Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Fully anticipating the character assassination that will undoubtedly follow this let me ask the readers and posters to this site a question.

Why does every burp and fart in this community have to be dissected and analyzed to the nth degree to determine how it affects the schools?

For crying out loud, not every decision or thought I have in life requires me to first see how it affects the schools.

Paper or plastic? Wait! What would the schools think?

Which movie should we see tonight? I don?’t know honey, how does it affect the schools?

Do you want fries with that? Maybe, but how will the schools be impacted.

For crying out loud people, not every thought, idea, plan, discussion or breath should have to be weighed against the damn schools in this community.

You have let them become the 1,000 pound gorilla. Get over yourself and have a life. Until the schools are willing to change themselves why should I change my life to make them my top consideration? Why should city council? Why should the trustees? Why should developers? Why should farmers?

Topic of the Century

Very nicely put!!

By Any Mouse

My observations

From what I have read is that there are essentially two schools (pardon the pun) of thought.

One is that the school board is either incapable or unwilling to properly manage this school district. The other is that the school board is doing the best they can in a thank-less job.

Anyway you slice it, this is an issue that is bound to polarize this communinty.

By Coyote

Thanks Mouse

Any Mouse,

Thanks for the encouragement. Let me take this a little further; then let my demise begin. I have been as active in this community as possible over the last 10 years or so. While not preferring the limelight I have been relatively successful behind the scenes. Let me tell some of my observations.

All too often we have had good people get ruined by public service. Thus the viable candidate pool shrinks each and every election cycle allowing in more unsavory bacteria to pollute the waters. Good guys, bad guys, what does it matter? If you are willing to serve and suffer the slings and arrows ALL public servants here are subject to, especially in forums like this, you are at least, in part, a good guy. Right?

Take Lisa Reade. In general she is a good person and could, under different circumstances be a valuable school board member. However, whether through her own volition or through association with the wrong people she has become the single biggest talking head since Andrea Camburn. Rather than being able to develop a more supportive inner-circle, for lack of a better term, she either let the media or some other faction develop her presentation of herself and advise her. Her heart has always been in the right place but her mouth has put her on the outs with most of the district. Even her most fervent supporters during her campaign, of which I was one, have abandoned her and worry about her stability at times. Lisa Reade became Lisa Rhetoric.

Take Bruce Rigelman. Here was one of the smartest guys I ever had the pleasure of sharing a cup of coffee with. He was dedicated, committed and most importantly in his realm of public service, actually understood all aspects of running that big business. A few unsavory elements in the community made it their mission to try to not just get him out of office, but destroy him at the same time. Well Unsavory Elements, are you happy with what you got in return?

Take Gary Weltlich. Gary was one of the most prominent ?“man of the people?” I had the pleasure of working with. He was the sole voice of reason on an otherwise unreasonable board. He escaped so many of the slings and arrows others were taking instead. He stayed off the radar screen while remaining effective in a quiet way. Then what happened? Well, I can?’t answer that and that is because when the true persona we see today emerged I was so disappointed, I could not even ask him what happened. I felt I had a strong enough relationship with him to have been able to ask him ?“Gary, what the hell happened? You used to be ?‘one of us?’ and always put your constituents in the township AND city first. Now you say and do the very things we all used to accuse the ?‘bad guys?’ of.?” Public service took its toll I guess.

more to come---