Bentine, Toy reply to accusations

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

In her com­ments dur­ing the Oct. 23 Galion City Coun­cil meet­ing, Galion res­i­dent Kate Strick­ler recounted a phone con­ver­sa­tion she over­heard out­side of the Oct. 9 meet­ing. She claimed that John Ben­tine, gen­eral coun­sel for AMP, made some ques­tion­able statements.

In a phone inter­view the fol­low­ing day, Ben­tine said he did have a brief phone con­ver­sa­tion after the AMP pre­sen­ta­tion at the Oct. 9 Coun­cil meet­ing. “How­ever, I can tell you unequiv­o­cally that did not hap­pen. That is not some­thing that would come out of my mouth, not even the words that I would use.”

Jolene Thomp­son, senior vice pres­i­dent of mem­ber ser­vices and exter­nal affairs, was the per­son on the other end of the phone con­ver­sa­tion. Accord­ing to Thomp­son, she had called Ben­tine to ask how the pre­sen­ta­tion went.

She also said Strickler’s account was incor­rect, and any state­ments made by Ben­tine that Strick­ler over­heard were not used in the con­text that Strick­ler implied they were.

Ben­tine, who com­mented that he has been an attor­ney since 1975, added that he takes his job very seri­ously and was offended by Strickler’s accu­sa­tion. “I sim­ply would not ever say any­thing like that,” he said. “I did say that I thought the pre­sen­ta­tion went well and we got a lot of good infor­ma­tion out, and also cor­rected some misinformation.”

Galion res­i­dent Don Faulds made sev­eral accu­sa­tions of the City’s neglect to fol­low the Char­ter when he spoke dur­ing the Coun­cil meeting.

In an email state­ment, City Man­ager Gene Toy refuted some of Faulds’ claims. “Upon its adop­tion, the Char­ter estab­lished five depart­ments — Law; Finance; Pub­lic Works; Police Pro­tec­tion; and Fire Pro­tec­tion. Within the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Works, the Char­ter estab­lished four divi­sions — water; sewer; streets/parks/public prop­er­ties; and elec­tric,” Toy explained.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Faulds stated that Toy appointed two city employ­ees with­out Coun­cil approval, but he should have.

In his email Toy said Coun­cil approval was not needed in those par­tic­u­lar cases. “Arti­cle 5 of the char­ter is very clear,” he went on to explain. “Depart­ment heads are to be appointed by the city man­ager and con­firmed by city coun­cil. The char­ter requires con­fir­ma­tion by city coun­cil only at the depart­ment level and not below that. Since I have been city man­ager, I have made three appoint­ments that require city coun­cil con­for­ma­tion — Audrey Brodzin­ski, Karen Wal­ters, and Phil Jack­son. I have never failed to get coun­cil con­fir­ma­tion when it is required.”

In response to some of Fauld’s other state­ments, Toy said, “Mr. Faulds was also crit­i­cal of me for attend­ing a recent Kiwa­nis meet­ing and dis­cussing numer­ous city projects. It is true that I did attend a Kiwa­nis meet­ing on Sep­tem­ber 25. I was invited by the group to be a guest speaker. I have addressed their meet­ings in the past and I am always hon­ored to speak to local civic organizations.

“I was asked to give an overview of cur­rent city events and projects. Regard­less of what Mr. Faulds may have tried to insin­u­ate dur­ing last night’s remarks to coun­cil, I did not say or share any­thing that had not pre­vi­ously been acted upon or dis­cussed by city coun­cil and there was no earth-shattering infor­ma­tion pub­lished in the Inquirer of which coun­cil had been pre­vi­ously unaware.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Oct 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.