recused himself from any discussion or vote related to the relocation of the Municipal Building. He should have done so to avoid a conflict of interest. The “public purposes” condition of Dr. Singer’s “donation” had still not been met by the city when Mearan was appointed to City Council, so he appears to have been in violation of Section 102.03 (A) (1) of Ohio’s Ethics Law, which prohibits a public official from representing a client while rendering decisions, giving approval or disapproval, making recommendations, rendering advice, or exercising “other substantial exercise of administrative discretion.”

City Building Committee

Left to right: Mearan (Chair), Robinson, Johnson, Kalb, Ockerman

At the July 10, 2006, City Council meeting, according to Council minutes, City Council President Howard Baughman told Council that “he has been talking with Mr. Mearan and has made the decision to appoint a committee to study the City’s assets for a building, study the information that has already been acquired, talk to new people with new ideas and to make a few decisions and proposals to Council. He expressed his hope that this be done in a timely manner.” What the minutes of the meeting do not show, but what a tape of the meeting on Portsmouthcitizens.info reveals, is that Mr. Baughman said, “Mr. Mearan has come up with some new ideas and is very excited about it.” Mearan was apparently eager to serve on the City Building Committee. In any case, Baughman not only appointed Mearan to what became known as the City Building Committee, he appointed Mearan as chair of that committee. By accepting an appointment to chair the City Building Committee, Mearan compounded his conflict of interest regarding Dr. Singer and the 807 Washington St. property. Mearan’s presence on the City Council and especially his chairmanship of the City Building Committee put him in a position to help Dr. Singer get his tax break.

“Abstaining” on the “Donation”

At the August 14, 2006 meeting of the City Building Committee, Mearan said, “I personally have no interest whatsoever in the Adelphia building. I have no client that has any interest. I represented Dr. Singer, who owned the building, and donated it to the city and I would even abstain from voting so there would be no appearance of impropriety.” But on Dec. 11, 2006, the City Building Committee issued its “Final Report,” which recommended the city use 807 Washington St. for a "City Hall complex," incuding a new police station. The vote to send the recommendations on to City Council was 4 in the affirmative (Mearan, Johnson, Ockerman and Robinson) and 1 (Kalb) in the negative. So Mearan did not abstain on this important vote. At this same August 14 meeting, incidentally, Mayor Kalb said, “There is this question of whether the city does own the Adelphia building. The city does own the Adelphia building. There is no stipulation that we have to be in it for ten years.” But five months earlier, as I have pointed out, on March 14, 2005, the City Council had passed Ordinance 2005-20, which stipulated “the Mayor of the City of Portsmouth, Ohio to accept a deed to the real estate generally known as 807 Washington Street, Portsmouth, Ohio, said property to be used for city-related purposes for a minimum period of 10 years” (emphasis added). And on Dec. 11, 2006, when the City Building Committee submitted its “Final Report,” Ordinance 2005-20 was included, with the provision that “said property to be used for city-related purposes for a minimum of 10 years.”

That March 14, 2005, vote was not the only important one in which Mearan did not abstain from voting on matters related to Dr. Singer’s “donation.” According to official minutes, on June 9, 2008, the City Council gave a first reading to “An ordinance to submit to the electors of the City of Portsmouth, Ohio at the next General Election to be held the 4^th day of November 2008, the question of whether to construct a new facility to be known as the Justice Center at the Washington Street Site (former Adelphia Building) to house the Police Department, Municipal Courts, Clerk of Courts, Probation Department and Solicitor’s Office . . .” The vote of the Council on the ordinance (which also included the Marting building) was 4 in the affirmative and 2 in the negative, with Mr. Mearan voting in the affirmative. In spite of the documented provisional quid pro quo nature of the property transfer from Dr. Singer to the city, Mr. Mearan served on the City Building Committee where he could help Dr. Singer receive his tax break.

Toxic Black Mold

The property Mr. Singer “donated” to the city was reportedly infected with toxic black mold (S. chartarum), which rendered the building less than worthless, as Mearan should have known. “Depending on the length of exposure and volume of spores inhaled or ingested,” an entry in Wikipedia states, “symptoms [of toxic black mold] can manifest as chronic fatigue or headaches, fever, irritation to the eyes, mucous membranes of the mouth, nose and throat, sneezing, rashes, and chronic coughing. In severe cases of exposure or cases exacerbated by allergic reaction, symptoms can be extreme including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding in the lungs, and nose.” Dr. Singer’s building had toxic black mold when the city took title from him, as Portsmouth Police Chief Charles Horner told Mearan at a City Building Committee on Nov. 20, 2006. So Dr. Singer did not so much donate as he foisted the building off on the city, with Mr. Mearan’s assistance. As a member of the City Building Committee had said at its Nov. 20, 2006, meeting, if the Washington St. building has black mold, “that building’s no good anymore” and “has to go.”

The rent Adelphia Cable and its predecessors paid to Dr. Singer over the period of the 20-year lease (which lasted only 19) amounted to just under $1,400,000. I have been told by people who worked in the old Adelphia building that it had deteriorated during the period of the lease, and while Adelphia would have liked to remain at 807 Washington St., paying high rent on a deteriorating building under a new lease made no business sense. Singer had wrung what profit he could from Adelphia Cable, and when no one else showed any interest in buying the property, (and what businessman in his right mind would?) he unloaded it on the taxpayers of Portsmouth in the deal Mearan helped negotiate, or perpetrate. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” does not apply to Dr. Singer’s gift, because the horse he offered the city was dead and infected with black mold and never should have been accepted. Mearan had the chutzpah to publicly suggest that a plaque or something be put on the new Justice Center at the Washington St. property to commemorate D. Singer's philanthropy. Dr. Singer's philanthropy is of the kind shown by the Marting Foundation, the kind that the poor people of Portsmouth can not afford any more of.

The so-called Adelphia building was an environmental and financial liability that its deadbeat absentee landlord foisted off on the city with the assistance of his attorney Michael Mearan. In the nineteen-years Adelphia Cable and it predecessors occupied Dr. Singer’s building, he reportedly never once was in Portsmouth. He came only afterwards. Who was representing Dr. Singer’s interests in Portsmouth all that time? Mearan needs to document when he began serving as Singer’s attorney in Portsmouth and when he stopped serving in that capacity. But exactly when Mearan formally stopped being Dr. Singer’s attorney is not the crucial point. The crucial point, from the viewpoint of the law, is that Mearan as councilman and as chairman of the City Building Committee put himself in a position to continue to represent Singer’s interests and push for using the 807 Washington St. property for public purposes so that Dr. Singer could get his tax break. Acting in “a representative capacity,” Mearan was guilty of a conflict of interest that calls into question the legality of the whole “Adelphia” deal and the ordinance that the city is trying to put on next November’s ballot. The Marting scam was declared null and void and so should the whole “Adelphia” scam. Following up on the City Building Committee member who said the black mold-infested “Adelphia” building “has to go,” I would add, “so does Mearan.”

Today it was reported in the New York Times that Steve Shaffer has been indicted by a Kentucky grand jury for his role in stealing Indian Head Rock. “These individuals have been playing fast and loose with the law, and it’s caught up with them finally,” Reginald Meeks, a Kentucky legislator, told the Times. “Clearly, there’s a different set of values in Kentucky than apparently exist in Portsmouth, Ohio,” he said. Mr. Meeks, you don’t know the half of it. Mr. Meeks, meet Mr. Mearan.

This is Portsmouth

This is the Municipal Building that houses the Portsmouth city government. It was erected in 1934, which makes it about 75 years old.

This is the Ramada Inn, "Queen of the Rust Belt," owned by the furtive land developer Jeffrey Albrecht who is now being investigated by the Attorney General’s office for bid rigging in an Athens land deal. Albrecht is said to be the developer behind the hotel/convention center that will be located on the land under the Municipal Building.

This is the lapdog mayor of Portsmouth who has said the Municipal Building is irreparable and should be torn down.

This is the U.S. Post Office, on Gay St., which was erected in 1935, and is about 74 years old. The Post Office is the architectural twin of the Municipal Building. It has been maintained over the years by the federal government and no one has ever suggested it be torn down.

This is the Marting building, which was erected in 1883, making it about 125 years old. An otherwise worthless and unmarketable building, the Marting Foundation foisted it off on the city for $2,000,000 for use as a replacement for the 75 year-old Municipal Building.

This is the Portsmouth City Council, which enabled the Marting Foundation to pull off its $2,000,000 fleecing of the taxpayers. Mayor Bauer, Ann Sydnor, and Carol Caudill were recalled from office for their part in the Marting Scam.

This is Bob and Teresa Mollette, the crusading couple who successfully challenged the legality of the sale of the Marting building to the city.

This is the former city councilman Marty Mohr who, along with Mayor Kalb, sold out the citizens of Portsmouth by working out a deal with the Marting Foundation that took the Marting building off the hands of the Foundation, once again, and placed it back in the lap of the taxpayers.

After the voters rejected using the Marting Building as a home for city offices, this is the property, the so-called Adelphia building, that the City Building Committee recommended for new city buildings.

This is the $12,000 study Tanner Stone did for the renovation of the Adelphia building, which was a waste of money because the Adelphia building proved beyond repair.

This is Mike Mearan, the crooked lawyer who served as the chair of the City Building Committee at the same time that he represented the landlord of the Adelphia property, which the City Building Committee recommended as the site for a new city building.

This is the phantasmagorical, Art-Dreco Hotel/Convention Center, the building on which Portsmouth is gambling its future and for which it is selling its soul.