Rick Rattled

“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Duncan. I enjoyed your illustrated lecture about Portsmouth politics very much, but me and the other rodents in our ward  feel that maybe, when it comes to one particular person, that maybe, just maybe, you sort of  go off the deep end and neglect waste water, which is a subject we care about a lot.”

Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . .

. . . who’s the dopiest councilman of all?

     Nothing would give me more pleasure than never having to write, or even think about a dope like Jim Kalb again, but that is not going to be the case because he will be the front man for the renovated Columbia Theater, which insures there will be problems there, and he is running again, unopposed, for city council to fill the Fourth Ward  seat that is being vacated by Jerrold Albrecht.That’s Portsmouth’s version of musical chairs, which two-year terms for city council would help put an end to.

     Our recent crop of Portsmouth politicians closely  resembles the Seven Dwarfs, with Albrecht as Sleepy (always dozing), Kalb as Dopey (because of all the dope), Basham as boorish Brashful, councilman Greg Bauer as Sneezy (from too much snorting), Chief Horner as Grumpy, and former mayor Frank “Sneakers and Sash” Gerlach as Happy.  When Sneezy Bauer defeated Happy Gerlach for mayor, Dopey Kalb became president of council. Then Sneezy Bauer was recalled as mayor after Dopey Kalb conspired with Grumpy Horner  to accuse Sneezy of purchasing the Marting Building illegally. When Sneezy was recalled by a two to one margin,  Dopey Kalb became mayor, and Sleepy Albrecht was appointed by The Wizard of Ooze to take Dopey’s place on the city council. Are you following me? Then Snow White trounced Dopey Kalb in the last mayoral election forcing him into the shadows. But then Dopey and all the city employees and the bikers ganged up on Snow White, who was recalled, and now Sleepy Albrecht is retiring and Dopey Kalb, probably on the advice of the Wicked Witch, is running unopposed for the Fourth Ward council seat.

      Dopey’s being manager of the Columbia spells trouble for that historic landmark, just as Dopey’s being back on city council spells serious trouble for Portsmouth. Far more than any other dwarf, Dopey is responsible for the financial mess the city’s in. When it comes to handling finances, he’s a real dope.

     In the tradition of the failed businessmen who end up on city council, the seventh dwarf, Kevin “Doc” Johnson, knows just what the cure for the city is: a more businesslike form of government in the person of a city manager. But we’ve already been through that fiasco, with Prince Harming, Barry Feldman, the infamous city manager of thirty years ago. Feldman’s come and gone,  and Portsmouth, having had enough of city managers coming and going like migratory birds, went back to the mayoral form of government.  If we go back to the city manager form of government, the dwarfs on the city council will be running the city again.

     

Citizens for Bitter Government

The faded, peeling reminder on the Wall of Fame of the selection of Portsmouth as an All-America City, in 1979

     There are times when I feel sorry for an opponent. This is one of those times. I am not opposed to the city manager form of government per se, as I pointed out in a previous blog,  but I am opposed to Portsmouth switching back to the manager form of city government because our corrupt government and vice-ridden river city is wholly unsuitable for it. A city has to be at a level of ethical and professional maturity before the city manager form of government will work, but Portsmouth is no where near that standard, not when petty criminals, failed businessmen, scofflaws and people with degrees in music education often wind up being “public servants,” often after being appointed to office by our corrupt city council. Still, I can’t help feeling sorry for the Citizens for Better Government (CBG), the group supporting the switch back to the city manager. On October 11, 2011, the CBG circulated a press release that included the following pathetic and misleading argument in favor of the city manager form of government:

“Back in 1979, citizens of Portsmouth were proud and excited for the future. It was in this year that the National Civic League named Portsmouth, for the first and only time, an ‘All-American City’ [sic]. And this incredible award and honor was due to the accomplishments off [sic], amongst many… Portsmouth’s City Manager” [emphasis added].


     It struck me as odd that the city manager who was instrumental in Portsmouth winning this “incredible award” was not named. I assumed it was just an oversight that the CBG hadn’t given credit where credit was due. But then I remembered who the city manager was in 1979, and then I realized not mentioning his name was probably not an oversight on the part of the CBG but rather a deliberate omission. The city manager in 1979 was none other than Barry Feldman, the most controversial of the thirty or so city managers that Portsmouth had from 1930 to 1988. In 1980, the city council voted to fire Feldman, as the city charter gave them the authority to do, but the unelected rulers of Portsmouth organized a recall movement that removed the councilmen, not Feldman, from office. Clayton Johnson (according to the Sentinel) got him reinstated. Reinstated or not, no city manager did more to discredit Portsmouth and the city manager form of government than Feldman, so naturally the Citizens for Better Government would not want to mention his name, which had become synonymous with bad government. The Citizens for Better Government not only left out the name of the controversial city manager whom they credited with getting Portsmouth the All-America City designation, they also got the name of the award wrong. The correct name is not the All-American City; it is the All-America City.

The unnamed city manager

     
     If Barry Feldman was such a great city manager, the question arises: why didn’t Portsmouth’s Wall of Fame, created in the early 1990s, include him among the stars on the wall? Again, it might have been an oversight, but that was probably not the case since Feldman had become an embarrassment to the city and had left not long after being reinstated. Turnover was frequent and a destabilizing feature of Portsmouth’s city manager system of government. Feldman’s four years as city manager was the most bitter period in the last sixty years of Portsmouth’s political history. If Feldman is the CBG’s idea of an ideal city manager, then that group should more appropriately be called not Citizens for Better Government but Citizens for Bitter Government, which is what we likely will be returning to if we go the city manager route again. As long as a majority of the city council are the pawns of Portsmouth’s unelected rulers, which is usually the case, it doesn’t make much difference what kind of city government we have, though I think it is better to have a bad mayoral than a bad city manager system. At least a mayor is not designated by the charter as the servant of the city council, which a city manager is. Keeping the mayoral form of government in Portsmouth will assure that the checks and balances that American government at all levels is based upon will be retained, for what it’s worth. 

The National Civic League 

     It’s worth taking a closer look at the National Civic League (NCL), the organization that makes the All-America City awards, which the Citizens for Better Government in its press release glorified as “this incredible award and honor.” There is no denying that the National Civic League is very good at public relations. If one of the aims of advertising is to persuade people to buy products they don’t need and can’t afford, then one of the aims of public relations is to spin the news so much that the public is too dizzy to know which side is up and which down, or which corporation not only profits from but also preys upon the public and which doesn’t, and which politician is honorable (a rare bird) and which dishonorable. Incidentally, the CBG conferred  on one of its members, a former controversial Portsmouth councilwoman, the title the Honorable Anne Sydnor, which shows you how much the term honorable can be misused for public relations purposes. The essence of public relations, in my view, is, through deceptive practices, making anything, no matter how bad, look better. Isn’t that why public relations practitioners are called “spin doctors”? 

     The chief spin doctor of the British government was later forced to resign after she recommended on the day of the 9/11 attacks that it was a good time to release any bad news the government might be sitting on because it would be buried beneath the horrendous news of 9/11. Isn’t that the most cynical kind of public relations you ever heard of? The NCL spins not only on behalf of the cities it selects as clients but even more on behalf of itself. Remember the movie The Miracle Worker? The NCL is so good at spinning that the public might end up believing that America might sink into chaos if the miracle working NCL was not there to rescue its cities from unemployment, poverty, racism, crime, drugs, prostitution, etc. The National Civic League is so good at promoting itself that it would probably get an All-America Public Relations award if there was an organization in the business of annually granting such an award. If you want to see how good the NCL is at spinning itself, visit their website.

    Where does the NCL get the money to keep their non-profit organization going? It gets corporate support from a wide variety of private and public sources, everyone from State Farm Insurance to the Sprint Foundation, and from Southwest Airlines to the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado. Covering all public relations bases, the NCL is green, diverse, and intergenerational, serving everyone from kids to senior citizens. In contrast to the Ameresco Corporation, which focuses on energy related areas, including in Portsmouth, the NCL hires out its staff as consultants in almost every conceivable problematic area of municipal life. How effective are they? In Portsmouth’s case, not very. Instead of leading to a brighter future, the All-America City award of 1979 was followed almost immediately by bitterness, recalls, recriminations, and continued economic decline, and in 1988 by the scrapping of the dysfunctional city manager form of government. What form of municipal government does the NCL recommend? The city manager form, of course, which is modeled on the business corporation. The city manager system, a reflection free market fundamentalism, is part of the process of the corporatization of America. What is good enough for General Electric is good enough for the All-America City, to rework an old slogan.

Like a Vanity License Plate or a Bald Pate

     The NCL also recommends that cities “Hire NCL to help you dream, create a shared vision, and a specific and achievable action plan.” Are there costs connected with all this? There are, and a city councilman in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a serial All-America City, questioned whether the taxpayers of his city could afford it. When he tried to contact NCL to find out particulars about its operation, he found they played their cards pretty close to their vest. An All-America City award is a little like a vanity license plate: you have to pay extra for it, but does it make a car bigger, faster, or otherwise increase its value? I don’t think so, anymore than it does to have Ohio’s motto, “With God all things are possible” inscribed on your car or head, or should that be “With City Manager all things are possible”?
  

    Such gestures do not work miracles, anymore than having a city manager form of government does. Costa Mesa, California, is a city manager city, but that did not prevent it mismanaging its finances, leading to the firing of about half the 500 plus city employees, one of whom committed suicide by jumping off the city hall. Even if Citizens for Better Bitter Government think it’s “incredible,” becoming an All-America City doesn’t work miracles. I’m embarrassed for them for having to resort to such a pathetic argument in favor of the city manager, but that is not going to stop me from voting against that form of government on November 8th.

How I will be marking my ballot, voting against the  city manager charter amendment

VOTE AGAINST TAX INCREASE AND CITY MANAGER

Lady Liberty Says Exercise Your Right to Vote on November 8

VOTE AGAINST THE INCREASE IN THE CITY INCOME TAX

Increasing the City Income Tax will make it possible for the free-spending Portsmouth City Government to continue to pay salaries and generous benefits to members of the police and fire departments that the taxpayers cannot afford. It's as simple as that.

Here is what the ballot will look like. Vote for fiscal responsibility by filling in the bubble next to "Against the Charter Amendment."

VOTE AGAINST THE SWITCH TO THE CITY MANAGER FORM OF CITY GOVERNMENT 

The city manager would be a puppet in the hands of the City Council, which could fire him or her whenever and for whatever reason. The city has already tried the city manager form of government, and it didn't work. Frank Gerlach has been both mayor and city manager of Portsmouth, and he says the city is better off with the mayoral form of city government. 

Here is what the ballot will look like, including all the fine print. Vote against city manager government by filling in the bubble next to "Against the Charter Amendment."

American Garden

American Garden

Is it necessary to cultivate our American garden,

Even as American arteries harden?

Biblical nation of  salt, sugar and fat—

What on earth hath ye begat?
Your idea of natural is Snapple?
For god's sake eat an apple!

                                            Robert Forrey 2011 

"American Garden" is from my blog (click to link)  Poems Old and New.

                                                                  

Jane Murray's Letter to State Auditor

 M. Jane Murray    1920 Dorman Drive   Portsmouth   Ohio   45662    U.S.A.

_______________________________________________________________________________

September 21, 2011

The Honorable Dave Yost

Ohio Auditor of State

88 East Broad Street, 10th Floor

Columbus, OH 43215

Dear Auditor Yost:

 It is my understanding that legally the City of Portsmouth has been and is now in a state of fiscal emergency. With the experiences I had as mayor, it is my opinion that the only way that financial stability for the city can be restored is through intervention by your office. Having worked with Auditors Barga and Thompson, I know they are fully aware that I inherited a $1.2 M. deficit at the beginning of 2010 and that the city council refused to enact my balanced budget but instead enacted a planned deficit budget in 2010 and have done so for 2011 as well. This is unheard of.

 At my request, your office conducted the city’s 2010. It confirms that the city auditor, city council, and previous mayors have violated state statutes by consistently using restricted enterprise and special revenue funds to pay for general government operations. Water, Sewer, Sanitation and State gasoline funds have been diverted to pay for salaries and benefits and general fund operations and services. As an example, in the 2011 city budget, over $1 million of water (enterprise) revenues are being used to pay part of the salaries and benefits of fire department employees. Yet water lines continue to break over and over. A plan for replacing aged lines doesn’t even exist. The disruption and cost of these breaks to residences and businesses continue. The destruction to the streets likewise get no or insufficient attention.

 Further bad public policy move is afoot. At the September 12 council meeting and as a way to partially address the city’s budgetary crisis, City Solicitor Michael Jones suggested the city petition the Scioto County Court of Common Pleas for permission to transfer capital monies into the operating budget to help offset the deficit. The city should not be allowed to raid capital funds to pay for operating expenses. There are desperate capital projects for which these funds should be expended. The voters approved these capital funds and mandated in the city’s charter they be spent for capital projects, not general operations. The city previously petitioned the Court of Common Pleas in 2003 for use of the capital monies and Judge Harcha approved the transfer, but warned the city not to make the request again.

 To date, there has been no discussion and no planning at all undertaken to address the deficits. The council put an income tax increase on the May primary ballot and it failed. There is another on the November ballot. Even if the tax increase passes, the funds will be insufficient to address the depth of the financial well dug by this government these past 10 years. The salaries are not the problem. It’s the benefits.

 It is my opinion that, because they benefitted too, the elected officials contributed to the financial disaster by approving union contracts such that the city pays all pension contributions – the employees contribute $0; employees contribute a mere $25/individual and $50/family monthly for insurance premiums and this only began in 2009; the council gave themselves the same health insurance benefits in the late 90s – though this action was challenged in court and rejected – the benefit continues to this day; 3 weeks of vacation leave after one year employment, 4 after five years, 5 after ten years and 6 after fifteen years (a month and a half); generous sick, holiday, funeral, etc., etc. leave, and the list of benefits go on.

 Though the 2010 Audit warns the city not to expend enterprise and restricted funds for other purposes, the city intends to continue this process. At the last council meeting and by emergency action (also contrary to law), the council approved a proposal by the city auditor to spend $8,000 for a consultant to devise sufficient rationale for the city to continue to raid these funds as they have in the past.

 Having been a local government professional for many years, I can attest to the desperate situation of the city’s infrastructure, the myriad problems facing our neighborhoods, sewage backing up in dozens of people’s homes, crime, drugs, prostitution…and the list goes on. Yet none of these issues have been nor will be addressed fiscally should the city continue down the same financially disastrous road.

 I join others and respectfully request that you: 1) take over the financial responsibilities of the city similar to your actions for Scioto County; and, 2) do whatever you can in your capacity as Auditor of State to stop the city government from using capital funds for the intent and purposes described above, and urge you to take legal action if necessary. Unless the community can get help from outside, from your office, I have no doubt things will deteriorate rapidly and dramatically. The residents, the citizens will be the big losers.

Sincerely,

M. Jane Murray

Cc: Charles F. Barga, David B. Thompson

TRASH TALK

Portsmouth's Trashy Municipal Building

Portsmouth is in the news again! Not for drugs but for trash.

When Janice Shanks recently hauled  two bags of  trash to mayor Malone’s  office in the Municipal Building, a local newspaper reporter, Frank Lewis, happened to be in the Municipal Building and wrote a story about it. The trash story went viral  even in the virile Lone Star State. The story appeared in newspapers in  Dallas, Ft. Worth, Houston, San Antonio,  etc.  A friend of Janice Shanks in Texas read about it on Yahoo. It has possibly been reported in every state in the union, by one means or other. It was even reported in Idaho and Maine. How do you like them  potatoes?

The trash story  has appeared in the Huffington Post, as redneck Portsmouth Mayor Jim Kalb’s trash-talking midnight email to me did in September, 2009. (Click here for that story.)

Reports of it  have appeared in thousands of  newspapers, television stations, web sites and emails across the country and around the world.  Malone got himself and the city a million dollars of publicity,  bad publicity, by the way he mishandled the trash. And of course buck passer that he is, Malone’s  blaming the mess on Bill Beaumont, the City Service Director. That was one of Kalb’s tricks, to blame Beaumont, and Malone is following suit. Miscommunication is the word Malone used to describe what happened. It’s not miscommunication, it’s mismanagement, his mismanagement. 

Janice Shanks is a sweet woman with a sense of humor and she’s taking it in stride. When I asked her about it, she replied with tongue in cheek, “It must have been a slow news day.”

Portsmouth Poster Boy for Dysfunctional Government

As  this trash mix-up illustrates, Malone has become the national poster boy for dysfunctional government. Janice Shanks’s trash had not been picked up because our financially  strapped city did not have the money to pay sanitation workers on the day it was scheduled to be picked up. Besides that, a truck had broken down and another was being repaired out of town because there was no one qualified in Portsmouth to work on it.  The   trash pick up on Monday, Labor Day, was canceled and then on Tuesday the sanitation workers picked up the trash for the homeowners whose trash should have been picked up on Monday.  Are you still with me?

The homeowners  whose trash pick-up day was Monday got their trash picked up on Tuesday, but those whose  trash pick-up day was Tuesday never did get their trash picked up all week.

More Trash Than Meets the Eye

There is more trash in this story than meets the eye. Reporters for the Portsmouth Daily Times do not write stories that might offend  or embarrass the rich and influential. Yes, we have a number of rich and influential people in Portsmouth, even though the city is too poor to pay for trash collections on Labor Day. PDT reporters do not write stories that might reflect poorly on the rich and influential nor on the  politicians who serve their interests.

Although he was groomed by one of the  rich and influential to be mayor-in-waiting, Malone has apparently fallen out of favor, probably partly because he doesn’t know how to serve their interests and partly because he likes to take off on junkets, as Kalb liked to take off for long geezer biker race weekends in the South.  Now a lawyer, John Haas,  is president of city council, and therefore next in line to be mayor.  The rich and  influential would probably like to elevate Haas to the mayor’s office because a lawyer in the mayor’s office, even a deadbeat one, is worth ten philandering  preachers in the bush.  It’s true that Haas’s personal life would shock voters  almost as much as Malone’s would,  but the PDT doesn’t report on the scandalous lives of Portsmouth politicians and public employees. For example, when former public employee Tom Bihl was leading the campaign to recall Jane Murray, the PDT never reported on his  shenanigans when he was police chief and auditor. If any reporter had revealed Bihl’s record during the recall campaign against Murray, he would have probably  been out of a job like previous reporters who had written something that embarrassed the rich and influential.

Trashing and SLAPPing Mayor Murray

Jane Murray was our deficit hawk mayor. Unlike our clueless city auditor, Trent Williams, she made it her business to know where the money was coming from and where it was going.  Because of her zeroing in on the budget, they  first clipped her wings and then they  SLAPPed  her silly. SLAPP stands for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.  City councilor Mike Mearan SLAPPed me for calling him a shyster in River Vices,  so I had to pay  a lawyer to defend myself. Murray had at least three such nuisance suits filed against her, the aim of which, I believe, was to drive her out of office and into bankruptcy as a result of her legal expenses.

Malone’s attempt to save money by cutting back on trash collecting is ironic because he contributed $1000 to the Committee in Support of Police and Fire, a political action committee that is supporting the measure on November’s ballot that will increase the city income tax. Note that the committee is in support of police and fire fighters, not city sanitation workers. The passage of the income tax measure  will not improve the trash situation or Malone’s chances in the election.

Mayor Malone Contributes to Tax Increase 

Mayor Malone contributes $1000 to campaign to increase city income tax

Why is Malone supporting the increase in the city income tax? Because  he wants the support of the police and fire department when he runs in the next mayoral election. Does he need the support of the police and fire personnel  more than he needs the support of the homeowners and registered voters of Portsmouth? A number of the police and fire personnel do not live in Portsmouth and therefore are not voters, but even if they aren’t,  they are good at  campaigning and will be going door to door, in Portsmouth, in uniform,  in support of the income tax increase. But will they support Malone in the next mayoral election? With Horner as police chief,  I doubt it. It will cost Malone a lot more than a thousand dollars to get their support.

If Malone had personally paid for the overtime portion of the sanitation workers’s  Labor Day pay, instead of contributing to the Committee in Support of  Police and Fire,  he would have done far more to help his chances in the next mayoral election. But I predict Malone will lose the next mayoral election by a wide margin, as he has twice in the past. Malone has a trash problem all right. A rich white trash problem. 

Drunk on Celebrity

Lisa Roberts and Chief Charles Horner as Annie Oakley and Marshall Matt Dillon

Portsmouth Police Chief Charles Horner and Lisa Roberts, R.N., of the Portsmouth City Health Department,  are apparently drunk on the celebrity they have gained as a result of the national and international coverage of  the notorious drug problems in Portsmouth and Scioto County. But just like  the big hats in the photo above, fame appears to have  gone to their heads. Horner and Roberts  were dubbed the Matt Dillon and Annie Oakley of Portsmouth by Marianne Skolek, a blogger who lives in South Carolina but writes about Portsmouth on a website in Oregon. Skolek has done a great job exposing Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin, the drug that caused the death of her daughter and many thousands of others.  But even if Skolek  is an expert on  pills,  I would say she doesn’t know beans about the politics of Portsmouth. If she did, she would not have mistaken  Horner for a Matt Dillon and Roberts for an Annie Oakley.

Yet, to her credit, Skolek was not willing to let the celebrities she had helped create get away with  mugging. When she saw the photo above, which was posted on a public website, Skolek gingerly chided Horner and Roberts for behaving unprofessionally. Skolek’s point, which was well taken, was that there is nothing funny about the addiction epidemic, no matter how you look at it. If Horner and Roberts were looking for laughs, they should have looked elsewhere. Roberts took umbrage at Skolek’s criticism  and shot back, “We have paved new paths. We are ‘Trailblazers.’ People need leaders and Hero’s [sic] today more than ever.” Yes, we do need leaders and heroes more than ever, but we should be the one to choose them. We don’t want them choosing  themselves. We don’t want our public officials getting drunk on celebrity.

Those of us who  do not just blog about but also live in Portsmouth  would never choose Horner as a hero.  Austin Leedom,  on The Sentinel, Teresa Mollette, on her website, and I on River Vices  (click on the links below), have been exposing Horner as a fraud for a long time. Horner is, in the Texas expression, all hat and no cattle. He is, at best, the Barney Fife; at worst, the J. Edgar Hoover of Portsmouth—lying, prying, spying,  and conniving. As Leedom wrote, “Horner has a long record of refusing to prosecute law violators and a sorry record of making errors of the worst kind in his bumbling attempts as leader of the Police Department and as commander of the Drug Task Force.” Teresa Mollette wrote, “Chief Horner infringes on the fundamental rights of all citizens of Portsmouth, Ohio. Through intimidation, coercion, and threatening tactics, he continues in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives persons of rights, privileges and immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States and the city of Portsmouth, Ohio.” I wrote just recently on River Vices,  “Each of the last four mayors wanted to fire Horner. They understood he was not to be trusted. They understood he is incompetent, disloyal to the bone, and insubordinate to boot.”

As for Ms. Roberts, she is proving herself more the Nurse Betty than the Annie Oakley of Portsmouth. According to the Portsmouth Health Department website, she works in the Office of Injury Prevention (OOIP), where she serves as coordinator. The kind of injuries and deaths the OOIP seeks to prevent are those related not to drugs, at least not directly, but to vehicles, of all kinds, from  kids’ tricycles to semi-trailer trucks. How then did she become the unofficial  spokesperson for the city government on the drug epidemic? By attaching herself to and becoming a spokesperson for SOLACE, the support group founded by Jo Anna Krohn in the spring of 2010. Krohn has tended to stay in the background, with others, especially Roberts, becoming the public face of SOLACE, which she has helped transform into a virtual Political Action Committee for Horner.

Do you get the picture? Horner is no joke. He is a serious impediment to the fight against drugs and crime, and no real progress can be made as long as “Matt Dillon”  has his hand around the throat of  Dodge City and as long as “Annie Oakley” is taking aim at, and feeling the muscle of,  the dopey looking chef. The above photo, taken outside of the Fork and Finger Restaurant may become as infamous as the one of Neil Hatcher giving the finger in front of Clayton Johnson’s Fourth Street estate. One picture is worth a thousand words.

Links

The Sentinel (http://portsmouthohio.tv/),

Mollette website: http://portsmouthcitizens.info/blog/?cat=54),  

River Vices (http://rivervices.blogspot.com/2011/08/black-mold-of-portsmouth.html

The Black Mold of Portsmouth

“The black mold Adelphia building still stands, or rather rots, on Washington Street, a monument to the hanky-panky our politicians play by taking worthless property off the hands of the well-heeled.”

 Five years ago, on July 24, 2006, articles about the Adelphia Building appeared in the Portsmouth Daily Times and the Community Common. Written by Jeff Barron, the opening line of the PDT report was, “Several members of the city building committee gave good reviews to the former Adelphia Communications building Wednesday for use as a police station.”

The Building Committee members were Mayor Jim Kalb and his sidekick Terry Ockerman; First Ward councilman Mike Mearan, who was the chairman; antique dealer Kevin Johnson; and pawnbroker Jim Robinson. The committee  was  accompanied on its visit to the Adelphia building by Police Chief Charles Horner and Captain David Thoroughman.

The committee didn’t just give good reviews to the building; it fell in  love with it. Robinson was quoted as saying, “[I]t seems to be perfect for what they’re wanting. There’s no reason to look anywhere else. My vote would go for it.” He wasn’t talking about the Taj Mahal; he was talking about the ugly, leaking Adelphia building. And what did antiques dealer Kevin Johnson say? He said he was happy with the building because it solved a lot of problems.  The Adelphia building didn’t solve any problems, as far as I can see. Instead,  it created a lot more. For one thing,  the black mold in  the Adelphia building was worse than in the Municipal Building, so how would moving the police department from the Municipal Building to the Adelphia building solve any problems? But Chief Horner was in favor of the move. Why? I believe he was in cahoots with  Neal Hatcher and Mike Mearan, two big backers of the move.

All the News Unfit to Print

Jeff Barron wrote a sentence in his article that makes it easy to see now why he would later be canned. “The building has a musty smell in it and some parts of the ceiling have fallen down.” Barron didn’t realize that there is always news that the PDT does not consider fit to print, news that might upset advertisers or somebody with influence, such as Andy Glockner who didn’t like it when Barron reported that a man who had been arrested for dealing drugs was a mechanic at Glockner Motors. As a PDT reporter Barron  had no business smelling anything or noticing anything falling down, even if it was the ceiling. The musty smell may have been the black mold, which nobody noticed, not even Chief Horner, who is now claiming to have been made ill by black mold in the basement of the Municipal Building.   

With twenty-twenty hindsight, we now know the Adelphia building was a swindle, as the Marting building had been before it. The absentee Adelphia landlord’s lawyer, Mike Mearan, the chairman of the Building Committee, had engineered the crooked deal  by foisting the building  off on the city, which still has it on its hands, like a dead dog  run over by a truck five years ago. The Adelphia building still stands, or rather rots, on Washington Street, a monument to the hanky-panky our politicians play by taking worthless property off the hands of the well-heeled. The city  doesn’t have the money to tear the unsightly building  down, so it remains a monumental eyesore, as it was back in 2006, when the committee and Horner made goo-goo eyes at it. Horner since then has made goo-goo eyes at least several other buildings he’d like to move the police force to.

Kalb The Count

“. . . ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine for the Adelphia building and one against.”

Not only the Building Committee, but everybody in Portsmouth was for moving the police force from the Municipal Building to the Adelphia building, according to Mayor Kalb who will probably be back snoozing on the city council after the November election. Kalb told the Community Common  on that same day, five years ago, July 24, 2006, “When we had the Martings’ forum at Portsmouth High School, 99 out of 100 people that turned in a ballot believed the Police Department should be in the former Adelphia Building.” Can you believe that? Who counted those ballots? Was it Kalb? Was he The Count? Who cast that one dissenting vote? Probably one of those  uncooperative CAVE people.

The city accepted the Adelphia building on the condition, stated  in ordinance 20-2005, that “said real estate . . . is free from all environmental hazards.” If ever the city came into possession of a building that was not free of environmental hazards, it was the Adelphia building, which was about as free of environmental hazards as the Gulf of Mexico was of oil pollution during the oil spill of 2010.  The absentee landlord, who had allowed the building to deteriorate for years, unloaded the building on the city so he could  get a tax write-off, but he could get it only if the building was free of environmental hazards and only if it was subsequently used for some public purpose, which it hasn’t been. It sits there useless five years later, as contaminated as ever. Did the landlord  illegally claim his tax write off to the IRS? Only the absentee landlord knows.

 Each of the last four  mayors wanted to fire Horner. They  understood he was not to be trusted. They understood he is incompetent, disloyal to the bone, and insubordinate to boot. He works hard as police chief, but what he works hard at is  trying  to undermine whomever the mayor might be before the mayor can fire him. He currently has the well-intentioned but naïve Solace group in his pocket. Nine women from Solace reportedly sat in the front row of the  city council meeting last Monday night to complain about the mold in the Municipal Building and to say that  the police force should have a new police station. If the Solace-inspired levy to support drug rehabilitation programs goes down to defeat next November, it will in part be because Horner has infiltrated that group like black mold does the interior of old, leaking buildings. Horner is the black mold of Portsmouth politics, and the air will continue to be contaminated  until some mayor succeeds in firing him.

McGruff the Crime Dog 

In an article in the PDT (19 August 2011),  “SOLACE Vows to Find PPD New HDQ,” Horner is quoted as saying, in compliance with the mayor's restraining order against him shooting off his mouth, that he has not had any direct discussions with SOLACE members about finding a new home for the police station. But there Horner was (in the photo below) at the emergency meeting of SOLACE, hours before the Monday night council meeting at which members of SOLACE showed up to support Horner and his campaign for a new police station. The distrustful dog in the photo apparently hilariously, like McGruff the Crime Dog, tried to take a bite out of Horner.  SOLACE may find next November  that there are a lot of voters in Portsmouth who feel like McGruff and don’t trust Horner.  It is  a shame the good people of SOLACE have allowed their organization to become so politicized and exploited by Horner.

Police Chief Horner (on left) at the emergency kitchen cabinet meeting of SOLACE on Monday, August 22, just after "McGruff" tried to take a bite out of him, not long before the city council meeting that evening. Is this what Horner meant by having no discussions with SOLACE members?

Gerlach Says No to City Manager

Frank Gerlach, former city manager and mayor of Portsmouth

I don't think  there's anything wrong with the city manager-council form of city government for some cities, but Portsmouth never has been and is not likely ever to be one of those cities. Nobody knows that better than Frank Gerlach who has served as both city manager and mayor. As Mark Shaffer wrote in the Scioto Voice (18 July 2001), Gerlach believes reverting to a city manager would be a step backward. "I would say the city needs a mayor rather than a city manager," Gerlach concluded. 

That is not to say, and Gerlach is not saying, that the current mayor-council system is satisfactory. Far from it. That system needs to change, but reverting to the city manager system would only make things worse. 

In case you have not read Mark Shaffer's Scioto Voice story, I am reproducing it here. Like Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla, Shaffer used to report for the Portsmouth Daily Times before that newspaper stopped making even a pretense at providing balanced news coverage about the city. 

Portsmouth Murals Cover Up

Mural of Muse of Art on Portsmouth Floodwall

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Portsmouth Murals. But if the Portsmouth murals can be said to have an Achilles’ heel, then it’s the way they don’t depict unpleasant truths about the city, past and present.

A little known incident is a good place to begin a discussion of the “cover up.”  Among the very last of the fifty-two panels on the main flood wall are panels  #49 and #51, the Muses of History and  Art. Muses are figures from what we call Greek mythology or what  more accurately should be called Greek religion, for who is to say which religions are mythological?  The Greeks believed that the Muses, or goddesses, were spirits who inspired artists to create. The Greeks and Romans did not hesitate to  depict the muses sculpturally as topless, or  bare breasted, and that is the way they have often been depicted in sculpture and painting in the Christian era.

Bare-breasted  is the way Robert Dafford intended to paint the muses in murals #49 and #51. “However,” according to a footnote at the very end of A Thirst for Land (2004), “the Portsmouth Murals trustees  thought that this might cause a bit of controversy and asked that the paintings be ‘covered up.’” Dafford apparently complied with the trustees’ wishes and covered up the muses. Muses may have inspired Dafford to paint the murals, but the Trustees of Portsmouth Murals, Inc., who were paying him, largely with public money, called the tune. At all costs, even the cost of the truth, controversy must be avoided. The last thing the  Trustees of Portsmouth Murals, Inc., and the Chamber of Commerce wanted depicted in the murals is the naked truth.

Black Friday

It  is not just breasts that got covered up or omitted in the Portsmouth murals. The mistreatment of blacks is among the great crimes of American history.  One shameful example from  Portsmouth’s past  was the so-called Black Friday. In “Relics of Barbarism,” which is Chapter VII of his History of Scioto County (1903), Nelson Evans wrote about Black Friday:  “On January 21 [sic], 1830, all the colored people of Portsmouth were forcibly deported from the town. They were not only warned out, but they were driven out. They were forced to leave their homes and belongings.” A Thirst for the Land  repeats Evans’ account of Black Friday, and the historian C.G. Woodson mentioned Portsmouth’s Black Friday in The Education of the Negro (1919), providing the correct date of Black Friday—January 1, 1830. (The date of the proclamation and of the expulsion were probably not the same.) Of the fifty-two panels on the main flood wall, couldn’t one have depicted this tragic event in the city’s history?  The point is not to have a Murals of Shame. There is much to be proud of in Portsmouth’s past, but to exclude an episode as important as Black Friday distorts history. Doesn’t the bible say the truth can make us free? Whether it’s Portsmouth’s racism, unemployment, poverty, drugs, prostitution, or political  corruption,  covering  up or ignoring the truth helps perpetuate rather than remedy the wrongs.

Missing Memorial Mural

   Until such time as Robert Dafford paints a Black Friday mural, Theodor Kaufmann’s painting of fugitive slaves (below), at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, could serve as a substitute for the yet-to-be-painted, probably never-to-be-painted, missing memorial mural, “Black Friday: Expulsion from Portsmouth.” 

City Manager for Portsmouth: Deja Vu All Over Again?

City Manager Barry Feldman after being suspended by City Council

Portsmouth’s unhappy experience in the early 1980s  with the city manager-council form of government helps explain why the voters decided to return to  the mayor-council form of government in 1988. Now  some misguided folks as well as the usual crooks want to switch back to the city manager-council form of government. When will they ever learn? It’s as if Barry Feldman never existed. Feldman was the city manager of Portsmouth  during the early 1980s,  a period of political upheaval that he was primarily responsible for. I don’t see Feldman’s name on Portsmouth’s Wall of Fame, which occupies the river side of the floodwall. If it was a Hall of Shame, Feldman’s name should be right up there with all the other crooks. (For more on Feldman, click here.)

Under the council-manager form of government the city manager is supposed to follow the direction  of the city council, but in 1980 Feldman followed the orders not of the city council but of the plutocrats who control Portsmouth. A plutocracy is government in which the wealthy hold political power, and Portsmouth has been a plutocracy since at least as far back as 1980.  In 1980, a  majority of three council members wanted to fire Feldman,  which they had the right to do under the  city charter, but the plutocrats helped organize a  successful campaign to recall the three councilmen.  Their recall was an example of plutocracy, not democracy, at work.

The basic problem with the council-manager form of government is that instead of checks and balances,  it concentrates  the  legislative and executive powers in one branch of municipal government—the city council. Under the city manager-council form of government, the city council exercises both executive and legislative functions and the  city manager is merely the administrative servant of the council. Under the city manager-council form of government, the city manager is  the servant of  the city council, a housekeeper: at worst, which is what Feldman was, the city manager is the  eunuch in the harem of prostitutes financed by the plutocracy.

Bottom of the Barrel

Under the present city charter, anyone can run for city council provided he or she is a registered voter, and therefore at least eighteen years of age; anyone can run for city council who has lived in the city for at least five years (that’s the Portsmouth Boy provision) and have been a resident for at least six months in  the ward they are seeking to represent. They don’t need to be high school graduates; they don’t  need to have finished  grade school. They don’t need to pass a mental competency or drug test. They can be a fool, a crook, and a crony, and too often are. They are the failures and the losers, they are the bottom of the barrel of bad apples. And these are the ones who are going to tell the city manager what to do?

If the the majority of city council members were honest, intelligent, and competent,  the manager-council form of government would make sense. But when was the last time the majority of the Portsmouth City Council were honest, intelligent, and competent? In 1980, that’s when, but that majority was recalled from office precisely because they were, intelligent and competent and above all honest. While there have been notable exceptions, of course, like Bob Mollette, the majority of the Portsmouth city council is usually dishonest, dumb, and  incompetent, and they serve the interests not of the public but of the plutocrats—the wealthy lawyers, developers, and beneficiaries of the Southern Ohio Growth Partnership. A city manager would be at the mercy of the failures and political hacks—the Bauers, the Kalbs, the Malones—who gravitate to city council with the hope of becoming mayor by default—by recalls, by resignations by those facing recall, and by indictments.

In summary, the council-manager form of city government would make Portsmouth a worse, not a  better place,  and God and now the rest of the country knows our notorious, corrupt, pill-popping  river city is bad enough as it is. 

Cartoon from early 1980s showing city manager Feldman mauling Portsmouth taxpayers