Three Little Pigs and the Fire Truck

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs who were trying to waste millions of dollars of public money converting a decrepit 125-year old department store into a City Center. The courts had already declared the city’s purchase of the decrepit store illegal, and a few years later angry voters turned thumbs down on the building by a 3 to 1 margin. That’s when one of the three pigs came up with a great idea.

 

“Hey," he said, “everyone loves a fire truck. Let’s increase property taxes from .7 to 3.1 mills, or 440%, to buy a fire truck.”

 

“A fire truck?” the puzzled second pig said.

 

“Sure. It will be like a stalking horse.  Once we have that one-year 440% property tax increase on the books, we’ll  continue it for another 30 years to pay for the renovation of the department store.”

 

“Brilliant," the second pig said. “We can tell the public there won’t be any new taxes because we’re just continuing the old Fire Truck Tax.”

 

“Right," the first pig said. “We’ll tell them ‘Your vote for the Justice and City Center will increase the value of our city, not your taxes.’ We’ll tell them it’s not going to cost them a dime.”

 

“But do you think they’ll fall for that?” the third pig asked, expressing his doubts.

 

“Sure they will," the first pig said. “People aren’t like us pigs. They’re so stupid they don’t even know how to set an alarm clock.”

 

“You know there’s still something that confuses me," the third pig said.

 

“What’s that?” the first pig said.

 

“What’s a stocking horse?” the third pig asked.

 

“It’s not a stocking horse, you dope," the first pig said. “It’s a stalking horse. S-T-A-L-K-I-N-G.”

 

“What’s a stalking horse?” the third pig asked, still confused.

 

“A stalking horse is a horse you hide behind when you’re hunting," the first pig said.

 

“So you can sneak up on them?” the third pig asked. 

“Yes," the first pig said. “So you can sneak up on them and tax them to death.”

 

A-Marting We Will Go!

Howard Baughman entering Marting building.

(This is a reposting of a blog from Jan. 13, 2005.)

The Marting building is like a Potemkin Village. Potemkin was a Russian Field Marshall who purportedly erected fake facades of villages along the travel route of Empress Catherine II during her tour of the Crimea. Potemkin wanted to impress her by pulling the wool over her eyes. Marting’s is Portsmouth’s Potemkin Village. The eastern and northern sides of the building are covered with a false brick façade. That façade hides the true condition of the Marting building (or the Marting buildings, because there actually three old buildings behind the facade.).

Mayor Kalb was quoted in the Portsmouth Daily Times (4/22/06) on why he changed his mind about the Marting building, which he said he was against, even though he voted for it, and then he changed his mind again and was for it. “I thought we were talking about a wood-framed building," he said. "We’re not. We’re talking about a concrete structure.”  “Don’t take any wooden nickels,” is a popular expression, only for Kalb it was “Don’t take any wooden buildings.” If a building has a brick and concrete structure, it is much safer than a wooden one.

 But wait a minute. If concrete is so good, how come the Municipal building is falling down? It’s not that old, compared to the Marting building. The Municipal building was built in 1934. The Marting building was built in 1883. That makes the Marting building 51 years older than the Municipal building. The concrete in the Marting building is 51 years older than the concrete in the Municipal building. Concrete technology had come a long way in the half century between 1883 and 1934. In 1883 concrete was primitive compared to 1934 concrete. In fact, “concrete” may be a misnomer for the structure of the Marting building. Structural engineers had learned how to strengthen poured concrete, to reinforce it and make it more resilient. But 1883 predates poured concrete; the foundation of the Marting building is brick and mortar, not poured concrete.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Mayor Kalb wants the city to move out of the Municipal Building because it is falling apart and is unsafe even though its not wooden.

Howard Baughman, now president of the Portsmouth City Council, testified that the reason the council rushed through the purchase of the Marting building, in 2002, was not because they were trying to pull a fast one on the public but because it was dangerous for city employees to work a day longer in the Municipal building. To quote his testimony in court, “it is important to get out of the building we’re now in because it’s unsafe and it’s not healthy for the workers that work there. And I believe it was important for that reason to do it as quickly as possible.”

As Mayor Kalb told Times reporter Jeff Barron, the reason he was initially opposed to purchasing the Marting building was because he thought its frame was wood. If the mayor sounds like he doesn’t know what he is talking about when he talks about structural engineering, remember his only previous experience was as a grocery clerk at Kroger’s. We shouldn’t expect him to know about the fine points of wooden and concrete structures, not even the fundamentals.

But buildings are not only about what materials they are made of but also about whether they contain asbestos, mold, and other harmful pollutants. Asbestos was one of the original concerns about the Marting building. Mold was also. But then the public was told there was no problem with asbestos or mold.

The photo above shows what’s behind the walls in the interior of Marting’s. The foundation of the building is brick and mortar, rather than poured concrete. This is what the “foundation” of the 125-year-old building looks like. This is what is behind the Potemkin facade of the Marting building, one of the hidden nooks and crannies where danger may lurk. The moldy, unhealthy air around the brick and mortar foundation smells like it is 125 years old. An Egyptologist, who explores inside pyramids, not a structural engineer, is what Marting’s needs. This is the kind of foundation city officials want to build a City Center on at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars. The City Center plans show how ignorant its promoters are of the past and how little regard they have for the future and for the health and safety of the public and of city workers. For them, the Marting building must be the site of new city offices at all costs. The public must be persuaded there is nothing wrong with the building that millions of dollars in renovation costs won’t cure.

Phantom Gallery, Con Artists

The recklessness of the promoters of the City Center were evident in their plans to hold a “Phantom Artists" exhibit in the Marting building the first weekend in October, which was  a month before the election that will decide the fate of the building. Somebody tipped off the State Fire Marshall, who put the kibosh on the building being used for anything. “We certainly would not want to place anyone's safety in jeopardy, nor would we want the city to have to pay for expensive and time-consuming repairs," responded the director of the Portsmouth Area Arts Council. Encouraging local artists is a good thing but using them as political pawns, as the promoters of the City Center are doing, is not. The Phantom Artists exhibit is being put off indefinitely. That’s what the voters should do on Nov. 4: Vote No in the City Center and put off doing anything with the Marting building until the current con artists in city government are either recalled or voted out of office and replaced with honest public servants.

The Marting Building:

Portsmouth’s Potemkin Village

The Marting building is like a Potemkin Village. Potemkin was a Russian Field Marshall who purportedly erected fake facades of villages along the travel route of Empress Catherine II during her tour of the Crimea. Potemkin wanted to impress her by pulling the wool over her eyes. Marting’s is Portsmouth’s Potemkin Village. The eastern and northern sides of the building are covered with a false brick façade. Just as that façade hides the true condition of the Marting building (o the Marting buildings, because there actually three)

Mayor Kalb was quoted in the Portsmouth Daily Times (4/22/06) on why he changed his mind about the Marting building., which he said he was against, even though he voted for it, and then he was for it. “I thought we were talking about a wood-framed building. We’re not. We’re talking about a concrete structure.” He was first following the expression “Don’t take any wooden nickels," only for him it was “Don’t take any wooden buildings.” If a building has a brick and concrete structure, it is much safer than a wooden one. But wait a minute. If concrete is so good, how come the Municipal building is falling down? It’s not that old, compared to the Marting building. The Municipal building was built in 1934. The Marting building was built in 1883. That makes the Marting building 51 years older than the Municipal building. The concrete in the Marting building is 51 years older than the concrete in the Municipal building. Concrete technology had come a long way in the half century between 1883 and 1934. In 1883 concrete was primitive compared to 1934 concrete. In fact, “concrete” may be a misnomer for the structure of the Marting building. Structural engineers had learned how to strengthen poured concrete, to reinforce it and make it more resilient. But 1883 predates poured concrete; the foundation of the Marting building is brick and mortar, not poured concrete.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Mayor Kalb wants the city to move out of the Municipal Building because it is falling apart and is unsafe even though its not wooden.

Howard Baughman, now president of the Portsmouth City Council, testified that the reason the council rushed through the purchase of the Marting building, in 2002, was not because they were trying to pull a fast one on the public but because it was dangerous for city employees to work a day longer in the Municipal building. To quote his testimony in court, “it is important to get out of the building we’re now in because it’s unsafe and it’s not healthy for the workers that work there. And I believe it was important for that reason to do it as quickly as possible.”

As Mayor Kalb told Times reporter Jeff Barron, as quoted above, the reason he was initially opposed to purchasing the Marting building was because he thought its frame was wood. If the mayor sounds lhe doesn’t know what he is talking about he talks about structural engineering, remember his only previous experience was as a grocery clerk at Kroger’s . He wouldn’t know not only about the fine points of wooden and concrete structures but even the fundamentals.

But buildings are not only about what materials they are made of but also about whether they contain asbestos , mold, and other harmful pollutants. Asbestos was one of the original concerns about the Marting building. Mold was also. But then the public was told there was no problem with asbestos or mold.

The photo below shows what’s behind the walls in the interior of Marting’s. The foundation of the building is brick and mortar, rather than poured concrete. This is what the “foundation” of the 125-year-old building looks like. This is what is behind the Potemkin facade of the Marting building., one of the hidden nooks and crannies were danger may lurk. The moldy, unhealthy air around the brick and mortar foundation smells like it is 125 years old. An Egyptologist, who explores inside pyramids, not a structural engineer, is what Marting’s needs. This is the kind of foundation city officials want to build a City Center on at a cost of millions of taxpayer dollars. The City Center plans show how ignorant its promoters are of the past and how little regard they have for the future and for the health and safety of the public and of city workers. For them, the Marting building must be the site of new city offices at all costs. The public must be persuaded there is nothing wrong with the building that millions of dollars in renovation costs won’t cure.

Phantom Gallery, Con Artists

The recklessness of the promoters of the City Center were evident in their plans to hold a “Phantom Artists “ exhibit in the Marting building the first weekend in October, which is a month before the election that will decide the fate of the building. Somebody tipped off the State Fire Marshall, who put the kibosh on the building being used for anything. “We certainly would not want to place anyone's safety in jeopardy, nor would we want the city to have to pay for expensive and time-consuming repairs," responded the director of the Portsmouth Area Arts Council. Encouraging local artists is a good thing but using them as political pawns, as the promoters of the City Center are doing, is not. The Phantom Artists exhibit is being put off indefinitely. That’s what the voters should do on Nov. 4, Vote No in the City Center and put off doing anything with the Marting building until the current con artists in city government are either recalled or voted out of office and replaced with honest public servants.

Kalbonomics

With the possible exception of Portsmouth’s Mayor Jim Kalb, almost everyone agrees that the United States faces the greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression. In a special televised address to the nation (9/24/08), President Bush warned “our entire economy is in danger.” The extraordinary crisis led John McCain to call a halt to his campaign for the presidency and to cancel a debate with Barack Obama.

With the possible exception of Mayor Kalb, almost everyone agrees Ohio also faces the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Buckeye state faces a reported projected deficit of $540 million this year, leading Governor Strickland to call for massive cuts in Ohio’s budget, starting with programs for the poor. “The state agency that administers programs for poor families is cutting almost $80 million from its budget,” the New York Times reported in an article “Ohio: Programs for Poor Faced Millions in Budget Cuts,” (9/25/08). Governor Strickland announced universities would have to cut back budgets drastically, including Portsmouth’s Shawnee State University, which for over a decade, during the Vern Riffe era, had lived high on the hog and at the bottom of U.S. News annual rankings, all the while receiving special multimillion dollar subsidies from the state. We can expect cutbacks in higher education. The mayor of Toledo and some 60 other Toledo officials are taking two days off without pay in response to the economic crisis. How about Mayor Kalb returning the ten percent raise he put in this year’s budget?

Living in some kind of alternate financial universe, Mayor Kalb continues his campaign to spend approximately $12 million dollars on two new city buildings, one of which happens to be 125-years-old and in terrible condition. Kalb had the engineering department produce, at taxpayer expense, posters of the architectural pornography that Tanner Stone had come up with for the so-called City Center and Justice Center. To seduce the public into thinking the City Center represents progress, there are about as many of these pornographic architectural posters in businesses and banks along Chillicothe St. as there are prostitutes along John St.

The new $38 million Grant Bridge opened for traffic two years ago, in October. Has the bridge revived downtown Portsmouth? Hardly. About eight out of ten cars that come across from Kentucky, by my observation, take a right turn, avoiding Chillicothe St. and downtown Portsmouth. Now we are being told the City Center will play an important role in reviving downtown Portsmouth.

Kalb has done what he can to make us believe the Marting building is a holy architectural site. Beautiful old churches are torn down, crucifixes are tossed on the trash heap, but the Marting building is supposed to be architecturally priceless. Dollar signs, not crosses, are what count in Portsmouth. They even plan to have an art exhibit in the unhealthy, unsafe Marting building in October, as if it was the Louvre, but the state fire marshal may have something to say about that. Don’t we already have a heavily subsidized art museum in Portsmouth? Wouldn’t that be the appropriate place for an art exhibit? Yes, it would be, but the dishonest people who are trying to raise taxes for the Marting building will stop at nothing, which is what the Marting building is. Nothing. Misrepresentation and lies go along with Kalbonomics. They claimed that Senator Voinovich promised pork would be available to subsidize the City Center, but a spokeswoman in the Senator’s office said no such promise had been made.

How much is Portsmouth’s city government in the red? With the kind of foggy bookkeeping characteristic of Kalbonomics, it is difficult to say. At the first city council meeting of the year (1-14-08) Auditor Williams said the city faced a projected $272 thousand dollar budget deficit, and, he added, if the city doesn’t have a million dollars in the kitty by November 30, we are in real trouble. November 30 is only two months away. Will the city be solvent? City officials are mentioning the "B" word. Bankruptcy! Though Kalb will be the last to admit it, in view of the international global crisis, Portsmouth faces a reckoning, but that reckoning is scheduled after the Nov. 3 election, when voters will get to express their views on the City Center, which someone has dubbed “The Kalb Mahal.” A man whom Kroger’s did not promote above the level of grocery clerk, and would have fired if they could have, according to what I have been told by present and former employees, this notorious underachiever is in charge of the city’s future at this moment. And what’s uppermost on his mind? The Kalb Mahal.

The current economic crisis has not stopped Mayor Kalb from feathering his own nest and providing a few more perks for himself. Last January, when the current economic crisis was already underway, Kalb tucked a ten percent raise for himself in the budget. He has more recently got himself a new city automobile. As mayor, Kalb says he has the authority to take any new car the city has on order, and he chose a new Dodge Charger that was originally designated for the Police Department. He felt he needed a car that befitted the dignity of a man of his importance. If the City Center becomes a reality, he will have a more spacious corner office, on the third floor of the City Center, as befits the dignity of a man of his importance.

To the left are examples of Tanner Stone's architectural pornography, drawings of the so-called Adelphia building, on the cover of the study that was done of the building, a total waste of taxpayers' money because the badly leaking building was infested with toxic black mold and was beyond repair. Nobody bothered to notice the building was worthless until after the absentee Los Angeles landlord, represented by Portsmouth attorney Mike Mearan, unloaded the property off on the city.

There is so much political baggage, so much bitterness, so much dishonest shit attached to the moldering Marting building/City Center that it is like a cancer metastisizing in our community. The opposition to the City Center, against Kalb’s Mahal, grows with each passing week. Along with the architectural pornography on Chillicothe St., there may be graffiti, such as “STOP THE SHITTY CENTER!” That’s what it may come to. That may be the last word on Kalbonomics. “STOP THE SHITTY CENTER!”

Tanner Stone drawing of City Center, more architectural pornography to seduce the citizens of Portsmouth

Stop SLAPPing

I mentioned at the end of my last posting that I wanted to say something more about the suit Portsmouth attorney and city councilman Michael Mearan filed against me in which he claimed I had libeled him by calling him a “shyster.” What he is trying to do is SLAPP me down. The emergence of SLAPPing coincides with and is a response to the Blogosphere, where ordinary citizens can document, publicize, and express their disapproval of the misdeeds of public figures, from the president of the United States to a member of the local city council. Expressing an opinion of public figures is every citizen’s constitutional right.

I will turn to Wikipedia for the definition of SLAPP, an acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. These are suits about speech on any public issue, such as those Mearan becomes involved with as a member of city council. To quote Wikipedia, SLAPP “is a lawsuit or a threat of lawsuit that is intended to intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the costs of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition. Winning the lawsuit is not necessarily the intent of the person filing the SLAPP. The plaintiff’s goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticisms.” Referring to SLAPPs, New York Supreme Court Judge J. Nicholas Colabella wrote, “Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to the First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined.” Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote “A SLAPP Against Freedom,” which began, “While authoritarian regimes silence critics by murdering or jailing them, journalists (and other critics) in the United States face gentler, but still effective, intimidation: libel lawsuits.”

Mearan’s suit against me is a glaring example of SLAPP. Anyone who knows him, or of him by reputation, could have figured that out. No way in the world would he go forward with a suit in which he would have to testify under oath, in court, about his reputation for being involved in prostitution and drug trafficking. Nor would he be willing to testify about his role as chairman of the City Building Committee, which recommended that the city “utilize the Adelphia building site to construct a City Hall complex to house all city departments with the exception of the Health Department.” Mearan’s role as chair of the City Building Committee was a direct conflict of interest since a client of his, who owned the Adelphia site, stood to benefit financially if the city utilized the site for public purposes.

Mearan slapped me with a suit to stop me from expressing my opinion about his conflict of interest as chair of the Building Committee and to stop me from expressing my opinion, granted to me under the First Amendment, about his role as the lawyer for Karol Craft and her son Timothy, who were given what a counsel for the Ohio Supreme Court called Mearan’s “disastrous” advice to accept a loan from a “business associate” of Mearan. What the Supreme Court counsel apparently failed to notice was that the loan was not only disastrous for Mrs. Craft, who lost her home as a result of it, but also criminally usurious, which should by law invalidate everything that followed, including Mrs. Craft’s loss of her home. Mrs. Craft’s claims that her signature was forged on the deed by which ownership of her property was passed on to an employee of Mearan. That is another matter Mearan would have to testify to if the suit goes to trial.

But Mearan probably never intended to testify to anything when he SLAPPed his suit against me, and neither do the hundreds of other public officials and public figures across the country who are resorting to SLAPPs to silence and intimidate their critics. SLAPPing has become so widespread that some twenty-five states and one territory, according to Wikipedia, have passed legislation to curb the abuse. California, as far back as 1993, was one of the first states to take action against SLAPPers. California even has a SLAPPback law that allows victims to recover their legal costs from SLAPPers. Libel suits have since declined in California, presumably as a result of Anti-SLAPP statutes. A public interest group, the California Anti-SLAPP Project, maintains a helpful website. On that site is “A Survival Guide for Slapp Victims.” Another helpful website is the SLAPP Resource Center. Ohio’s neighbors Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, and Tennessee have anti-SLAPP statutes or case law, but Ohio does not. Perhaps our representative in the Ohio House of Representatives, Assistant House Democratic Leader, Todd Book, can help introduce Anti-SLAPP legislation once he finishes his Indian Head Rock crusade. I would like to see Anti-SLAPP legislation someday listed as an achievement on the Todd Book Wikipedia site.

As dense as he sometimes appears to be, I think Mearan must understand by now that he is not going to get away with SLAPPing. He started to SLAPP Sentinel editor Austin Leedom but has apparently backed off. We Portsmouth bloggers are not going to let ourselves be SLAPPed around by the likes of Mike Mearan. In spite of the adage that a man who serves as his own lawyer has a fool for a client, Mearan is representing himself in his suit against me. Since he does not plan to bring this suit against me to trial, he saves himself the expense of a lawyer. I am not spared that expense, but fortunately that is an expense I can meet. That is not always the case with victims of SLAPP suits, and that is not the case with Mrs. Craft, the seventy-year-old homeless widow, who has been railroaded by Mearan far more cruelly than I have been SLAPPed. Notwithstanding rumors that Mearan’s pandering to the vices of the legal establishment in Portsmouth gains him a peculiar kind of immunity, I will see justice done, sooner or later, or I will die trying.

Shyster

In an undated letter sent to me in June, 2008, Portsmouth attorney Michael Mearan informed me that, in my blog River Vices, “you make numerous false statements referring to me as ‘Shyster Lawyer.’” Later in the letter, he stated, “I have limited my practice to representation of the ‘little guy.’ As a small town lawyer, my reputation is an integral part of my practice. The term ‘shyster’ is defined in Wikipedia as someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law.” At the end of his letter, he wrote, “The River Vices articles previously referred to have held me out to public embarrassment and ridicule. Unless you can furnish me with specific acts that justify your use of the term shyster, I’m asking you to print a ‘sincere’ correction and apology in River Vices on or before July 1, 2008.”

Instead of apologizing, I provided Mearan with examples of why I believe he is a shyster lawyer in the following River Vices postings: “Mearan’s Conflict of Interest,” on June 19; “Dirty Deeds,” on July 16; “American Dreams, American Nightmares,” on July 10; and “Loan Shark?” on July 31. These postings provide examples of Mearan’s unethical and unscrupulous actions in connection with his chairmanship of the City Building Committee and in his role as the attorney for Mrs. Karol Craft and her son, Timothy Lyons, who lost their home after Mearan arranged a criminally usurious loan for them with Joe Lester. Instead of representing “the little guy,” as Mearan put it, in my opinion he preys upon “the little guy” and “the little gal.”

Before the July 1 deadline Mearan gave me, he filed suit against me, repeating the charges he had made in his undated June letter and asking the court for $25,000 in compensatory damages and $100,000 in punitive damages. My lawyer, D. Joe Griffith of Dagger, Johnston, Miller, et al, in a letter dated June 25, collegially requested Mearan dismiss the complaint and give himself some “cooling down time.” In a letter dated July 1, Mearan heatedly declined to dismiss the complaint.

On July 7, 2008, a First Set of Interrogatories, a Request for Production of Documents, and Requests for Admission were served to Mearan via U.S. Mail. Those 7 following Requests for Admissions are as follows:

Requests for Admissions

1. “Admit that it is on record with the Scioto County Recorder’s Office that there are liens filed against Michael H. Mearan for unpaid taxes.”

2. “Admit that Attorney Michael H. Mearan has, in Scioto County or the City of Portsmouth, participated in either the purchase and/or sale of illegal drugs.

3. “Admit that Attorney Michael H. Mearan has in the last 10 years illegally solicited the services of prostitutes and/or received compensation for brokering sexual activities.

4. “Admit that within the past 10 years Attorney Michael H. Mearan has participated in illegal gambling activities.”

5. “Admit that Attorney Michael H. Mearan has, within the [last] 10 to 20 years, within the City of Portsmouth and/or Scioto County earned a reputation for engaging the solicitation of prostitution, the use and/or sale of illegal drugs and/or participation in illegal gambling.”

6. “Admit that the River Vices articles written by defendant constitute statements of opinion.”

7. “Admit that Attorney Michael H. Mearan, in July of 2007 and June of 2008, was a Portsmouth City Council Person.”

These Requests for Admissions were accompanied by a set of Interrogatories, which can be found on http://PortsmouthCitizens.info under “Mearan.”

By September 12, 2008, Mr. Mearan had failed to deny the Requests for Admissions in the appropriate time frame allowed by law. Therefore, on September 12, through my attorney, I filed a motion for Summary Judgment, that is for the dismissal of the case.

Motion for Summary Judgment

“Now comes the defendant, Robert J. Forrey, by and through counsel, and pursuant to Civil Rule 36(A) moves the Court for Summary Judgment in the instant case as there are no genuine issues of material fact in dispute and Defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The reasons which more fully support Defendant’s Motion are contained in the accompanying Memorandum.”

The Memorandum can be found on http://PortsmouthCitizens.info under “Mearan.”

Now it is up to Judge Harcha to rule on the motion for Summary Judgment.

I will have more to say about this case in my next post.

Our Jughead Mayor

Mayor Kalb at work at Kroger's

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

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

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

The Shame! The Shame!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuts Over Blogs

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

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

Internal Investigation

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

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

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

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

Car Wars

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

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

24/7 Blogger Surveillance Room

Marting Scam: Stage Two

The by now notorious Marting building

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

Mearan and the Black Mold

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

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

Adelphia Building: This Property is Condemned

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