by Halie Rebeccaschild

We did it!

On November 7th, 2017, Loveland stood up and spoke with a landslide election of Loveland Community Heartbeat’s endorsed candidates, Neal Oury, Tim Butler, Ted Phelps, and Rob Weisgerber. The voices of Loveland residents could not have been clearer, we disapprove of the lack of transparency and the unethical processes of the past majority on council, and we want an elected city council that restores civility, function, and ethical integrity to city hall.

Now What?

Loveland Community Heartbeat plans to stay actively engaged in our local government through the upcoming transition to ensure that incoming City Council members fulfill their pledges to the residents of Loveland to increase transparency, ethics, and engagement. We believe that civically engaged residents are necessary to a truly healthy and flourishing city, and we plan to model that philosophy by staying involved.

We invite residents to join us at upcoming city meetings and in any opportunities that open up for residents to have an input on the development of a comprehensive master plan, a charter review, a parks master plan, city committees, budget planning, re-zoning, etc. Your input can make a huge difference to the quality of life of residents and to ensure that residents across the city feel like they are a part of the big decisions made, especially those involving public-private partnerships, changes to our city hall, or the type and amount of residential units added each year.

Stay Alert & Civically Engaged

So while it may appear that our work is done, getting our endorsed candidates elected, please do not make the mistake of thinking you can turn your backs now. Instead, why not make a small commitment to your city to stay alert, informed, and engaged? Believe it or not, WE the residents make all the difference ensuring city hall functions with ethical integrity of, by, and for the people. And we hope to see you continue keeping one eye on our city to ensure we move forward as one of Ohio’s Best Hometowns.

To those of you residents who stood up this year with your voices, your signatures, and your votes, Loveland Community Heartbeat salutes you! And to the team of residents who worked tirelessly to promote our messages to the residents this year, resulting in a successful outcome of a recall petition drive and the election of four endorsed candidates, I bow down to you with the greatest respect as the true movers of mountains.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” (attributed to) Margaret Mead

Thank you for standing up for our hometown, Loveland!

Halie Rebeccaschild is a traveling PADI SCUBA dive instructor, administrative professional, and community organizer who maintains residency at her childhood home in the Stoneybrook neighborhood of Loveland.

LACK OF A QUORUM

by Walter Golladay

Walter Golladay is a a resident of the Claiborne neighborhood in Loveland since 1989. He and his spouse, Peggy are proud to have raised a daughter who is a 1990 Loveland High School graduate, and their two grandsons are now members of the Loveland High School student body.

Mr. Golladay made the following statement to Loveland City Council following a scheduled public hearing that failed when no quorum was met. In summary, he warns, don’t vote for candidates who don’t show up for us. Loveland Community Heartbeat is proud to have Mr. Golladay as a voting stakeholder.

Golladay’s Address to Council, October 10th, 2017:

On 26 September, Loveland City Council was scheduled to meet on the 4th Tuesday of the month. Because a quorum of four council members did not happen, the meeting did not officially take place. For unknown reasons, Vice Mayor Angie Settell, and Council members Pam Gross, and Stephen Zamagias were absent without just cause from their appointed duty station. That being, City Hall, Loveland, Ohio, 7 pm.  Right here! These three council members chose to conduct personal business elsewhere, not for the benefit of Loveland residents, but for another business, another individual, or themselves.

 

This Loveland resident has the firm belief that these three council members chose not to appear in order to prevent a council quorum being established with the City Council members present of Kathy Bailey, Robert Weisgerber and Ted Phelps. For this one meeting, council members Kathy, Robert, and Ted would have represented the majority.

 

These three absent council members, Settell, Gross, and Zamagias, must be held accountable. In sufficient detail, they must explain to the Loveland residents where they were that evening, and why they could not attend a long established, regularly scheduled, council meeting date. They must also explain why none of them were available to attend alternate council meeting dates proposed of Monday, Wednesday or Thursday, the 25th, 27th, or 28th of September.

 

Why do I ask?  Because if they get away with this travesty, one or more of these three council members will do it again, when it benefits them and their clique, not we, the Loveland residents. These three council members chose to offend we Loveland residents by disappearing for the week and preventing scheduled City of Loveland business from being conducted.

 

Tomorrow, 2017 General Election absentee voting begins in the State of Ohio. Election day is November 7th.

Tonight, should any, or all, of these three council members not be able to offer a valid reason for their aforementioned absence, then we Loveland residents need to seriously consider not voting for them.

Thank you.

Where is the explanation for this group failure?

To date, Angie Settell, Pam Gross, and Steve Zamagias have provided no satisfactory answer to Loveland residents about their group absence from the September 26th meeting, which prevented a quorum from being met and stopped a meeting scheduled by the law of the Loveland Charter for 56 years.

Loveland Community Heartbeat endorses Neal Oury, Tim Butler, Ted Phelps, and Rob Weisgerber for Loveland City Council. Learn more about them here: www.lovelandheartbeat.org/candidates17 .

Paid for by Loveland Community Heartbeat Political Action Committee.

by Tom Morris

Tom Morris’s Address to City Council, August 22nd, 2017.

Council, we seem to have two public relations problems on our hands that I’d like to address.

The first, and most noticeable, is that our town is currently an embarrassment. We are much, much better than we have been. The actions of this council in the recent weeks has been deplorable, unfortunate, and absolutely a joke. I hope the remaining members of the “Fitzgerald Four” know that when news broke that their scripted, middle finger to the city meeting last week was deemed improper, most of this town was literally laughing at you. As an aside, never try to feign surprise at something if you already have a prepared acceptance speech. We seem to be on the right track now and hopefully this problem will be solved with a few weeks of stalemates and then the replacement of some of those said laughed at members in November’s election.

The second, and almost as glaring problem is that we are still paying for a Public Relations Officer. The man over there getting paid more than twodollars a minute to just sit here in the room with us. This man was hired with the unenviable task of trying to improve the image of a mayor who acted as much like a discount movie villain as he looked. Thankfully the PRO’s failure to do so at all was our city’s success.

Instead of casting our city in a better light, we have paid over 10 thousand dollars to sign up for a few social media accounts. Congratulations, we’ve spent five figures and several months accomplishing what a 7th grader does in an afternoon.

Over 10 thousand dollars. I had to watch this council fight like toddlers over a similar amount for the city to maintain actual, tangible land and yet we seem fine to throw away that much money for me to be reminded to pay my already automatically withdrawn water bill. Thanks for that. $125 an hour to have lunch with a resident and receiving nothing in return? These actions are deceitful, duplicitous, and if not illegal, at the very least Grossly unethical.

A good example is that on June 27th, we endured a hilariously embarrassing “a house divided cannot stand, so I’m going home now” council meeting. I hope the former mayor acted alone on that one, but if any of you had a hand in that, you are a disgrace to our city, though I digress. That meeting lasted 7 minutes and was a travesty. 7 minutes. And for that meeting we were charged $531.25. Almost $76 per minute of meeting. I like to think I do well for myself, but I could never bill clients like that since I was unfortunately imbued at birth with a conscience. Maybe it took more than 4 hours trying to shyster a positive spin on something so mind-numbingly dumb, but all we needed was the blurb that went through town of “grown man acts like child and is unfit for his position.”

We have a volunteer committee that can handle this. We just need to let them do the job they want to do. Besides, it’s not like we’re paying a premium for quality. I know the residents of this city can work together to get accurate, relevant, and most importantly unbiased information disseminated to the community.

Please, Council, I ask you to step up and end one of the remaining vestiges of the previous mayorship and move to end the agreement with the Public Relations Officer. I’m hoping that nobody is pulling at the your strings anymore so everyone can now form their own opinions, hopes to have a chance at reelection, realizes that this is a terrible deal for the city, and votes accordingly.

And if saving us thousands of dollars a month seems like too much work, I ask the residents of this city to not follow or visit any of the city social media pages until this problem is fixed. We don’t need them. We’re clearly able to get news out among ourselves.

 

There’s nothing of merit to be seen on the city’s PR pages anyway and maybe council will be less willing to give away our money to man that’s just screaming into the void of the internet without an audience. And certainly don’t post, call, or ask him anything. Every “who wrote this?” you put on Facebook and he responds to costs us around a penny per every single resident of Loveland.

We don’t need these public relations problems. Our city is much, much better than this and moving in an improved direction. We need to keep building on the positive momentum and end this PR agreement. It is not needed, it tarnishes our city’s name further, it’s fiscally reckless to continue it, and we need to correct it right away.

Loveland resident Tom Morris, address to Loveland City Council on August 22, 2017.

If this wasteful spending outrages you, Loveland, please contact Loveland City Manager, Dave Kennedy, to express your disappointment and desire for an end of this expense. Give him a call at (513) 683-0150 or email him at dkennedy@lovelandoh.gov .

Read more about this story on Loveland Magazine.

Paid for by Loveland Community Heartbeat Political Action Committee.