Galion citizens comment

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Dur­ing cit­i­zen com­ments at the Oct. 9 Galion City Coun­cil meet­ing, Bob Cerar was crit­i­cal of Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade. In par­tic­u­lar, Cerar com­mented on her ques­tions dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion ear­lier in the meet­ing from rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Amer­i­can Munic­i­pal Power.

He referred to two let­ters from AMP that Wade men­tioned dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion (see City Coun­cil story on page 1 of this issue for details). “If I under­stood cor­rectly, there were two things Roberta was look­ing for. One of them was a let­ter she thought showed we (the City) were being billed for some­thing that we weren’t. Is that cor­rect?” Cerar asked.

John Ben­tine, gen­eral coun­sel for AMP, affirmed that Galion has not been charged any­thing for the stranded costs of the AMP Gen­er­a­tion Sta­tion project because final costs have not yet been deter­mined, pend­ing the out­come of an ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion case. “If the out­come is suc­cess­ful and we reuse that prop­erty, there might not be any stranded costs,” Ben­tine concluded.

After the AMP rep­re­sen­ta­tives left, Cerar said, “I felt bad for these folks because they came all the way up here and sat through this entire meet­ing for a bunch of mis­takes and misunderstandings…by some­body who is an attor­ney, some­body who has been spend­ing months going over this and over this with peo­ple, about how you coun­cil­men are lead­ing us down the wrong path because you aren’t tak­ing into account all these errors.”

Cerar accused Wade of claim­ing that Galion has been pay­ing extra money to AMP and that she “went look­ing for any­body who could feed her delu­sion and make the city look bad.”

“I’m so embar­rassed for our city,” Cerar said. “For some­one who would do this to make my city look stu­pid, make my coun­cil look dumb, make my city man­ager look inept. So she can try to make her­self look good.”

He felt it was time for her to be taken off Coun­cil because “she is not doing any ben­e­fit to Galion” and “dig­ging the city deeper into any holes she can cre­ate,” and doing so purposefully.

Bud Mof­fett, another cit­i­zen who spoke that evening, also crit­i­cized Wade for some of her com­ments, and also for being a part of the Char­ter Amend­ment ini­tia­tive. He quoted a pre­vi­ous issue of the Inquirer about the ini­tia­tive: “The issue is that the Charter/City Man­ager form of gov­ern­ment has been a fail­ure for the city of Galion.”

Mof­fett accused Wade of being part of the fail­ure, if the state­ment is true, because she is a Coun­cil mem­ber. “Why does Coun­cil keep putting up with her mouth?” Mof­fett con­tin­ued. “Why don’t they do some­thing about it?”

“I’m going to refrain from get­ting into an argu­ment with you,” Wade responded.

Kur­tiss Hirt, owner of Inter­net Cafe, spoke next. He said he would like to be included in future Laws and Ordi­nances Com­mit­tee meet­ings to offer his input about the inter­net cafe legislation.

“I would also like to invite any­body that has not come down to learn about how our busi­ness works and what it is,” Hirt said. “Hope­fully we can get things resolved in an ami­ca­ble manner.”

Coun­cil mem­ber Wal­ter Keib, who vis­ited the busi­ness, responded to Hirt. “I really appre­ci­ated your patience with me. I didn’t know any­thing about sweep­stakes, so I really appre­ci­ated the explanation.”

Coun­cil mem­ber Cathy George wel­comed him to come to the next com­mit­tee meet­ing on Nov. 13 after the City Coun­cil meeting.

Kenny Saun­ders also addressed Coun­cil. Two weeks ago, the well went dry at his home on South Street. He said he would like to tap into city water because he can­not fix the well and wants to pro­vide his fam­ily with bet­ter qual­ity water rather than dig­ging a new well.

“This is great for us (the City) because we get another util­ity cus­tomer,” Wade commented.

George moved to put leg­is­la­tion on the agenda of the next Coun­cil meet­ing in two weeks; the motion passed. City Man­ager Gene Toy offered advice on what Saun­ders could do in the mean­time, such as get­ting an esti­mate from a con­trac­tor and talk­ing to some­one from the Build­ing and Zon­ing Depart­ment about what per­mits he will need.

John Ross­ing­ton, who is run­ning for county com­mis­sioner in the Nov. 6 elec­tion, spoke next. He said is is run­ning as an inde­pen­dent because party pol­i­tics are get­ting in the way of progress.

“I’ve been attend­ing Coun­cil meet­ings for the past five years because I think it’s impor­tant to know the peo­ple you rep­re­sent,” Ross­ing­ton stated. He asked for sup­port from the voters.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Oct 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.