Kalb's Confession

At the City Council meeting on August 9, 2004, acting Mayor Jim Kalb made a remarkable confession. He admitted publicly that the sale of the 125-year-old Marting building to the city had been a fraud. He admitted publicly that when the city purchased the Marting building the heating and air conditioning systems were in poor condition, and so was the roof, which was leaking. He confessed that the building had “major environmental conditions,” by which he meant asbestos. He confessed that the appraisal that the city had relied upon had been made by an unlicensed appraiser (Ken Rase) and that the figure Rase had come up with was three times the value another appraiser had made just three months earlier. The mayor of Portsmouth admitted what others would be scolded for saying, and yet what he said was ignored and forgotten. Naturally, you didn’t read about his remarkable confession in the Portsmouth Daily Times.

If Kalb confessed the sale of the Marting building was a fraud, why had he originally voted in favor of the purchase? He confessed that he had been misled and given “faulty information.” He confessed he been told the heating and air conditioning were in good condition, that the roof would last for years, that there were no “environmental problems.” Who gave him this “faulty information”? He confessed he had been misled by PFB Architects of Cincinnati, the engineering firm the city had hired to inspect the Marting building and estimate the costs of renovating it. He confessed employees of PFB had told him there were no problems. He confessed he learned of the true condition of the building only after the sale in a written report provided by PFB. He confessed what they had told him verbally was at variance with what they put in writing.

Kalb also confessed that he was the one to initiate the investigation of the purchase of the Marting building, but instead of telling him the results, the investigators kept him in the dark. “As the person that first asked the questions and now the Mayor of the City involved in the investigation,” he said, “I would of [sic] thought I should have been one of the first to know the results.” He confessed that instead of being one of the first to know, he was one of the last. He confessed that as of August 9, 2004, he had still not “received any papers or official word concerning the outcome of the investigation.” Kalb comes off in his own confession as a foolish dupe. When Kalb confesses to being a dupe, you are inclined to believe him. Kalb said that if he had known before the sale of the Marting building what he had learned afterwards, he probably would not have voted for it. If the voters of Portsmouth knew before they had elected Kalb mayor what they know now, they probably would not have voted for him.

After the Mollette lawsuit resulted in the nullification of the Marting purchase, Kalb turned right around and “negotiated” another deal with the Marting Foundation by which the city once again assumed ownership of and the headaches connected with the worthless Marting building. In spite of confessing he had been duped in the original acquisition of the Marting building, Kalb acquired it a second time. He was duped again. As it is written in Proverbs (26:11), “As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly.”

The Confession

What follows, word for word, is Kalb’s disorganized confession as recorded in the official minutes of the City Council. I added italics for emphasis.

Noting this to be his “final word” on the Marting’s building purchase, he [Mayor Kalb] stated everyone present to be aware that the State’s investigation into the purchase of the building is completed. He said it appears there is not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that merits any further investigation. The Mayor said if he had had all the information that is known today he would probably have voted differently at the time of the purchase. He said if he had known, at the time of his vote, that an appraisal had been done less than three months before the appraisal provided him and that a certified commercial appraiser did not do the appraisal provided to him, he might have voted differently. He said had he known the appraisal he was given, by someone not so licensed, was ten times the amount of the one by a licensed appraiser, just three months before, he might have voted differently. He noted there to have been discussions saying the two appraisals were done for different reasons or needs, but the fact is both appraisals list their respective figures as “fair market value,” saying he still has trouble understanding how the fair market value of a building open for business tripled in just three months for a building that was then empty. He said a need for a different appraisal after just three months, the tripled increase of the fair market value and the fact that he did not have an appraisal by a person licensed to do so, led him to question other aspects of the purchase for which he had voted. He questioned whether or not he was intentionally led to believe that the heating and air conditioning systems were sound and would be operating for many years, and was shown heating and cooling bills that were so low he felt he had to question them. He said he was told, that the systems was so great that he was told that Council should create a new position for the person who had maintained these systems so well, so that he could continue to do so. He said he was also led to believe that the roof would be good for years and that there were no major environmental problems that needed to be corrected. He said the engineering firm that the City hired verbally relayed these facts to him and he believed all of this until after the purchase was completed. He said soon after the completed purchase he received a written report contrary to what he had been told verbally. He said the report indicated it had been received prior to the completion of the purchase. He said all the facts he has stated to this point and the fact that so many educated people in the public were questioning the purchase led me to the point that I had to have some of these questions answered. He said to help him get these answers he forwarded his questions to the Chief of Police because he was told by the Solicitor that the Chief of Police is the person in charge of any investigations in the City. He noted that it has been repeatedly stated that he conspired with the Chief of Police to initiate this investigation in his quest for answers to coincide with the recall and to discredit Mayor Bauer. Stating that it has been said the Chief Horner was “out to get Bauer” because of plans for the Police Department to be in the basement of the new City building, he said, “If this were so, why would the Chief be willing to help me in my search for answers when I was also there to vote about the location of the Police Department.” In defense of the Chief, the Mayor said, “He did so because he took an oath and part of his duties is investigation of possible wrongful acts in the City.” He further stated that it has been said that he started this whole process because I wanted to be Mayor and because of the recall effort in place it was the ideal time to discredit the Mayor – have him recalled and assume his position.” The Mayor called these accusations “absolutely false” saying; “I spoke many times both publicly and privately against the recall. Mr. Scott will even verify that I told him privately that this recall was not a good thing for the City.” He said he supported and defended the purchase of the Marting's building up until the time a person came forward with information that perhaps he had based his decision to purchase the building, on faulty information. He said the information provided to him brought up questions, to which he needed answers, and that is when he went to the Chief of Police for help. He said he did not choose the time for the information to surface nor did he ask for an investigation just to arbitrarily discredit any individual organization. He said, “I took an oath as a Councilperson and to ignore this information would have been a violation of that oath.” He said he did what he had to do, as did all the individuals and agencies involved in the investigation. He stated the “bottom line” to be, “The investigation has run its course and there were no improprieties found.” He said he guessed that left him with one final question, which was, “Why were people on the street, the news media, local organizations and agencies all aware of the result of the investigation before me?” He stated, “As the person that first asked the questions and now the Mayor of the City involved in the investigation, I would of thought I should have been one of the first to know the results.” He said that he still has not received any papers or official word concerning the outcome of the investigation.

“As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool who repeats his folly.”

Conventional Folly

Shopping Mall Scam

Portsmouth has for at least the last twenty years been plagued by the Shopping Mall Scam. The crux of that scam was that a downtown shopping mall would revive downtown Portsmouth. That scam, which goes back at least to 1980, persisted until Neal Hatcher’s proposed Shopping Mall finally bit the dust a few years ago. If Hatcher couldn’t produce a mall with the city government in his pocket, no one could. Downtown Portsmouth is the last place any developer with sense would want to build a mall. You don’t build malls downtown, anymore than you build battleships in Arizona, and for good reason. There is not much water in Arizona or space in downtown Portsmouth. Malls are built on the outskirts or even better miles away from a downtown, on undeveloped relatively cheap land, not in a downtown where traffic cannot be accommodated, and not where you have dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of pieces of property that need to be negotiated for or acquired through the time-consuming, politically volatile and expensive avenue of eminent domain.

Now that a stake has finally been driven through the heart of the downtown Shopping Mall Scam, along comes a new scam to take its place: the Portsmouth Convention Center. Probably very few people in Portsmouth have ever heard of Heywood T. Sanders, but they should. A professor at the U. of Texas in San Antonio, he is a leading authority on convention centers. Among the conclusions he has reached, after twenty years of studying the subject, is that convention centers, and the new hotels that often accompany them, usually create far fewer economic benefits and far more problems in the communities in which they are built than had been expected. Most convention centers/hotel complexes are at best revenue-neutral and at worst a financial drain on local taxpayers and municipal governments.

Testifying before a U.S. House of Representative subcommittee in March 2007, Sanders said, “Forecasts of thousands of new convention attendees boosting local economies with millions of dollars in new spending, yielding thousands of new jobs are the common currency of local convention center development proposals and related consultant market studies.” That currency, Sanders suggests, is counterfeit; the optimism that proposed convention centers generate is unjustified. But that’s not the end of the convention center scam, for when existing convention centers do not live up to expectations, the argument is made that the reason they are not doing well is that they are not large enough: to succeed, they need to expand. So the convention centers become even bigger and so do the problems.

As for the hotels that are frequently part of a convention center package, Sanders in his House testimony warned they are as unlikely to generate growth as the convention centers themselves. “While consultant market and feasibility studies for these hotel projects indicate little public risk,” he pointed out, “with hotel operation forecast to generate sufficient net income to pay for debt service, those forecasts have almost invariably proven incorrect.”

Consultant Racket

Part of the problem with convention centers are the consulting firms that communities hire to make preliminary studies. Those firms almost always conclude that a convention center/hotel complex is a slam dunk that will lead to more visitors, more revenue, and more growth. In a 2000 interview in ArtVoice, Sanders said, “I’ve read about forty different feasibility studies. And you know, not a single one says don’t do it, don’t build a new center. Not one even says this might not be a good idea, or maybe you should be cautious. Every single one says ‘build it, you’ll do great.’ ” “If you build it they will come” works in the movies but not in reality, and Portsmouth, last I heard, was still located in reality, though too many of its residents try to escape from its poverty and despair with drugs and other forms of dope. CEO N. R. Augustine,of Martin Marietta said, “Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of turning problems into gold, your problems into their gold.” I have never lived anywhere that has had more consultants per capita than Portsmouth. What Portsmouth urgently needs is a consultant who can end its dependence on consultants.

The development of the consultant field is one of the great rackets of the last half century. Consultants can always come up with the facts and figures to justify whatever it is the groups that hire them want to do. Do you think consultants would be in business very long if they didn’t? Convention center consultants are to the present what medicine men were to the past. Medicine men promised to make hair grow on bald heads, the consultants promise that convention centers will rejuvenate depressed downtown areas. The most profitable of these convention center consultants is, ironically, a firm named Johnson Consulting!

Consultants can be used to demolish as well as build. If you want to tear down a city hall or municipal building to make way for a convention center/hotel complex, hire a consultant firm to come up with a study that concludes the building is a public hazard and should have been torn down ten or twenty years ago, even though the building is only about 75 years old and its municipal architectural twin sister, a U.S. Post Office located just up the street, constructed at the same time, is doing just fine thank you. Want to stick the taxpayers with an empty leaking relic of a department store that is 125 years old and no retail merchant in his right mind would want? Then hire a consultant, or appoint an advisory committee, to decide that building is just the place to invest $12 to $15 million public dollars to convert it into a “Civic Center” that is supposed to help to revive the dead downtown area. Never at a loss for scams, Portsmouth has two of them to save downtown: the City Center Scam and the Convention Center Scam. Meanwhile, downtown Portsmouth continues to be a magnet for prostitutes, drug-dealers, and antique/junk shoppes.

White Elephants

Speaking of antique/junk shoppes, convention center/hotel complexes in dozens of American cities have turned out to be white elephants. We’re talking about cities as visitable as New York, Boston, Chicago, San Diego, and Philadelphia, whose convention centers have not attracted enough visitors to justify what they cost to build and operate. If those cities have not attracted enough tourists to justify their convention centers, what is going to attract enough tourists to Portsmouth to justify its convention center/hotel? The floodwall murals? In a digital age of high definition TV and stunning graphics, of YouTubes and Photoshop boobs, the floodwall murals represent a quaint but static form of visual stimulation and entertainment. An honest appraisal of the economic impact of the murals, one in which paid consultants were not involved, would probably reveal they have not helped the downtown much economically. Even if Todd Book’s purloined rock ends up at the Welcome Center, I would say that the number of tourists who visit Portsmouth will remain at best a trickle. If a $38 million dollar bridge could make little apparent economic impact on downtown Portsmouth, why would a $20 million plus dollar convention center/hotel complex? The only thing that probably would attract enough tourists to Portsmouth to justify a convention center/hotel complex would be casino gambling, but until gambling comes to pass, Portsmouth should take a pass on a convention center/hotel complex.

And before we have casino gambling in Portsmouth, we should have a little more risk in our local economy. But it is the systematic elimination of risk and competition, the stacking of the deck, the loading of the dice, that is stifling our local economy. The game is fixed and when people like Hatcher play he is really playing with house money, which in this case means public funds. That competition is the lifeblood of the American economy is one of the great American myths, and no where that I have been is that more a myth than in Portsmouth. The proposed convention center/hotel complex in Portsmouth will presumably be financed in the way the Hatcherville SSU dormitories were. The taxpayers will take all the risks and Neal Hatcher, or whoever the developer-in-waiting is, will be guaranteed he can’t lose.

There is an extensive bi-partisan conspiracy to keep the game fixed. Anyone who comes to work in Portsmouth doesn’t need a consultant to tell him or her that loyalty or at least submission, is rewarded and criticism is punished; that just as long as you don’t try to change anything, you are welcome; that just as long you are willing to put up with cronyism, incompetence, and corruption, you will fit in; and that just as long as you are willing to go along, you will get along. In Portsmouth to get along you need to learn the local dialect, in which “forward” really means “backward,” “philanthropist” really means “crook,” and “news” really means “lies.”

Big Boys

“The immediate proponents [of convention centers] often are hotel owners and Convention and Visitors Bureaus,” Sanders said in ArtVoice. “But it’s usually the big boys, the major players in local business, who are really behind it. These are people who have a tremendous amount of money invested in the entire downtown area, and when the city’s economy is doing poorly they’re desperately concerned that they could lose a good part of what they’ve put into downtown.” I have not read a more accurate description of the role of Portsmouth’s “big boys” in our chronically depressed economy. The reason for our big boys’ fixation with downtown Portsmouth is that they were stuck with virtually worthless downtown property, but they refuse to take a loss on it. Why should they when they know how to make the public pay? What they have learned to do, instead of taking a loss, is find governmental agencies or public institutions, such as SSU, to take the unmarketable property off their hands, properties such as the Marting Department Store, George Clayton’s Kenrick’s Department Store, and Herbert Singer’s so-called Adelphia property. Where is the County Welcome Center, and where will the proposed City Center and the new police complex be located? On these otherwise unmarketable properties. City planning in Portsmouth consists off taking worthless properties off the hands of the big boys and trying to figure out what to do with them.

Javits Center: Going Nowhere

Sanders argues that “revitalization works where you have multiple small-scale undertakings, not blockbuster public investments. Compare [Manhattan’s] SoHo to the West Side projects around the Javits Center—one wasn’t centrally planned at all, it just happened as people discovered inexpensive space available in attractive buildings, and it’s thriving. The other has received all kinds of public attention and isn’t going anywhere.” Then he cites an example closer to Portsmouth. “I saw the same thing in Cincinnati: one area had quietly become a hub for diverse small enterprises—restaurants, offices, entertainment—attracting them with nice buildings and low expenses, and it was full of people; across town was the area the city had been trying to revitalize via a plan involving large direct public investment, and it was dead, no one around. Big-box development just doesn’t work.” Portsmouth’s convention center/hotel complex is not going to work either, no matter what the design of the building.

A survey conducted by SSU students found that about half the people interviewed thought downtown Portsmouth was ugly and unsafe. If Portsmouth’s $38 million dollar Bridge to Nowhere has made no apparent improvement in downtown Portsmouth, why would a $20 million dollar convention center/hotel located right next to it? Why has the Ramada Inn been a basket case for the last twenty years, earning the nickname “Queen of the Rust Belt,” but a hotel right across the street is supposed to be the salvation of downtown Portsmouth? Forget the pipe dreams and concentrate on getting rid of the crime and ugliness of downtown Portsmouth. But that will take new faces in city government and a new police chief, one who is not trying to intimidate citizens in their sixties, seventies, and eighties from speaking out on behalf of progress and accountability from public officials. Horner has labeled these elderly citizens “domestic terrorists,” when their worst crime is producing blogs like this and refusing to buy into Portsmouth’s latest scam, a convention center/hotel complex. What we get from our public officials is not leadership but collusion, not wisdom but conventional folly.

Bridge to Nowhere

April 14: "Packing" the Meeting

"Packed"

Council

Chamber

O, Portsmouth, to what depths of corruption and ignominy will the Clayton Johnsons, the Neal Hatchers, the Jim Kalbs and, yes, the Ted Stricklands not drag you?

The meeting of Portsmouth City Council on 14 April 2008 illustrates what can be done when Democrats and Republicans put their heads together to screw the taxpayers of Portsmouth. The corruption in Portsmouth is as deep and pervasive as it is because it is bi-partisan. Governor Strickland is as responsible as any Republican for the shameless subversion of democracy that is taking place in Portsmouth and especially in the chambers of the Portsmouth City Council. No one knows the corruption of Portsmouth better than Strickland, because he was active in Portsmouth politics for many years and because he had his office in Portsmouth before the city was gerrymandered out of his congressional district. No one knows the corruption of Portsmouth better than Strickland and no one could do more, since he is governor, to help stop it.

A person whose truthfulness I have come to rely on told me that Strickland was asked as he was about to leave a local restaurant, back when he was still in congress, what he thought the trouble with Portsmouth was. Noticing a copy of a newspaper with a front page story about the Marting building lying on the table, Strickland pointed to the story on Marting’s and said, more or less, “There’s Portsmouth’s biggest problem, right there.” Now, I assume Strickland meant not that the Marting building by itself was Portsmouth’s biggest problem but rather that the systemic political corruption that made the Marting scam possible was the biggest problem. I think he was right on target.

On 2 May 2006, the voters of Portsmouth, by a nearly three to one margin, passed a referendum demanding the city not proceed with the renovation of the Marting building. The city has ignored the referendum, by proceeding with plans to renovate the Marting building as if the referendum never happened. Even before passing an ordinance to resume the renovations, on the morning of 14 April, 2008, a tall crane pulled up next to the Marting Annex to begin replacing its roof.

At the Times too Long

Sam Piatt wrote about this event in the 15 April 2008 PDT. The title of a Depression era song goes, “Sam, you made the pants too long.” On the basis of Piatt’s reporting at the Portsmouth Daily Times, maybe the title should be changed to, “Sam you’ve been at the Times too long.” If he had integrity, would Piatt be back for a second tour of duty at the PDT? Two experienced reporters with experience and integrity, Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla, no longer work at the PDT. They were fired. Deaterla was fired after the Times bought the Community Common.

They were fired by the Managing Editor of the PDT, Arthur F. Kuhn, who presumably hired Piatt. Kuhn must have come to the PDT thinking he was hired to write homey columns about the ups and downs of living out in the woods. It was as if he thought he was on a sabbatical or Neiman Fellowship. He seemed unaware that the Nature-boy niche has already been taken by Portsmouth’s sixtyish hardcore adolescent Steve Hayes. Kuhn started out with the same nature shtick as Hayes. As late as last September 9^th, he wrote one whole Sunday column about how cold it was out there in the woods. “I never got acclimated to the cold last winter,” he wrote, “so even though I love the four seasons and the winter, I still may corner the market on thermal undies.” The cold wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t acclimated to. He wasn’t yet acclimated to the dirty politics of Portsmouth or to his role as managing editor of the Prostitute Daily Times. He did not appear to understand he wasn’t hired to write about how cold it could get out in the boonies. He was hired to do journalistic dirty work in downtown Porksmouth, like a long line of managing editors before him. He was hired to promote the interests of the Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership, which the PDT so subserviently serves. He was hired to criticize concerned citizens as naysayers and gadflies. It was not the woodsman’s axe he was expected to wield but the hired tool’s hatchet. If a managing editor should corner the market on anything, it should be journalistic integrity, not thermal undies. A managing editor who wasn’t a journalistic prostitute would hire, not fire, reporters like Barron and Deaterla.

Cover up Reporting

In the Tuesday 15 April 2008 PDT, Piatt reported that early the previous morning a tall crane (shown here) appeared next to the Marting Annex, starting a project to replace the roof. Piatt reported how tall the crane was (100 feet) and what the under-estimated cost of the job was ($49,550) but not a word about the 2 May 2006 referendum that enjoined the city from doing any renovation of the Marting building. The city action to replace the roof of the Marting Annex was a contemptuous violation of the will of the voters, but Piatt didn't come close to mentioning it. On 12 September 2007, Jeff Barron had written a front page PDT story, “Referendum Talk Angers City Leaders.” In the course of that story, Barron pointed out, “Voters two years ago decided not to renovate the former Marting’s Department Store.” If Piatt were to report as simple a fact as that, he might have been fired by Managing Editor Kuhn, as Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla had been for not being cover-up reporters. All Jeff Barron had to report was that a man arrested for dealing drugs was employed as a mechanic at Glockner Motors. That’s all it took to get him fired. Of course, if Andy Glockner wasn’t a member of the SOGP, Barron might still have his job. Maybe. It has been my observation over the years that reporters at the Times, if they are not forced out or fired, just leave out of shame.

In the same 15 April 2008 PDT, Piatt reported on the the City Council meeting the night before. The subhead on the story was “Strong Support Shown for Establishing City Center.” In the story, Piatt wrote, “judging from the applause from the 100 or so people who filled the chamber and spilled out into the hall, the nays must have been outnumbered about 80 to 20.” Piatt does not point out that most of the 80 were union members who were there because their unions told them to be there, and most of them were not from Scioto County, and therefore not taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for the renovation of the 125-year-old Marting building. For most of the union members, they were at their first and probably last Portsmouth City Council meeting of their lives. I asked a number of them where they were from, and the answer was Ashland, Maysville, Ironton and Columbus, Ohio. Those from the Portsmouth area were in the minority. The Shawnee Labor Council had packed the council chamber with the aim of leaving little room for regular council goers. They had packed the chambers to give a distorted picture of public support for the Marting project, a distortion Piatt was only to willing to report. Many of union members were still in or hardly out of their teens. Some of these young people said they were in apprentice programs and they were given class credit for attending the council meeting. Unfortunately, what they got a lesson in was how to subvert the democratic process by packing a meeting. They were recruited for the council meeting the way Portsmouth school children reportedly were recruited to march in the infamous 1980 KKK-like parade in favor of the Shopping Mall Scam. Hell, anything's better than going to class.

Up and Coming Con Artist?

I talked to Jim, a union man from Columbus, who told me he had come down to Portsmouth to support the City Center. I asked him a few questions, and it was obvious he had no idea of why the Marting building was controversial. I asked him if he knew the building was 125 years old and had a leaking roof that would have to be replaced. He had no idea what I was talking about, as I’m sure most of his fellow unionists did not. He wandered off in the direction of Austin Keyser, of the Shawnee Labor Council, who had organized the packing of the council chamber by non-local, out-of-state union members. I have sometimes wondered where the next generation of Republican and Democratic con-artists and scoundrels were going to come from. Is Keyser a leading young Democratic contender for one of those roles? I snapped a photo of him (shown here) at a recent council meeting. Just above his head, fittingly, is the leaking corner of the council chamber that Mayor Kalb loves to call attention to, like a beggar does his sores in appealing for alms.

Perhaps some excuses can be made for Kalb, even though he is the best-lapdog-in-show. He may not be nearly intelligent or sensitive enough to realize what a painful embarrassment he is not only to Portsmouth residents but also to members of his own sex. Jim Kalb is not only a poor excuse for a mayor, he is a poor excuse for a man. I will go even further and say Kalb is not only an embarrassment to his city and to his sex, he is an embarrassment to our species. Kalb could be expected to be a strong union supporter since on at least two occasions in his failed "career" at Kroger’s, where he did not rise higher than a grocery clerk, the union reportedly saved him from being fired. I am a strong supporter of unions, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better argument against them than Kalb. If the union helped Kalb save his job, Chief Horner had to save his job on his own initiative by helping to get Mayor Bauer recalled. Mayor Bauer reportedly would have fired Horner if he had not been recalled.

Big Brother is Watching

Meanwhile, at the April 14^th council meeting, Horner had his camera aimed in the direction of the visitors gallery in the council chamber. Having labeled concerned citizens “domestic terrorists,” he is obviously continuing to try to intimidate and harass critics of city government and of his own police state tactics. Where did Horner find the money for his hi-tech surveillance equipment? From funds made available to police departments by federal agencies for the war on domestic terrorists? If only Horner had such equipment a few years ago, he might have been able to focus it directly across the street from the Portsmouth Police Dept., at the Ramada Inn, where his son was dealing drugs.

A lot of the competition for seats at the April 14^th meeting would have been reduced if council sessions were televised. But the City Council has for years been dragging its feet on televising council meetings. The last thing it wants is for the public tuned in to what it does. Just as citizens were not able to find seats at the April 14^th meeting, they were not able to watch it on TV either.

Let’s count our blessings, whether we can see them or not. We have Bob Mollette, an incredibly well organized and courageous council member, and we have the veteran steel worker and union officer Rich Noel, whom the lowlifes in city government are currently doing everything they can to drive from the city council. If only those young apprentices at the meeting knew it, Rich Noel is the union man to emulate, not Austin Keyser.

Scams: 1980 and 2008

Casket and
"Wanted" sign
used in 1980
KKK-like
parade.

It is instructive to compare the Marting Scam of 2008 with the Shopping Mall Scam of 1980. One of the connections between the scams is that local lawyer C. Clayton Johnson was a key figure in both. The differences between the two scams and the differences between 1980 and 2008 are also worth noting. The nine blocks that were supposed to revive downtown Portsmouth in 1980 have been reduced in 2008 to one pathetic building that is supposed to revive downtown Portsmouth, the 125-year-old leaking and unwanted-by-anybody-else Marting Department store. Even when it comes to scams, Portsmouth is not what it once was.

1980

• Working with City Manager Barry Feldman and others, but behind the backs of the City Council, Clayton Johnson is instrumental in the creation of a scheme to develop a $63 million dollar mall in nine blocks of Portsmouth’s depressed downtown area.
• The city of Portsmouth enters into negotiations with a Cleveland-based developer Jacobs, Visconsi, and Jacobs. A Memorandum of Intent was drawn up.
• Local unions and the Ohio Civil Services Association in particular back the 1980 Mall Scam.
  
• Harold Daub votes in favor of the mall. He is hailed "Man of the Hour" by the general manager of WPAY Tom Reeder, but after flying to Cleveland to talk to the developer, Daub concludes the proposed mall is a castle in the air and a scam by backers of the mall hope to reap millions.
  
• Daub, councilman Mark Price, and Mayor Andrew Clausing, publicly oppose the mall plan, claiming it could cost taxpayers millions of dollars with no likelihood that the mall would ever be built.
• A media campaign is waged to harass, vilify, and recall Clausing, Price, and Daub. WPAY and its general manager Tom Reeder and the Portsmouth Daily Times lead the media campaign for the Mall and against the three councilman, including Daub, Reeder’s former “Man of the Hour.”
• After a concerted campaign by the local media, Clausing charges that “We have government by the press and the radio.” “There could have been a riot initiated by the news media,” Clausing told the Portsmouth Daily Times.
• A pro-mall Ku Klux Klan-like parade is held in downtown Portsmouth, with marchers carrying caskets bearing the likenesses of the city councilman opposed to the mall.
• Ann Sydnor and Jo Ann Aeh, whose husband was active in the KKK, get their start in Portsmouth politics by becoming invovled in the campaign to recall the three city councilmen. Aeh and Sydnor become permanent political fixtures in Portsmouth either as office holders or employees of city and county government.
• The three councilmen are recalled and replaced by pro-mall council members, but the proposed mall never materializes. City Manager Feldman slinks out Portsmouth not long afterwards for another job in Michigan, and for the next 25 years the myth is perpetrated that Portsmouth missed its one chance to regain prosperity because of three councilmen.
• Even with a subservient city council, Neal Hatcher in the period 1996-2006 fails to get his proposed mall off the ground.
• The city school system, with a plan to build a downtown athletic complex, steps in to purchase the land that Hatcher had acquired by knavery and eminent domain for his mall.

Portsmouth Daily Times, Jan. 23, 1980

2008

• Mayor Bauer and two councilwomen, Ann Sydnor and Carol Caudill, who were part of the original Marting Scam, are recalled from office by angry citizens.
• The purchase of the Marting building by the city is ruled invalid by the courts in a case brought by Bob and Teresa Mollette.
• Clayton Johnson negotiates a new scam on the Marting building with Mayor Kalb, but voters by a nearly 3 to 1 margin in a 2 May 2006 referendum demand a stop to all renovation work on the Marting building.
• Clayton Johnson sees his plan to convert the 125-year-old Marting building into city offices stymied by concerned citizens and by the courts.
• At a luncheon in a Portsmouth restaurant, in October 2007, Johnson is overheard bragging about the 1980 campaign that recalled the three councilmen who opposed the 1980 mall, saying that one of the councilman, Harold Daub, was still around and still causing trouble.
• Johnson is allegedly overheard saying the time had come to begin another campaign like the 1980 one, but this time in favor of converting the Marting building to city offices.
• Local talk jock Steve Hayes of WNXT and managing editor Art Kuhn of the Portsmouth Daily Times mount a media campaign, criticizing concerned citizens and two City Council members, Bob Mollette and Rich Noel, who are opposed to the Marting Scam.
• 81-year-old Sixth Ward Councilman Rich Noel, who voted against the Marting Scam, is accused of not paying for city trash collections, even though he was never billed for those services.
• The story on Rich Noel first appears in the Scioto Voice, which is trying to outdo the Portsmouth Daily Times in its servility to the powers-that-be in Portsmouth.
• On 25 March 2008, six city employees and four vehicles converge on Noel’s property on Dunlap Road, looking for violations of city codes. They find none. The city had not made a single visit to Noel’s property in the previous twenty-five years.
• The Shawnee Labor Council endorses the Marting Scam.
• On Monday, 14 April 2008, the city council is expected to pass an ordinance to authorize the renovation of the 125-year-old Marting building into city offices.

125-year-old unwanted-by-anybody-else Marting building

Marting Madness

A Portsmouth native who is a friend of mine, and who knows the history of the city better than I do, recently told me that he absolutely cannot understand why the city government is determined to spend up to $20 million dollars to renovate the 125-year-old empty, moldy, and leaking Marting department store building for city offices. It doesn’t make any sense. At times it seems loony. My friend is baffled, and so am I, and so are the vast majority of other Portsmouth residents and taxpayers. Yet the proponents of the Marting building, led by the lawyer and deal-maker Clayton Johnson, are proceeding even though they know they will continue to be resisted politically and legally for having defied the will of the majority of the voters, who demonstrated though the democratic processes available to them, through recalls and a referendum, that they want no part of the madness of renovating the Marting building.

Captain Clayton

Clayton Johnson is not leading the city forward. He is leading the city backward, all the way back to 1883, when the Marting department store building was erected. He is leading the city backward to more turmoil, to more referenda, to more litigation, and to more delay. The 125-year-old Marting building, which is hidden behind a phony brick façade (even the bricks are phony), is commercially and architecturally worthless and should have been torn down ten years ago. But it wasn’t. Why? I am not a lawyer, or an architect, or a psychiatrist, but I am a student of American literature, and I find in what is considered the great American novel, Moby Dick, a possible explanation for the Marting Madness.

When Clayton Johnson cooked up the Marting deal, he overreached. He got too greedy. He put a price tag of $2 million dollars on the Marting building, which was appraised for no more than $700,000 plus, and even that figure was much higher than it should have been. He overreached when he conspired with crooked city officials to sell the building to the city for $2 million. He didn’t act very smart. When the mayor and council members who conspired with him were recalled from office by outraged voters, Johnson was embarrassed. The man with the reputation as the smartest lawyer in town suddenly looked dumb, and greedy. He avoided talking with a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch who was writing a feature story on the whole mess. What could Johnson say? When the Mollettes brought suit and the Marting deal was invalidated by the courts for the secret and illegal way it had been put together, Johnson would have been not just embarrassed but professionally and personally humiliated.

Hoisted on his own Pequod

The white whale cost Captain Ahab a leg. The blowup of the Marting deal cost Clayton Johnson his reputation as Portsmouth’s smartest lawyer. The only thing Johnson appears to have more of than money is pride. After that loss, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. When Ahab lost his leg, he vowed revenge. When Johnson lost his reputation, he vowed to get even, if my analogy is valid. He negotiated another crooked deal with the city in which he stuck the city with the the 125-year-old Marting building and the Marting Foundation kept the $2 million, or what was left after his legal fees were paid, setting a number of conditions that had to be met before he would return the money. He’d show them, the Portsmouth rabble who did not even know how to set an alarm clock! Among the conditions he set was that the Marting building had to find a new retail tenant – a virtual impossibility – or be used for city offices.

The name of Ahab’s ship was the Pequod. Ahab’s pursuit of the whale made no sense economically or ethically. In his mad pursuit of the white whale, Ahab endangered the Pequod and its crew. With his Marting Madness, Johnson is financially endangering Portsmouth and its taxpayers. At the end of Moby Dick, the ship and crew go to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Where and when and how is it going to end in Portsmouth with our mad Ahab and his motley crew? God only knows.

Marting Building: Very Like A Whale

Rocks

CBS News Photo of Indian Rock

       Christians have the Rock of the Ages; Plymouth has Plymouth Rock; the Deadheads have Acid Rock; and Portsmouth has Indian Head Rock, or at least it does until such time as the courts force the city of Portsmouth to give it back to its rightful owner, the commonwealth of Kentucky. We already knew how intellectually challenged Mayor Jim Kalb is. Perhaps allowances should be made for him. Perhaps at some time Kalb may have been in a serious motorcycle accident without his helmet. To be fair, having rocks in your head does not necessarily mean you are stoned all the time. We areembarrassed at having this also-ran in the race of life as mayor. So we are not surprised to learn he probably had something to do with the theft of Indian Head Rock. There is the Grinch who stole Christmas. What we have is the mayor who stole Indian Head Rock. We look forward to his day in court.

         Why was Kalb involved in the theft? The short answer is that Jim Kalb has no more sense than an Indian Head Nickel. Whether the theft was done by divers in darkness or broad daylight, if booze and drugs were not involved in the hare-brained escapade, I am going to be surprised. Would teetotalingOhioans have pulled such a stupid trick? Would sober Buckeyes have been dumb enough to steal a rock to restore the honor of Ohio? What honor is involved anyway? A lot of past generations of no-doubt beery and eternally adolescent white males paddled or swam over to Kentucky when the river was shallower than it is now and scratched initials and numbers on the rock, making it sacred to their hero-worshipping pot-smoking descendants. Here is what one hero-worshipping ancestor wrote in aletter to the Portsmouth Daily Times about Indian Head Rock. “Each name, date and set of initials represents someone who was part of a workplace, a family and a history here.” How genealogically touching. “Those scratches on the rock are the shadows and echoes of the families who built Portsmouth, and made it flourish.” I have read a lot of history, including histories of Portsmouth. This blather about the rock and its alleged connection with those who made Portsmouth flourish is not history. What we are talking about is not hieroglyphics but graffiti, not history but hokum.

       “The accumulated jumble of letters and numbers on the rock are a DNA map of the city of Portsmouth,” the letter writer continued, not knowing when to leave well enough alone. I disagree. The jumble of letters and numbers on the rock say more about Portsmouth’s IQ, than it does about Porsmouth’s DNA, and the numbers are not encouraging. If the IQs of everybody in LakeWoebegone are above average, in Portsmouth they seem well below average. Clayton Johnson is reputed to be the smartest lawyer in Portsmouth, which is probably true, but we should keep in mind the proverb, “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Just as Johnson has done withthe Marting building, the letter writer to the editor is trying to tie Indian Head Rock to Portsmouth’s prosperous past. Preserve Marting’s! Preserve Indian Head Rock! Preserve the prosperous past! The scams are essentially alike and equally dishonorable. How can men without honor claim to be restoring it? How can the morally bankrupt speak in the name of a spiritual legacy?

       Kalb has already carved his name in local politics and his name is mud. He has destroyed all hope that the level of local politics might be lifted above the scummy level we are all too familiar with. As the lapdog of the developer Neal Hatcher, he has helped hatch the Hotel/Convention Center scheme, and as the patsy for lawyer Clayton Johnson, he helped the Marting Foundation steal $2 million dollars of public funds, which is what the Foundation was paid by the city government for a much bigger, much more worthless rock, the 125-year-old Marting Building, which Johnson succeeded in unloading on the city as a historic landmark. Historic? Yes, think of all the hats and shoes, all the girdles and men’s garters, all the outerwear and underwear, that were sold in the Marting building during Portsmouth’s golden age of prosperity. How can we let this shrine to shopping be torn down? The sale of the Marting building to the city was ruled illegal by the courts, because the sale had been negotiated in the dark, in violation of Ohio’s Sunshine laws, just as Indian Head Rock had been stolen by undercover thieves and will probably be ordered by the courts to be restored to its rightful owner, the Bluegrass state.

       Former Mayor Bauer and council women Sydnor and Caudill were recalled from office as a direct result of their role in the city’s fraudulent purchase of the Marting building for $2 million dollars. The Marting sale was invalidated by the courts. But Kalb turned right around and allowed Johnson to snooker him into giving the Marting Foundation back the $2 million while the city got stuck with the worthless Marting building again. (Actually, the figure was $1.4 not $2 million because the Marting Foundation had already lost $600,000 in unwise stock market speculations.) Just as Kalb, Todd Book, and others proceeded with plans to move the stolen Indian Head Rock to the Welcome Center in Portsmouth, in spite of the protests of irate citizens in Kentucky and Scioto County, Kalb and the corrupt members of City Council are proceeding with plans to turn the 125-year-old Marting building into the home for city office buildings, and let the voters be damned!

Judging a Book by the Company He Keeps

       It is bad enough that the mayor of Portsmouth has embarrassed the city not only locally but now nationally, on the CBS nightly news, but Kalb has been joined by Democratic Assistant Minority leader of the Ohio House of Representatives, Todd Book, who, in defending the theft of the rock, has shot Portsmouth in the other foot. Book has proceeded as if any kind of publicity about the theft is good for Portsmouth and apparently good for his political career. As long as his name is spelled right, he doesn’t seem to object. “There’s been so much talk about it,” Book said, referring to the rock, “and so much exposure both locally and nationally, that we want to actually get it out of the garage and let people see it.” The rock was stored in the city garage, making the city an accessory after the fact. Book was all for moving the rock to the Welcome Center, thereby calling the historic heist to the attention of tourists and Portsmouth residents. Book went so far as to suggest the rock could be used to educate the children of Scioto County about the history of the area. What local history is he talking about? The Marting Scam? Stone stealing? Rock robbery? Book extolled an essay contest for fourth graders on the rock. Fourth graders! Mr. Book, have you gone out of your political mind? To rephrase the famous remark of a distraught boy to Shoeless Joe Jackson for his role in throwing the World Series, “Say it ain’t so, Todd.” Say you were really not going to use fourth graders as a cover for the theft of Indian Head Rock.

Putting the Legal Stuff Aside

       “Let’s put the legal stuff aside,” Book said. “We have something that has attained some national recognition and people are interested now.” Put the legal stuff aside? That, Mr. Book, is just what makes Portsmouth the politically corrupt place that it is. That is why a notorious figure like Mike Mearan gets appointed to City Council and why Mearan chairs a building committee that ignores the votes of Portsmouth’s citizens who have, through recalls and a referendum, overwhelmingly rejected plans for the 125-year-old Marting building to be converted to city offices at a cost of many millions of taxpayer dollars. The only lesson Indian Head Rock holds for local children should be the one The Shadow used to preach on the radio: “Crime does not pay!” Instead of being exposed to the Indian Head Rock, and the thievery it represents, children should be protected from it and what it says about Porksmouth’s corrupt unAmerican culture, where competition is eliminated and a form of socialism for the rich prevails, where abatements and pork and city and country acquisition of distressed property, makes multimillionaires of unscrupulous lawyers and developers.

       Book claims Portsmouth has “attained” national recognition in the media. What Portsmouth has attained is national notoriety, not national recognition. Portsmouth is being exploited by the media as a hick lawless city. On Friday, March 28, the rock caper provided comic relief on the CBS nightlynewscast, which had some very serious stories to report, including the recession and renewed fighting in Iraq. Something amusing was needed to balance the grim news. The rest of the country may be amused by the gang that stole the rock, led by a furniture upholsterer, but many of us who live in Portsmouth are appalled, not amused, by these shenanigans. A Kentucky legislator introduced legislation that condemned the theft of the rock and stated “it shows disrespect for this country’s Native American heritage.” A character in a Union Civil War uniform stood guard over the rock during the rally at the Portsmouth city garage, just in case visitors needed to be reminded of the political and racial roots of the rally.

       An anonymous post on the Daily Bellwether blog dealing with the rock wrote, “Someone should lynch that nigger from Kentucky who started this dispute with Indian Head rock. If it was just some boulder in the river they wouldn’t care. He’s nothing but a stupid shine and should be wasted.” This is the level of discourse the stupid controversy can sink to. Voters should remember the role of Kalb, Book, & Co. in keeping the controversy in the news. Organizing rallies, doing a full court press in the local media, inflaming regional and racial conflicts, this is what stealing the rock has spawned. And it has also spawned a video, “We will Rock U” (Indian Rock Edition), possibly the product ofthe cool adolescent going on sixty who works for WNXT and shills for the SOGP.

                                                      Same Old Same Old Strickland

       The same-old-same-old goes on in Portsmouth and our governor, Ted Strickland, preoccupied with Hillary Clinton’s increasingly low-road campaign for the White House, does not seem to give a damn about Scioto County. In his own campaign for governor, he spoke without apparent embarrassment in front the Democratic Party headquarters, which had been provided to Scioto County Democrats by none other than Neal Hatcher. Strickland swore Mayor Kalb into office when he should have been swearing at him. The sad truth is that it appears that Strickland does not dare tamper with the government by SOGP that prevails in Scioto County, the county that he is a product of and that is now informally named after him. At Bill Clinton’s campaign appearance in Portsmouth, it may have been Todd Book who proposed that we change the unofficial name of Scioto County from Riffe Country to Strickland Country. Leading up to the Ohio primary, Strickland stood behind Hillary all the way, but at what moral cost? The way Clinton won in Ohio and by the margin she did was partly the result of sleazy tactics that Strickland may some day have to answer for. What might the blue collar Ohio voters have thought if they could have seen Clinton’s tax returns and seen what fat cats had contributed big bucks to Bill Clinton’s presidential library? At Clinton campaign appearances in Ohio, Strickland looked not so much like the deer in the headlights as the deer tied to the fender of the Clinton campaign. When he has fulfilled his political obligations to the Clintons, there will still be time for Strickland, an ordained minister, to put God and honor above party and personal loyalty. At a crucial point in Strickland’s career, he owed his political survival to the Clintons, but he will presumably have paid off his political debts to them once the Democratic presidential primary is over and Clinton is not the choice of the Democratic Party. Then he might become his own man, and do great things for Ohio, but even then I think Portsmouth will be the last place he will try to bring about any changes in. He may have political debts and personal obligations in Portsmouth that he can never pay off.

Profile in Political Cowardice

       Strickland’s public statements on the Indian Head Rock controversy should be enshrined as the classically mealy-mouthed political fence straddling that they are. “I am interested to see how this plays out,” he is quoted in the Community Common. “I have found this to be interesting, certainly to see the intensity of the feelings that seem to be surrounding this.” Oh, really? He summed up his profile in political cowardice with the statement, “I think it’s important not take this too seriously.” He had the effrontery to criticize the Iowa caucuses as being undemocratic, on behalf of Hillary Clinton (who must have been appalled by his lack of political judgment), and yet he can turn a blind eye to the most undemocratic and lawless actions right in his former bailiwick, right in the heart of Strickland Country. He is waiting to see how "this plays out"! And we are waiting to see how the remainder of his political career plays out after the dust settles from the Democratic primaries. I think we will find it “interesting.” Strickland may have great influence elsewhere in Ohio but he appears to have little in Portsmouth, his old stamping grounds, or little that he is willing to exert. I doubt that he is the rock that the Ohio Democratic Party can rebuild on.

Selling Out: Kevin W. Johnson

The Emporium: A Historic Landmark?

      Portsmouth businessman Kevin Johnson is playing an important role in helping the city’s corrupt politicians recycle the Marting Scam, which has morphed into the “City Center Scam.” The City Center Scam is a scheme to turn the 124-year-old decrepit Marting building into a home for city offices, with mom and pop kiosks on the ground floor to sell notions and newspapers. You can bet on the featured newspaper being the Portsmouth Daily Times, which fires reporters who even accidentally happen to report news embarrassing to the over-privileged who run the city. But why did Richard’s News close shop if there’s money in selling newspapers and magazines in downtown Portsmouth?

      The citizens of Portsmouth rejected the Marting Scam by more than 2 to 1 in a referendum in May 2006, but the crooks are back again in 2008, recycling what they failed to sell the first time, repackaging it as the City Center, with Kevin W. Johnson up to his neck in the lies and “petitions” being circulated to fool the public into thinking that the old, unoccupied, leaking Marting building, with its ugly phony-brick 1950's façade, is the key to the revival of downtown Portsmouth. After my legal challenge to First Ward councilman Tim Loper resulted in his removal from office, Johnson harbored political ambitions of being appointed to replace him. But the city chose Mike Mearan over Johnson, perhaps with the philosophy of “better the devil you know.” Now Johnson, as a member of the City Building Committee, has shown he is a team player who follows the rules by which the crooked game is played.

Nefarious Building Committee, with Johnson in center

The Emporium

      Kevin W. Johnson, or Kevin Warren as he is listed on the Scioto County Auditor’s website, is the co-owner of the Emporium antique shop, at 607 Chillicothe St. His partner is Paul  E. Johnson, whose last name he has apparently taken. The irony is that Kevin W. Johnson, or Kevin Warren, this crusader for the revival of downtown Portsmouth, is reportedly trying to sell the Emporium. He’s going to sell out, after about five years in business, if he can find a buyer as foolish as himself and his partner to sell to. He’s going to sell out and move out, although a case could be made that he had already sold out when he became a member of the nefarious City Building Committee, chaired by Mike Mearan. His sellout may in the end help him unload the Emporium.

      What a poster boy Johnson is for downtown renewal! What in the world were he and his partner thinking when they opened another antique shop in Portsmouth? The Emporium is all the evidence you need that downtown Portsmouth died forty years ago but nobody buried the corpse, of which the Marting building is the stinking head. The people in our down-at-the-heels-crime-ridden-community needed another antique shop like they needed another dozen prostitutes on John St., or more doped-up drug dealers on Waller St., or like they needed another chop shop/oxycontin dealership like West End Auto. Who among us needs a Marting Shoe Polisher can, a life-sized cut-out of Marilyn Monroe having her skirt blown up over a subway grate; or a copy of a 33 1/3 Velvet Underground vinyl record (shown left); or a Black Forest Cuckoo Clock? Yes, a Black Forest Cuckoo Clock! Doesn’t Kevin W. Johnson realize that the local rednecks don’t even know, according to Clayton Johnson, how to set an alarm clock? Would potential customers who don’t know how to set an alarm clock pay $125 for an antique cuckoo clock? Antique cuckoo clocks? How about antique VCRs, the kind that used to drive everybody but children nuts fifteen or twenty years ago when they tried to program them. We really need to get some of those VCRs in the hands of senior citizens to bring back the good old days. Maybe Hill View could bus seniors down to the Emporium to shop for antique VCRs, the way they may be bussed down to the Hotel/Convention Center if gambling ever comes to Portsmouth.

      All those little downtown stores that useful businesses had long ago moved out of were like empty shells for hermit-crab antique dealers to move in and out of every six months. The Emporium had moved into the empty building that had previously been occupied by Stapleton Office Supplies, which had held on as long as it could before heading for greener pastures, heading for anywhere, that is, other than downtown Portsmouth, just as Sears Roebuck had previously moved out of that same building. Ah, where are the Sears Roebucks and Montgomery Wards of yesteryear? Why did Kevin W. Johnson think there would be any more customers for antiques than there had been for office supplies, or for pet grooming, or for Speedo bathing suits, or quilts, to name some of the businesses that have come and gone in the last twenty years on Chillicothe Street? Portsmouth was already the antique/junk shop capital of south-central Ohio before the pair of Johnsons arrived. Having another antique shop was like bringing coke to New Boston or Oxycontin to Portsmouth. We’ve already got enough of that stuff.

      I was in Stapleton’s the week before it closed, and talked to employees. It was a sad occasion, but the folks there understood the time had come to get out, something that proponents of reviving downtown refuse to recognize. The Marting Foundation is trying to con everyone into believing downtown can be revived, as it once was, as if dinosaurs can be replicated by DNA, as in Jurassic Park. The dream of recreating the bustling downtown Portsmouth of 60 years ago is a myth that Clayton Johnson and others perpetrate and exploit, just as unscrupulous evangelists exploit the hope of everlasting life. Unfortunately, the only thing that is likely to revive downtown Portsmouth is casino gambling, and that is what Neal Hatcher is banking on, not the return of Sears or Marting’s or even Stapleton’s. No, Hatcher knows better, which is why he’s betting on the Hotel/Convention Center that will replace the Municipal Building.

      That’s probably what Kevin W. Johnson was betting on too when he opened the Emporium. As I reported in an earlier River Vices blog, “Sluts and Slots,” the Portsmouth Daily Times (28 June 2005) ran a front-page story with the headline “Gambling Draws Local Support.” What did this local support consist of? Two people, the pair of Johnsons. The PDT reported Kevin W. Johnson was in favor of legalized land-based gambling in Portsmouth. Johnson pointed to unspecified cities in Colorado and South Dakota as places where legalized gambling has been a good thing, and what’s good for cities in Colorado and South Dakota, he implied, will be good for Portsmouth. Kevin W., the PDT reported, “said casinos could mean turning around the local economy.” Maybe gambling would eventually turn around the local economy, with serious moral and social consequences, but not soon enough, as it turned out, to turn the Emporium into marketable real estate.

      Will someone buy the Emporium or will it remain on the market for a long time? If the City Center becomes a reality, maybe Kevin W. can attract buyers for the Emporium by claiming, falsely I believe, that things are looking up downtown. As somebody with a lot of white elephants on his hands, he has a vested interest in the proposed City Center, which may explain why he has ended up being a strong proponent of the city investing millions of dollars in the Marting building, though many citizens are adamantly opposed to it. Kevin W.'s  hopes for gambling in Portsmouth did not bail him out, but maybe the City Center will. Beware of businessmen in Portsmouth who have property they want to unload. If they can’t unload it on some private party, then the public better beware because the city or county might come to the rescue with tax dollars. Remember Clayton Johnson and the Marting building? Remember George Clayton and Kendrick’s retail store? Kevin W. is trying to make the case  that the building the Emporium is located in has architectural and historical importance. In other words, a similar case is being made for the Emporium building that has been made for the Marting building. “In recognition of our [restoration] efforts,” the pair of Johnsons tell us on their Emporium website, “the City of Portsmouth designated our building as a historic site in late 2002, and plans are to restore the exterior of the building in the near future.”

Caveat Emptor

     The city has done everything to physically and verbally tear down the Municipal Building, which has historic value, which is 50 years younger than the Marting building, and which has housed the city government for 75 years. By contrast, the city has declared the Emporium building a “historic site.” What malarkey! There is nothing historic or artistically significant about the Marting and Emporium buildings. Perhaps we should be thankful that the pair of Johnsons have not restored the exterior of the building, as they planned to do, because that might have consisted of nothing more than a façade to cover up its undistinguished exterior, a la the Marting building.

      So Kevin W. is part of the crew of underhanded types, in and out of government, who are trying to stir up the populace as they did back in 1980, when three City Councilmen were accused of sabotaging a new mall, a mall that has gone down in Portsmouth mythology as the city’s last lost great opportunity. That mall was a scam and so is the City Center. Fortunately, we have one of those councilmen from 1980, Harald Daub, with us still, and he along with thousands of other Portsmouth residents are still opposing scams like the City Center. There’s one thing you can say for Harold Daub. Unlike Kevin W.  he never sold out.