Trash Talk: The Rat and the Unelected Mayor

The Rat and and the Unelected Mayor 

R: What I want to know is when you’re gonna stop this cockamamie trash collection schedule that’s never the same.

M: I told you it’s very simple. On designated holidays, everyone’s collection moves up one day. So if it’s on Monday, when the next holiday comes it’s on Tuesday. And if you’re pickup day is Tuesday, when the holiday comes it’s on Wednesday.

R: And if it’s on Thursday?

M: Then the pickup day is Friday if there’s a designated  holiday.

R: What’s a designated holiday?

M: You rats don’t know what a designated holiday is?

R: It’s not just rats that don’t know what designated holidays are. Most of the people in this town don’t know what they are or when they are.

M: Who told you that?

R: Never mind. I’ve got my sources.

M: Well, look Rodney, try to understand . . .

R: Rodney? I’m here on official business, so please address me as  Mayor Rodney.

M: Mayor?

R: That’s right. I‘m the duly elected mayor of the rats of Portsmouth. I wasn’t appointed like you, and I want the respect due me in my role as mayor. Didn’t you complain at a council meeting that the public weren’t addressing you by your proper title? And you hadn’t even been appointed mayor yet. You were just president of council. What did you want them to call you, Mr. President?

M: Let’s get back to the trash pickups and designated holidays.Why is it so hard to understand? If your pickup day is Monday, when the holiday comes it’s changed to Tuesday.

R: When there's a designated holiday?

M: That’s right.

R: Like St. Patrick’s Day?

M: No, St. Patrick’s Day is not a designated holiday.

R: It’s not?

M: No, it’s not.

R: Why not?

M: Because it’s not important. It’s not a legal holiday.

R: It’s not legal?

M: No.

R: It sounds like discrimination against us rats of Irish ancestry.

M: You’re an Irish rat?

R: My great-great-great-great grandfather came over on a boat from Ireland more than a hundred years ago.

M: But St. Patrick’s Day is not a designated holiday.

R: So, it’s an illegal holiday?

M: No, I wouldn’t say illegal.

R: Was it illegal when that woman brought two bags of trash to your office because she couldn't figure out your crazy pickup schedule?

M: I don't know what you're talking about.

R: Your memory's not much better than your math, is it?

M: We're talking about the trash schedule, not my math.

R: How about St. Valentine’s Day? Is that a designated holiday?

M: No, it’s not a legal holiday.

R: You’re a Protestant aren’t you?

M: That’s right.

R: What have you got against saints, Mayor?

M: Saints?

R: St. Patrick and St. Valentine. And while we’re at it what have you got against homosexuals?

M: They’re an abomination.

R: Who says?

M: The bible says, “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It’s an abomination.”

R: So you’re not a homosexual?

M: Absolutely not.

R: Are you an adulterer?

M: What has that go to do with trash pickups?

R: You know what it says in the bible about adulterers? “If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die.” Deuteronomy, Chapter 22, Verse 22-24.

M: What’s the big hang up about trash days? 

R: The big hangup is you're switching them around.  We’re creatures of habit, us rats, believe it or not. My father and my grandfather before him could count on the trash being picked up on the same day every week, like clockwork, depending on which ward we’re talking about.  On Monday, they would take the sewer to the First Ward. On Tuesdays they would take the sewer to the Second Ward. Etcetera. Five days a week, six in my grandfather’s day. They knew where they could get a square meal every night. But no more. Now it’s chaos. Neither the rats or the people know what the hell’s going on with the trash.

M: I’m sorry. We can’t afford that system anymore.

R: Because you don’t want to pay the hardworking sanitation crews overtime.

M: We can’t afford to pay them overtime.

R: But you can afford to pay the police and fire plenty of overtime. You've driven the city close to bankruptcy with all their overtime.

M: They’re doing essential work

R: And picking up the garbage isn’t essential?

M: It’s not garbage, It’s trash.

R: Says you. The sanitation crews know and us rats know that plenty of it’s garbage, or we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. No self-respecting rat is interested in trash.

M: This meeting is now over. I’m a busy man.

R: Busy? Why you're one of the laziest men in this city. In fact, you’ve  been avoiding work all your life. 

M: Who told you that?

R: I've got my sources. You were on the state payroll as a so-called laborer on the roads, but you were a notorious goldbricker, before you moved on to your current racket.

M: Religion?

R: Portsmouth politics, where there are more abominations than there are rats in the overflowing sewers of Portsmouth.

M: If you don’t leave this office, I’m going to call the police.

R: I’m going. I’m going.  But before we end this trash talk, let me  recommend a website. It’s BibleTrash.com.  And I’ll provide a link for you (click) here.

M: Are you an atheist? An atheist rat?

R: I'm  free-thinking rat. 

M: Then I'll follow you out.

R: Why?

M: Because I'm going out on the steps of the Municipal Building  and pray to the Lord to rid Portsmouth of rats. 

R: Save your breath. Your Waste Water Manager Duncan is drowning us rats faster with his flooded sewers and basements than the Lord can do in a month of Sundays.

M: (picking up the bible from the desk) Here it is. Isaiah, 55:17:
". . .those who eat the flesh of pigs, rats and other unclean things—they will meet their end together with the one they follow."

R: I think I speak for all my constituents when I say if your prayers against rats are as effective as your prayers for prosperity we don't have anything to worry about.

M: But the bible says . . .

R: Oh, the bible says so many things, like death is going to come to adulterers, and that the slothful are not fit to rule (Proverbs, 12:24), but there you sit in the mayor's chair, which you are not qualified for and to which you were not elected. It's a wonder anybody in this trashy city has faith in anything. Incidentally, what does the bible say about bankrupts? 

". . .those who eat the flesh of pigs,
 rats and other unclean things—
they will meet their end together
 with the one they follow."

 

All Aboard the Twentieth Century Limited!

The crooked conductor on the Twentieth Century Ltd. 

As the January 2014 transition deadline approaches for the change in city government (click here), I want to call your attention to an article that appeared in the Yale Law Journal in 2006 on the subject of the mayoral versus the city manager form of government (click  here to read the article). Written by “Richard C. Schragger, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, the article seeks to answer the question posed by its title: “Can Strong Mayors Empower Weak Cities?” By “strong mayors” Schragger refers not to Schwarzenmayors but to males and females who have strong executive powers by reason of the city charter and/or the state law in the area where they hold office. By “weak cities” Schragger means, well,  cities like Portsmouth, which are the stepchild of  the states in which they are located. In the four levels of government—federal, state, county,  and local—cities are at the bottom of the political food chain,  and generally have to subsist on scraps thrown to them from the federal, state, and county levels above them.  The top to bottom structure is dominated from the top by the federal government, which shares power with the states, as is provided for in the U.S. Constitution, but state constitutions usually do not follow suit, providing little recognition and power to city governments. “This arrangement,” Schragger writes, “in which cities are formally subservient to states, has significant consequences for local political actors.” The particular local actor who suffers most in this arrangement is the mayor, because she is the chief executive government in city government, but  she has relatively little authority to carry out her responsibilities.

Because their powers are limited, too many mayors have historically resorted to underhanded methods to make up for their lack of clout. Corruption became synonymous with city government in the late 1800s, with mayors and council members (or aldermen) competing with each other for graft. Early in the 1900s (that is to say, the twentieth century), in the decade and a half known as the Progressive Era, reformers, especially in urban cities, cracked down on corruption and helped promote the change to the city manager form of government. Many mid-size and smaller cities followed the example of the larger cities. The aim of the reform movement was to take politics out of city government by replacing mayors with professional (appointed-as-opposed-to-elected) city managers, who had the educational qualifications and training to run a city after the fashion of a business. Or at least that was the hope. 
                           Century of the City Manager
The twentieth century can be said to be the century of the city manager, but well before the century was over a number of cities grew dissatisfied with that form of government and began switching back to the mayoral form of government. Portsmouth was one of those cities, switching back in 1988. The twenty-first century is shaping up to be the century of the strong mayoral form of city government, according to Schragger. At least that’s the way things are trending, possibly because chronically depressed cities like Portsmouth cannot afford to have city managers as chief executive officers. City managers have no political power—they’re not supposed to have political power—but  cities cannot get by with politically impotent chief executive officers. Former Portsmouth city manager Barry Feldman, whose whole city manager career was marked by controversy, offered advice for aspiring city managers in the doctoral dissertation he later wrote at the University of Connecticut: be as political as you can get away with,  because without political influence a city manager is a cross between a punching bag and a doormat, even if he she has more education and a higher salary than city council, whom the city managers have to answer to. I’ve been told by a former city council member that Feldman serves as Kevin W. Johnson’s guru when it comes to questions of governance. Heaven help Portsmouth if  that’s true, because somebody should write a dissertation on Feldman’s career, which illustrates the futility of the city manager form of government. Johnson gives every sign of being as underhanded and dishonest as Feldman, which qualifies him to be Portsmouth’s next city manager. 
                                Progress, Portsmouth Style 

            Switching back to city manager is the most important (and deleterious) thing that has happened in city government in  Portsmouth in the last thirty years, but with Johnson’s connivance the measure was put on an off-year ballot without many voters knowing what was happening. Something that important deserved more time for consideration, and a vote in a general election, which was apparently what supporters of the switch back did not want. In homosexual hating Appalachia, Johnson, whose career took him from West Virginia, to San Francisco, to Portsmouth,  would queer any project he was identified with, so they knew better than to allow more time for consideration and discussion. That Johnson  is also underhanded, as he has frequently  shown himself to be, as on the so-called “building committee,” makes him a favorite target for the homophobes on Topix, who denounce him as not only queer but corrupt. From a drug-dealing pimp to this. That’s progress, Portsmouth style.

Frank Gerlach, who may be the  only person in Portsmouth’s history to serve as both city manager and mayor, strongly advised against switching back.  But what does he know, a successful lawyer and seasoned leader? Granted that the terrible trio of Greg Bauer, Jim Kalb, and David Malone are the best argument against the mayoral system that anyone might possibly make, but removing the mayor, except as a ceremonial figure, from the city government, will be worse because at least the office of the mayor serves a check and a balance to the city council and leaves open the possibility that somebody who is not a pawn may occupy the office. But without the  checks and balances the mayoral form of government potentially allows, we will have Kevin W. Johnson as the crooked conductor on the train the apt name for which is the Twentieth Century Limited, which will take  Portsmouth back to the previous, or possibly even to the nineteenth century. “All Aboard!”  Will Portsmouth never live down the curse of Barry Feldman? All aboard! Will it ever it stop being a weak city? All aboard! Will it ever have a mayor again, a strong mayor, who will not be railroaded out of office by the usual suspects for whom most of the failures occupying public office are nothing but puppets. All aboard! The painful irony is that this form of business-like governance will be run by chronic losers whose own business ventures, like the Emporium (that historic landmark!) have ended in failure, if not bankruptcy.

Portsmouth's railroad terminal building was razed to make way for the county jail.
(Click here)

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Kasich Worst on Open Records

"Kasich Worst on Open Records"

from Plunderbund (click here)

Governor Kasich signs law exempting rabid dogs from Ohio’s onerous open records laws as Fifi, spokesdog for RRCK (Rabid Republican Canines for Kasich) looks on approvingly. Governor Kasich told reporters afterwards that convicted sex offenders living within 1000  feet of schools are the last group still covered by Ohio’s onerous open records laws and he vowed to see sex offenders exempted before the year is out. With that last barrier to free enterprise removed, he is sure JobsOhio will forge ahead.

Gee Wiz!

"Ohio State University President Gordon Gee said Notre Dame was never invited to join the Big Ten because the university’s priests are not good partners, joking that 'those damn Catholics can’t be trusted,' according to a recording from late last year."

                                                                                                     News item

"All right, have it your way. You heard Gordon Gee say,

 'Those damn Catholics can't be trusted.'"

Kevin W. Johnson: Selling Out

[What follows is a condensed and slightly revised version of a 2008 River Vices  posting, to which I have added a postscript.]

Portsmouth businessman Kevin Johnson is playing an important role in helping the city’s corrupt politicians recycle the Marting Scam, which has morphed into the “City Center Scam.” The City Center Scam is a scheme to turn the 124-year-old decrepit Marting building into a home for city offices, with mom and pop kiosks on the ground floor to sell notions and newspapers. 

The citizens of Portsmouth rejected the Marting Scam by more than 2 to 1 in a referendum in May 2006, but the crooks are back again in 2008, recycling what they failed to sell the first time, repackaging it as the City Center, with Kevin Johnson up to his neck in the lies and “petitions” being circulated to fool the public into thinking that the old, unoccupied, leaking Marting building, with its ugly phony-brick 1950s' façade, is the key to the revival of downtown Portsmouth. After my legal challenge to First Ward councilman Tim Loper resulted in his removal from office, Johnson harbored political ambitions of being appointed to replace him. But the city chose Mearan, perhaps with the philosophy of “better the devil you know.” Now Johnson, as a member of the City Building Committee, has shown he is a team player who follows the rules by which the crooked game is played.

The Emporium

Kevin Johnson, or Kevin Warren as he is listed on the Scioto County Auditor’s website, is the co-owner of the Emporium antique shop, at 607 Chillicothe St. His partner is Paul Johnson, whose last name he has apparently taken. The irony is that Kevin Johnson, or Kevin Warren, this crusader for the revival of downtown Portsmouth, is reportedly trying to sell the Emporium. He’s going to sell out, after about five years in business, if only he can find a buyer as foolish as he was when he started the business. He’s going to sell out and move out, although a case could be made that he had already sold out when he became a member of the City Building Committee, chaired by the nefarious Mike Mearan. Johnson's sellout may in the end help him unload the Emporium.

What a poster boy Johnson is for downtown renewal! What in the world was he and his partner thinking when they opened another antique shop in Portsmouth? The Emporium is all the evidence you need that downtown Portsmouth died forty years ago but nobody has buried the corpse, of which the Marting building is the stinking head. The people in our down-at-the-heels-crime-ridden-community needed another antique shop like they needed another prostitute on John St., or more doped-up drug dealers on Waller St., or like they needed another chop shop/oxycontin dealership like West End Auto. After visiting the Emporium website, I wondered who among us needs a Marting Shoe Polisher can, a life-sized cut-out of Marilyn Monroe having her skirt blown up over a subway grate; or a copy of a 33 1/3 Velvet Underground vinyl record (shown at left); or a Black Forest Cuckoo Clock?  Doesn’t Kevin Johnson realize that the local rednecks, according to Clayton Johnson, don’t even know how to set an alarm clock? Would potential customers who don’t know how to set an alarm clock pay $125 for an antique cuckoo clock?

The Emporium had moved into the empty building that had previously been occupied by Stapleton Office Supplies, which had held on as long as it could before heading for greener pastures, heading for anywhere, that is, other than downtown Portsmouth, just as Sears Roebuck had previously moved out of that same building. Why did Kevin Johnson think there would be any more customers for antiques than there had been for office supplies, or for pet grooming, or for Speedo bathing suits, or quilts, to name some of the businesses that have come and gone in the last twenty years on Chillicothe Street? Portsmouth was already the antique/junk shop capital of south-central Ohio before the Johnsons arrived. Having another antique shop was like bringing coke to New Boston or oxycontin to Portsmouth. We’ve already got enough of that stuff.

I talked to Stapleton’s employees the week before it closed. It was a sad occasion, but Stapleton’s understood the time had come to get out. The Marting Foundation is trying to con everyone into believing downtown can be revived, like the  dinosaurs  in Jurassic Park. The dream of recreating the bustling downtown Portsmouth of 60 years ago is a myth that Clayton Johnson and others perpetrate and exploit, just as unscrupulous evangelists exploit the hope of everlasting life. Unfortunately, the only thing that is likely to revive downtown Portsmouth is casino gambling.

Gambling

That’s probably what Kevin Johnson was betting on too when he opened the Emporium. As I reported in an earlier River Vices blog, “Sluts and Slots,” the Portsmouth Daily Times (28 June 2005) ran a front-page story [above] with the headline “Gambling Draws Local Support.” What did this local support consist of? One person, Kevin Johnson, who, the PDT reported, “said casinos could mean turning around the local economy.” Maybe gambling would eventually turn around the local economy, but not soon enough, as it turned out, to save the Emporium.

Will someone buy the Emporium or will it remain on the market for a long time? If the City Center becomes a reality, maybe Johnson can attract buyers for the Emporium by claiming that things are looking up downtown. As somebody with a lot of white elephants on his hands, he has a vested interest in the proposed City Center, which may explain why he wants the city to invest millions of dollars in renovating Marting’s, though many citizens are adamantly opposed to and voted against it. Gambling did not save the Emporium. Portsmouth did not bail him out, but he apparently hopes the the City  Center will. But if the City Center doesn't materialize, if all other avenues are closed, he can try to unload the building on the public as the Marting Foundation did the Marting Building and George Clayton did the Kendrick’s retail store building. Johnson has tried to make the case that the building the Emporium occupies has architectural and historical importance. “In recognition of our [restoration] efforts,” the Johnsons tell us on their Emporium website, “the City of Portsmouth designated our building as a historic site in late 2002, and plans are to restore the exterior of the building in the near future.” What malarkey! There is nothing historic or architecturally significant about the building the  Emporium occupies. Designating the building historic was a political payoff to Johnson who from the time he arrived in the city courted corrupt politicians like Jim Kalb and supported the Marting Scam. As a historic site, the Emporium building has more chance of being unloaded on the taxpayers, as the "historic" Marting building was. If he does unload the building on the taxpayers, it will be his reward for having sold out to the crooks who control the city.

Postscript

As we now know, the City Center did not materialize  and the Marting building remains an albatross around the neck of Portsmouth taxpayers. Kevin W. Johnson did not find a buyer for his business, liquidating the merchandise instead. The "historic" building the business occupied had been on the market for years without attracting any buyers. In the past, following what I call "Portsmouth's First Commandment," influential people with Portsmouth property they could not sell unloaded it on the taxpayers as the Marting Foundation did the "historic" Marting building. But those kind of swindles are now harder to pull off and Johnson does not yet have that kind of influence. He is not yet that kind of Johnson! However, he is good at selling out. A banker who is apparently now a budding politician, Michael Gammp, of the American Savings Bank, purchased the building from Johnson in a move the commercial and political consequences of which are yet to be revealed. Meanwhile, Johnson, has proved himself the most officious council member. His machinations have included returning the city to a city manager form of government, which will put him in the position of being able to control city government, since the mayor will become a position with no power at all, leaving Johnson, as the cleverest politician in city government, to act even more  in his characteristically clandestine manner. Long after he is gone, the city will have to deal with the consequences of the shift back to city manager. When he arrived in Portsmouth, Johnson thought gambling would be a solution to many of the city's problems. Now he thinks the city manager will be. Just wait.

* * *

For earlier related posts click on:

S.O.G.P.

Gambling

The First Commandment of Portsmouth