News archive

Open Meeting Act Lawsuit - Summary Judgment

Some of you may be aware that I filed a lawsuit against the City hoping to compel them into complying with the Ohio Sunshine Laws.  I identified multiple violations over the past couple of years.  All the Court filings to date can be found at https://pro.mcohio.org/pro/ then inputing 2021 CV 01213 as the case number.  Find the "Docket" in the top menu and this will pull up all the documents.…

Election Day Flier



Inappropriate Executive session leads to more wasted money

I listened to the 4 August work session. At the end they went into executive session. with the stated reason of "considering options in purchasing property for public purposes". This of course is not listed as one of the Permissible Discussion Topics found in the Ohio Sunshine Laws, Open Government Resource Manual.

Turns out the discussion led to the hiring of a real-estate consultant at an outrageous…

Keeping your water softener?  Make sure to adjust the regeneration…

Update - I guess the city is still going broke.

Complaint about the Mayor - the investigation

I thought I would take a minute to post links to the original complaint Mr. Otto made about the Mayor because Mr. Otto believed that Mr. Gore did not fulfill his responsibilities in regaurd to Mr. Morgan's residency issue.

Here is the link to the complaint.

Here is the link to Mrs. Bryge's investigation and recommendations

I am not going to add a lot of commentary in this article but will add

Another no bid contract.  

I thought I would talk a little bit about the Aquatic Center contract with the YMCA.  The main points are that council had the opportunity to go back and compare the cost of the current contract with the YMCA with the fixed price bid we got from Dayton Pool five years ago.  This comparison would have given us confidence in our current arrangement.  But no one on council asked for that comparison,

Tags: contract, bid, Another

This is why I am voting against the incumbent for Council at Large

Twenty minutes after telling us about the project; City council spent $3.7 million dollars to purchased 51 acres of property.  At the time they told us they were going to purchase the property, they authorized the City Manager to spend up to $250,000 to hire firms to figure out what they want to do with it. Hidden in the City Manager report of the October 8 work session are all the public details

Could this illegal flyer get me to vote for Otto?

Otto Mailer 1.jpg
Tags: Otto, illegal, flyer, vote

Budget Discussion

This discussion from this week's work session should be the most talked about city issue of the last 2 years.  It is 45 minutes long and if you care about your personal finances and the services the city can provide you will listen to it.  I am not providing commentary now but I hope after you listen to it you will join the discussion on Facebook.   Tell me your thoughts and take aways.

Click here

Inappropriate Executive Sessions - Could they cause us to lose our…

Council went into executive session Sept 17, 2019 to discuss comments made by Judge Piergies about Huber Heights City Manager Rob Schommer’s negotiating ability.  The comments Judge Pierges makes in the audio file below are inflammatory but not a legally approved reason for going into executive session. 



When they came out of executive session, they announced that they would be extending the

Council thinks they are that much smarter than you

What have they done this time?  See what I discovered as a result of listening to Agenda item 3E of this week’s work session. 
Item 3E is a resolution scheduled to be passed on Monday that waives the competitive bidding requirements for professional services needed to implement the program associated with the 51 acres the city is buying for $3.75 million dollars. 

The resolution they plan on

Should Glenn Otto be removed from Office

Should Glenn Otto be removed from Office for writing this Email?

Good afternoon Don,

I wanted to reach out to you concerning the “yard issue” at 7019 Shull Rd.

I have spoken with Mrs. Lisse and gone to the property to review the situation. Mrs. Li

Councilman Otto investigation

During Monday night's council meeting there was a 40-minute discussion[1] by council to decide if they want to spend money and hire a lawyer to investigate whether they want to try and invoke Section 13.08 (2)[2] of the Charter where is says an official can be removed from office for “Intentional violation of the prohibitions set forth in Section 4.06 of this Charter”.

This is how Section 4.06

Raise Council Pay by 560%!

This Monday Council will vote themselves a pay raise.  Though I believe these council members are grossly overpaid for the quality of work they perform, I argue that they are not raising it enough to pay for the quality we need. 

In what range should we set pay for a city council member?  First, I will address my friend and city podcaster, Matt Truman’s contention that dedicated public servants

Deceitful Spin – or outright lies, whichever.

I was beginning an article about the corruption indictments that made the news the other day when I decide to document another example of deceptive spin to reference in that article.  This incident occurred during council’s discussion on blackmailing the school system.
 
Caption:  
If that were to occur today that would be impactful because we have no dedicated
revenue to take on that a couple hundred thousand dollar a year expense.  

So that expense was taken on basically from the general fund.  

So we're just depleting general fund dollars to maintain that payment.  

Because there's no dedicated revenue for it.  

So we're not collecting tax or not collecting millage or anything on that value.  

We're just basically extracting it from what we already collect.

Councilman Morgan thinks blackmail works

In this article, I will talk about the important items about the TIF that should have been discussed during the April 16th work session, but council did not address.  Then I give a couple kudos on the smart things that were said.  Then we will talk about the contract the city has with the school to make the pilot payment for the deferred property tax.  After all that, I will address Seth’s silly

Importance of Timing when creating TIF

Residential TIFs expire 30 years after creation so the city will want to time the creation correctly to maximize the amount of money collected.  In the examples below I show that in general building too late costs a lot more than building too early.  For instance,

Council discusses blackmailing the school district out of $400,000

Back in 1996 the City went to the citizens and asked them if they could convert the privately held water company to a City owned utility.  As part of that takeover, the City and the School District came to an agreement where the School would support

Reducing traffic congestion on Old Troy Pike

  
Some Ideas for imporving traffic flow you might suggest once your council decides it is important enough to start the planning:

How about connecting the access road that runs in front of Gander Mtn over to Bridgewater Rd.  This is only about 1/2 mile.  A half mile of road cost about $1.25 million dollars.  This would allow some Huber and Vandalia residents to access businesses in the North Heights Plaza while avioding the area around the interstate interchange.






It would not be impossible to improve Wildcat road to include a bridge over the interstate.  The bridge would be expensive but the I-70 TIF is a big fundraiser and with more development there is the possibility of more funds. 




 

Reducing traffic congestion on Chambersburg and Fishburg Rds

Ward 1 Community meeting
Response to question about Chambersburg Road
 
During the recent Ward 1 community meeting a resident asked about improvements to the west sides of Chambersburg and Fishburg Roads.  Your council members correctly remembered

City Manager's complaining about my blog post

The City Manager and Mayor made references to two of my earlier posts (Rose Music Center Financial Reports & Deceitful Spin - hiding a $5,000 fee increase) during the Feb 5th discussion on the Rose Music Center update.  You should watch that discussion not only because it will help you understand why I addressed council on Monday, but also because there are some other points made during that discussion

Rose Music Center Financial Reports:

I am glad to see the city published the 2017 and 2018 Music Center Financial Reports as part of the March 5, 2018 work session read ahead materials[1].  People keep telling me they wish that I were still mayor.  There are a couple things that drive those discussions to the possibility of changing the City to a Strong Mayor form of government and me to serving as the first strong mayor. 

One item

Deceitful Spin - hiding a $5,000 fee increase

While I was mayor, I would not have allowed Mr. Schommer to try and avoid the hard discussion that a responsible public servant would have with residents of a community.  But this council allowed him to sell them on raising the water main assessment for residents on Chambersburg Road from nothing to $5,000 without notifying residents council intended to authorize the impending change.  

This 29

Thoughts on Ward 2 Appointment Process

Update-----

I just listened to last nights discussion (Tuesday Dec 4th). I like to commend the commitment to holding the interviews in public. 

I thought the discussion on whether the council discussion should be held in public as well was interesting. I like that Ms Bryge advocated for the discussions to be in public. I think Mr. Morgan's point that these discussions typically reveal everyone's

Transparent Ward 2 Appointment Process

The Huber Heights City Charter does not specify a process for appointing a replacement council member.  Here are a couple suggestions that would make the process transparent and allow residents to get the best look at the potential candidates:

The first suggestion is to hold the interviews in public and to put them on video so that residents can go back and watch them.  In the past it has been

Recall discussion - City Attorney not at the top of his game

I listened to the Council discussion on the ordinance to put the recall on the November ballot.  It was especially painful because the City Attorney was off in many of the assertions made:

Listen to the discussion on the city website:

Here is what the charter says about council's obligation:  


   (C)   Action by Official.  When a recall petition has been determined sufficient, the City official

Keep Republic

There probably are a couple more years on the City's trash contract with Republic but I do not think it is too early to compliment the job Republic is doing.

This week the garage got clean and I had a lot of items out front. This morning Republic came and took it all away. I have said it before, Karen Kaleps did a good job organizing the RFP and Jim Borland did a great job in choosing the right…

North Zone Water Project

North Zone Water Project Inquiry
This is a link to the article on WHIO: 


The link tells us that in June the City expects there to be issues with brown water.  They also advise that you do not do laundry if you are experiencing an issue with brown water.  They do not state which area of the

Robbery - the police and citizens shine

The other day seven armed men robbed the AT&T store on Old Troy Pike.  Except for the original decision of the seven individuals, the actions taken and decisions made by all that got caught up in this event were outstanding.  The store owner had the foresight to have excellent video surveillance which will be invaluable.  The employees and customers were calm and made the right choices when it