Dear Editor,
The power struggle for the City of Portsmouth seems never to end. Many in Portsmouth know the out dated city charter is the power base for the ruling four of the city of council to agree together and have complete controls of the affairs of Portsmouth. With a mayor form of government they had opposition, a spoke person that could limit their actions. They were successful in getting the voters to change from a mayor form of government to a city manager, in which they will have absolute control. They hire, they fire, so no city manager will disagree with them. It was really a bad choice the voter made for our city to have real leadership. Remember there will be no mayor to take your troubles to. Getting the majority of the city council to listen or have a reaction to you will be slim to none.
The move to change to a city manager will also cost the city 100,000 dollars or more each year. That is okay because we can still get credit; after all, we are already so far in debt that we have very little hope in getting it paid without bankruptcy. Have no doubt the city council is fighting hard to guarantee that they have absolute control to appoint the first city manage to be hired. It was an easy task to appoint themselves to be on the board to go through the screening process to find a city manager.
The heartbreak of it all is I have personally been told by a council person they would not consider any local person for the position. One, they do not believe any one locally had the ability or the brains to fulfill the position. Two, they do not want to consider any one that had local connections.
I wonder if most people in Portsmouth think we have to reach out and seek some form of leadership outside of our community, that everyone in the community lacks any leadership ability or that the people are so dumb that we are just lucky to be able to read and write. The whole idea is to just turn everything over to the power of the four council member, even if they decide to charge every resident in Portsmouth to pay the city manager, they will rule.
The main thought I had was the whole purpose of having a city council was to council, not to have total leadership of our community.
Eugene Collins
Portsmouth, Ohio
Did you read both postings, one agrees with Mr. Collins and the other, eieio, does not, so where does that leave you?
When we had a City Manager before, we were not as corrupt as we are now. The council is in charge, they were when we had Mayor Bauer, who brought the City Managers Association for one of their major meetings, you don't do that when you are corrupt, and Mayors Kalb, Murray and Malone. Bauer and Murray were recalled, does that give you a clue when the other two, Malone and Kalb were not recalled and took us to the abyss in these multiple years of multiple millions in DEFICIT's getting Adult Supervision from the State of Ohio getting no where going to a show down with the State of Ohio on "charge offs" another name for the illegal arbitrage.
You will not get a professional outsider in here unless they are corrupt from the start and there's a lot of inexperienced unemployed city managers with credentials who you could lure in here to cover for what the City Council wants, etc. Just them a lucrative package, salary and perks, and a severance package they have nothing to loose especially if they are already a double dipper, etc.
You should have seen how they bullied the Mayor Murray and finally recalled her, etc. It's assumed Bauer was the same way. With the city manager, it will now only take one City Council Executive Session meeting to fire them, not a recall, HELLO.