Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

The eternal optimist

Bruce,

Thanks you so much for always being optimistic. It is a breath of fresh air in most instances. However, in this case, it won't sell.

Fix/Fox has already shown his true colors time and time again. His incompetence in his leadership of the infamous republican club has resulted in many or most of the founding members quitting in disgust and outrage. Their treasury is completely broke. They gave money to candidates without voting on it. They abandoned their precious constitution and bylaws because they wouldn?’t suit Fix/Fox?’s needs. He has placed members in extreme jeopardy of losing their jobs over political activities by pressuring them to do something clearly forbidden by their employers. His fingerprints are all over at least two marriage failures and he is now committed to no less than four, repeat four campaigns for the primary. Bruce, as you well know from your years of public service, you can?’t be everything to everyone all the time. Something has to give and I think he made it pretty clear in conversations with people he thought he could trust during the campaigns, council will take a back seat to his higher political aspirations.

Give Smithy a chance? No way. I helped, in my own little way on the O?’Brien and Kramer campaigns and I saw first-hand the betrayal by Smithy. He was completely and totally manipulated by his campaign manager and that manager?’s puppeteer on council. This is the same manager that earlier in the year agreed to run O?’Brien?’s campaign but then took on Smithy and never had the gonads to tell O?’Brien he was dumped. That was a decision made by the campaign manager extraordinaire and the puppeteer when O?’Brien wouldn?’t be bullied by the puppeteer in his voting. Smithy, in spite of advice by his running mates sought out an endorsement vehicle that essentially ended O?’Brien?’s hopes. O?’Brien had ironed out his differences with the endorsers and all agreed to move on. O?’Brien made these accommodations solely in support of Smithy and then Smithy ends all his chances by getting in bed with the partisan politicians and didn?’t even have the cajones to tell O?’Brien until it was all over. Now Smithy is sitting with his two comrades in arms but they are the decided minority on council. Take my advice Smithy, ask Java Head, Wright and Parker what it?’s like to serve in the minority. Hope your selling your soul for a few votes is all you dreamed it would be. If I recall, the majority of council that has accomplished so much over the last two years were in the papers as point and the three baboons were always counterpoint. See how you feel when you read your quotes as the dissenting opinion all the time.

Hammond I will give a chance to for one reason and one reason only. O?’Brien recruited her so he must have seen something that we will see too, sometime. O?’Brien ran with Smithy but didn?’t recruit him.

Riggs, I ain?’t ever giving you a chance. What have you done since you have been on council? Nothing! I remember your talking up the ethics ordinance and all the flowery quotes written for you that you read to the press. Then what? You toss it all aside for a few hundred bucks for a gubernatorial campaign? Hope the boss appreciates your selling out and hope he doesn?’t get the idea that a sell-out is always a sell-out. You?’ll sell him out when it is politically advantageous.

And lastly to the Alpha Male, how could you let this happen? How could you abandon your most fervent supporters since your public service career started? What did you get for it? Another split council that you are now part of the minority of? Hope it was worth it. Hope you can tell the county voters how you did the right thing by letting a golden opportunity slip through you hands but that your judgment is still keen when you are serving on the bench. I hope good old Lou is having the last laugh at your expense!

That dog won't hunt

Bruce, with all due respect, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. But I'm willing to give the devil his due... Do some research and leg work on your own.

Ask Kramer and O'Brien how Fix/Fox attacked their ethics and morals on the record in Planning and Zoning. All the other members of that commission heard and saw the attack as well. It's public record for Pete's sake! Do you really think that Fix/Fox will change? Why do you think his name is stapled to Brian Fox? They are essentially one and the same person. Fix has been defending this notion that he is not associated with Fox ever since he announced he was running for office at the Republican Club but they have been seen in public together! Look at Fix/Fox's campaign finance report, better than 90% of the $8000+ he took in came from outside the city of Pickerington. Do you really think that those people just gave him money and expect nothing in return. If you think that, perhaps I could interest you in a bridge I have for sale in New York.

Again, don't take my word on it, but ask Smith why he was sending out mailers and posting newspaper ads for just himself and not the ''team'' he was running with. Ask him why when O'Brien, Kramer and Hammond was going door to door with team material he was only going door to door with his material. He betrayed Mitch O'Brien and Tory Kramer. He did the same to Cristie Hammond but she came out a winner.

Again, Bruce, I ask you if you honestly think that people who commit such deeds are capable of change?



By The Watcher

Valid Concerns

You folks certainly do raise some valid concerns. I have not talked with Mr. Fix in years, since his days working with Bob Harding. People do change.

If Mr. Fix has run the Republican Club of Northwest Fairfield County into the ground, and driven off its membership, that does bode ill. Although I am a liberal (though fiscally conservative) Democrat, I have great respect for the founders of that organization, and credit them with turning our local government around. I also consider them good friends, and trust their judgment.

Strike two, I guess, would be spending that much money -- especially that much outside money -- on a campaign for election to the Pickerington city council. In our political system, money always seems to buy access, if not votes. It certainly would be worth following that money to see where it leads.

But I'm still waiting for strike three. I'm not an eternal optimist. But I do believe in hoping for the best in people (while preparing for the worst).

But we do need to be prepared. The test, for me, will be whether our new council can stand up to the BIA -- an organization whose interests are antithetical to those of this community.

We can best stay prepared by keeping the important issues alive. We need to articulate them clearly. We cannot allow our elected leaders to forget them. And we need to publicize them in every way that we can. We need to set the public agenda, and our elected leaders need to know that they are being watched by an attentive electorate that will not hesitate to throw them out of office.

Politicians can be weasles. Too often, they are distracted from any commitment they may ever have had to the public good by enlarged egos, by their continual need to raise money for their next election, and by their drive to advance their own political careers. It's not surprising that we have so many bad laws and public policies. Indeed, it's amazing that we have as many good ones as we do.

We should distrust office-holders who use one office as a stepping stone for the next. Too often, they are just using us.

I likewise prefer amateurs for local office -- people who have been brought to office by local issues, and who want to do nothing more than address them effectively. We are, indeed, fortunate to be represented by many such people here in Pickerington. Mitch O'Brien certainly was one of them, and our new council president and vice president are as well.

We may, unfortunately, also have some of the other sort, and we will have them for the next several years. But we must try to make the best of it. We have come too far to let anyone turn us back now.