Town Hall meeting brings hope, attitude

[/media-credit] Don Faulds, who is run­ning for City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent in the Spe­cial Elec­tion, wel­comes cit­i­zens to the town hall meet­ing on Feb. 28. Other can­di­dates who spoke that evening were (pic­tured from left): Roberta Wade, Missy Har­ris, Paula Durbin, Mike Richart, Brian Treisch, Shirley Clark, Matt Strick­ler, Tom O’Leary and Andy Daniels. (Inquirer photo/Rachel Mendell)

Inquirer Reporter

A town hall meet­ing with the Spe­cial Elec­tion can­di­dates was held on Feb. 28, at the Galion Pub­lic Library. About 35 cit­i­zens attended to get acquainted with those indi­vid­u­als, whose com­ments could be summed up as nos­tal­gic about what the com­mu­nity is (or used to be) like, opti­mistic about revi­tal­iz­ing the eco­nomic pros­per­ity of the com­mu­nity and hope­ful to gain a sense of trust and account­abil­ity with citizens.

That evening, can­di­dates in atten­dance were: May­oral can­di­date Tom O’Leary, City Audi­tor can­di­date Brian Treisch, City Trea­surer can­di­date Paula Durbin, City Law Direc­tor can­di­date Roberta Wade, Coun­cil Pres­i­dent can­di­date Don Faulds, Coun­cil 1st Ward can­di­date Andy Daniels, Coun­cil 2nd Ward can­di­date Missy Har­ris, Coun­cil 3rd Ward can­di­date Mike Richart, Coun­cil 4th Ward can­di­date Matt Strick­ler and City Council-At-Large can­di­date Shirley Clark. May­oral can­di­date Ken Bod­kins was unable to attend due to health rea­sons and City Council-At-Large can­di­dates Tom Fell­ner and Jon Kleinknecht were unable to attend due to work obligations.

Don Faulds wel­comed every­one that evening: “We all have an invest­ment in this com­mu­nity, some more than oth­ers. Let’s hear input from the com­mu­nity and work together to bring Galion back.”

Each can­di­date offered a brief intro­duc­tion and their rea­son for run­ning, then the floor was open for pub­lic com­ment and questions.

Faulds began the intro­duc­tions, explain­ing that he was born and raised in Stark County in a rail­road fam­ily. He recalled trav­el­ing through the area, on busi­ness with his father, and going to Crest­line for swiss steak din­ners. He moved to Galion 50 years ago, met his wife and raised his fam­ily here.

“We need to plan for the future…Unfortunately, in the last num­ber of years, we’ve not really had a plan that has been pre­sented to our community.”

Faulds views the job of coun­cil pres­i­dent as a coor­di­na­tor and facil­i­ta­tor of the leg­isla­tive process and to cre­ate cohe­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion through­out the city gov­ern­ment and com­mit­tees. He worked as a sales­man for a fra­ter­nal insur­ance com­pany and also as a sales man­ager and com­pli­ance man­ager. He said he is pas­sion­ate about peo­ple and looks for­ward to work­ing with them and busi­ness leaders.

Andy Daniels, cur­rently the Chief Oper­a­tions Offi­cer for Avita Health Sys­tems, said there are a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties for Galion, as it is located close to Colum­bus and Cleve­land and has a good infrastructure.

“The one thing that’s both­ered me for a while is that it doesn’t feel like there’s much hope any­more,” Daniels went on. He said he is run­ning because he wants to get involved in help­ing the com­mu­nity and to improve dis­clo­sure and finan­cial account­abil­ity with the citizens.

He has a back­ground in finance and project man­age­ment, and has pre­vi­ously worked as a high school math teacher and in infor­ma­tion technology.

Missy Har­ris can cur­rently be found serv­ing cus­tomers at Big Plate Diner. She was raised in Galion since she was four years old and is a Galion High School grad­u­ate. Recently, she founded the Food L.O.V.E. Club and called her­self “a bit of a free spirit.”

She said she wants to see more trans­parency in local gov­ern­ment. “As a mom and a wait­ress, I cer­tainly under­stand liv­ing on bud­get and our town can make cuts to live more within its means.”

Har­ris holds a bachelor’s degree in soci­ol­ogy from Barnard Col­lege in New York City and said she has had a var­ied career, includ­ing as a news­pa­per reporter and a pro­gram direc­tor for Galion Pub­lic Library. How­ever, she cited her prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with research and activism as good qual­i­fi­ca­tions for her position.

Mike Richart has lived in Galion for 20 years. “I would like to see a town that is vibrant again, that will make peo­ple happy to come here,” he commented.

Richart, cur­rently a cus­tomer rep­re­sen­ta­tive for an indus­trial sup­plier, served in the Coast Guard and has also worked in retail and man­age­ment. He felt the city is wast­ing tax­payer money and wants to put a stop to it.

Matt Strick­ler is the youngest can­di­date run­ning. A grad­u­ate of Galion High School, Strick­ler was not shy about admit­ting that he does not have a col­lege degree. He works as a roof­ing con­trac­tor in his family’s busi­ness, and called him­self an open-minded per­son will­ing to lis­ten. He added he will take a “com­mon sense approach” for his duties.

Strick­ler believes there is too much unnec­es­sary fin­ger point­ing and bick­er­ing in the cur­rent gov­ern­ment. “A com­mu­nity is like a church,” he com­mented. “If you don’t focus on grow­ing, you can sus­tain your­self for a short time but what hap­pens when things decline?”

Shirley Clark also grew up in Galion. She said she lived in Los Ange­les for 27 years, and when she came back to town, she saw how the com­mu­nity had changed—for the worse. Clark, who has pre­vi­ously served four years on Coun­cil, said she worked to recon­di­tion East Park and get the skate ramp added, and helped pre­vent elec­tric and water rate increases some years ago.

“Let’s see if we can work with the cit­i­zens more now than what has been done in the past. Cit­i­zens pay the taxes, they have a right to speak,” she commented.

She said she wants to bring in more busi­ness, get util­ity rates under con­trol, and put the gov­ern­ment in cit­i­zens’ hands. Cus­tomer ser­vice is impor­tant to her and feels that she has the right back­ground to lead by exam­ple in that regard.

Brian Treisch, another Galion native and grad­u­ate, is the owner of Uptowne Out­fit­ters. He said the posi­tion of audi­tor effec­tively watches the money, and felt it would be his duty to work to remove city from fis­cal emer­gency. In addi­tion, he wants to give cit­i­zens a bet­ter under­stand­ing of city financials.

Treisch has a busi­ness back­ground, with an under­grad­u­ate degree from The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity and a master’s in busi­ness from Ash­land Uni­ver­sity. He has worked as direc­tor of adver­tis­ing for Domino’s Pizza and served on the Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion. He added that his involve­ment in the community—along with other can­di­dates as well—is another deserv­ing qualification.

Paula Durbin is from Ontario but spent much of her child­hood in and around Galion. She is cur­rently retired, but vol­un­teers at the library and is part of the group Save the Depot. Durbin is an OSU grad­u­ate and has worked as a teacher and owned her own travel agency. Durbin explained that while liv­ing in Waco, Texas she worked for the City and had to deal with bud­get­ing and supervision.

She com­mented that Galion has a lot of assets and has a chance to grow with the right peo­ple, but the cit­i­zens need to be more involved.

Roberta Wade is cur­rently serv­ing her sec­ond term on Galion City Coun­cil. She has a law prac­tice in Ger­man Vil­lage and has been an attor­ney for more than 20 years, focus­ing on health­care issues. Wade cred­ited her­self as one of the key peo­ple who ini­ti­ated the Char­ter amend­ment which has led to the tran­si­tion in gov­ern­ment and said she is proud to be a part of the team that will lead the transition.

Wade holds law and busi­ness degrees. She pre­vi­ously served on City Coun­cil under the statu­tory gov­ern­ment and has been a city audi­tor. Because of her expe­ri­ence, she said she will be a good resource for the tran­si­tion and is “com­mit­ted to Galion.”

Tom O’Leary spoke last that evening. He comes from a rail­road fam­ily and moved back to Galion in 1981. He said he has direct expe­ri­ence with how the statu­tory gov­ern­ment sys­tem works. “Every­thing we have is invested in this town…City gov­ern­ment had not done its job to uphold its role in enhanc­ing or appre­ci­ated those invest­ments,” O’Leary stated.

He said his admin­is­tra­tion skills and 30 years of expe­ri­ence in pub­lic ser­vice will con­tribute to his job. Pre­vi­ously, he was a county com­mis­sioner when he was 27 years old and worked for Gov­er­nor Voinovich. Before retir­ing, O’Leary worked for Jobs and Fam­ily Ser­vices for four years, which he said allowed him oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with Galion-area families.

For ques­tion por­tion of the meet­ing, the first ques­tion was directed to O’Leary: If he intended to appoint a Service-Safety Direc­tor or how those duties would be car­ried out. O’Leary said yes, he would appoint a posi­tion of some sort, but would look at some sort of admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant to func­tion in that role.

Instead, he said he would uti­lize depart­ment heads more and empower each depart­ment. His phi­los­o­phy: Less is more when it comes to management.

Elec­tric rates and util­ity shut-offs were another topic. Can­di­dates empha­sized they want to work more directly with those who are hav­ing trou­ble pay­ing bills and cre­ate bud­gets for them.

O’Leary added that they could look at chang­ing the billing cycle itself to bet­ter accom­mo­date peo­ple, espe­cially retirees and oth­ers liv­ing on fixed income. “It’s amaz­ing that [the City] shuts peo­ple off for a few hun­dred dol­lars when we have a $650,000 a month bill from AMP Ohio,” he commented.

Wade referred to a Finance Com­mit­tee in which rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Com­mu­nity Action Cen­ter said that, out of all the util­ity depart­ments they deal with, the City of Galion was the worst. “We have a lot of room for improve­ment in work­ing with these kinds of delin­quent accounts and other social programs.”

On bring­ing jobs to Galion, O’Leary noted there is only so much capa­ble of being done in seven months. How­ever, he said the revolv­ing loan fund can be used to assist exist­ing busi­nesses and strate­gies can be devel­oped for dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing Galion from sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ties. He said the city needs to line up its assets, such as the qual­ity labor force, and poten­tial devel­op­ment areas.

“It’s also impor­tant to present a pos­i­tive atmos­phere” O’Leary said, because of com­pe­ti­tion with other communities.

Wade pointed out that in years passed, there has been a dis­con­nect between gov­ern­ment lead­ers, the cit­i­zens and the busi­ness community.

Richart added that they could work with exist­ing indus­tries, as well and help them expand, to increase employ­ment in the short-term.

Before mov­ing into the next dis­cus­sion topic, Faulds used the meet­ing as a soap­box to com­plain about the City’s power con­tract with Prairie State Energy Cam­pus, a coal-fired power plant that Faulds has adamantly opposed since last sum­mer. He crit­i­cized past city offi­cials for enter­ing into so many “one-sided” power pur­chas­ing agree­ments with lit­tle to know discussion.

One audi­ence mem­ber asked about the pro­posed drug treat­ment reha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter that fell through, even though there is a lack of resources in Craw­ford County to help peo­ple suf­fer­ing from a drug addiction.

O’Leary said the biggest issue with that pro­posal being made was that there was never any input from the neigh­bor­hood and com­mu­nity, so things “got off on the wrong foot.” He acknowl­edged that there is a need for tran­si­tional liv­ing, but com­mu­nity input is needed on where it should be located in the county. “The right place, the right plan, effi­cient secu­rity,” he concluded.

Another audi­ence mem­ber said the “not my job atti­tude” of cur­rent city offi­cials is pathetic. Some dis­cus­sion about the impor­tance of appro­pri­ate atti­tude and a focus on cus­tomer ser­vice ensued.

The final ques­tion that evening was: “Dur­ing Coun­cil meet­ings, will you allow more that five min­utes for cit­i­zens to speak?”

Faulds responded that respect for the cit­i­zens is the heart of the issue. He sug­gested that, instead of sav­ing cit­i­zen com­ments for the end of the meet­ing, that por­tion could be moved toward the begin­ning, before the meet­ing busi­ness begins.

On Thurs­day, March 7, some can­di­dates will be at Granny’s Kitchen from 4:30 — 6:30 p.m. if any cit­i­zens are inter­ested in speak­ing with them more and offer­ing fur­ther insight.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Mar 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.