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tangible land and yet we seem fine to throw away that much money for me to be reminded to pay my already automatically withdrawn water bill.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.
Loveland’s Public Relations Officer tweeted at $125/hr to remind residents of our utility bills.
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.
Every senseless tweet, every ridiculous post from Loveland’s Public Relations Officer, is money down the toilet, Loveland.
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 .
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Last Updated: September 7, 2017 by Halie
Loveland has 2 Public Relations Problems
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.
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.
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.
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