One of the strains in our relationship is the negative perception he had of me prior to ever engaging with me. That perception appears to be largely formed from misinformation spread by those that support other city politicians. It's always hard to shake first impressions. When discussing my successful attempt to prevent council from creating a TIF district that would have taken a large amount of school money and transfer it to the City, he provided this information as to why he could not assess if my actions were approprate.
"Was your stand on principle appropriate? As I was not there first hand and did not see the details, I am left with fragmented pieces of history to evaluate….I have your statements, partial recounting from various sources, and the record that The Huber Heights City Council voted 7-1 in 2014 to formally censure you for activities surrounding the TIF and information you distributed. The information I have states that you refused to retract information in a flyer accusing the city council of taking money from Bethel Schools by creating a tax increment financing district in Miami County — a claim city officials said was false. Do I think you stand on principle here was appropriate? Again, as I wasn't there and this is all second hand, I am unwilling to publicly comment. Did this, among other things, factor into my overall choice and endorsement? Yes."
For your benefit and his, these are items to help you understand why I consider this a great success that was primarily my doing. Many residents don't get the opportity to know how much I was responsible for this particular success because their only exposure consists of articles like this one, Huber Heights mayor censured, in the DDN that were severely tainted because the author only used information obtained and generated by political rivals. Make no mistake, the flyer I produced was accurate and it helped produce a very positive result the rest of council was not willing to adopt without the pushback I created.
To understand this whole issue, I recommend you reading the article as well as the other references. That way when you look at the minutes and flyer, its obvious that the problem is the accuracy of the article and council statements and not the information in the flyer. When you already have that background I won't have to point out all the places where the article is deception like when in one paragraph they write:
"In early December, McMasters distributed about 250 flyers in the Parktowne/Carriage Trails neighborhoods claiming City Council “plans to divert Bethel School money into City coffers” with this new TIF district."
and then the next they write,
"However, the council’s proposal is a 30-year non-school TIF, which does not impact the Bethel school district or the Miami Valley Career Technology Center."
The facts are the minutes of the 2 Dec Administration Committee meeting shows that at the time the flyer was distributed, December 12th, officially council was planning a 75/25 TIF. It wasn't until the December 18th in the Administration Committee meeting that council changed that decision to a different split where the schools would receive all the funds they would normally get.
Here is a link for you to get to the minutes of the December 2, 2014 Administration Meeting:
This is the entiretly of what is in the minutes on this subject:
Here is the flyer I distributed - I think you can see why it annoyed members of council. It wasn't because there was anything inaccurate about it.
Here is the link to the Dec 17, 2014 Administration Committee meeting minutes. There is a lot covered in those minutes. In fact, if you read them you can see where a lot of the misinformation in the DDN article comes from. Here are the first couple paragraphs. It does give you indication of the misinformation you will find if you read the entire minutes.
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