Mark Uher
Mark certainly did make a very deliberate attempt to get me fired by my employer several years ago. And nearly everything Mark has said about the incident in this posting is false -- including, above all, what Mark claims my employer told him. A more accurate summary of that response would be ''go pound salt.''
Several months earlier Mark had threatened to boycott Bank One if I did not support ''minimal new millage -- the financing structure we used for our new high school and junior high that will increase our total interest expense by 20% and result in a doubling of our principal and interest payments over the next few years.
After I voted against this unsound financing structure, Mark sent several letters to my employer, and made phone calls to one of my colleagues, claiming, among other things, that I was ''despised in my community'' and an ''embarassment'' to my employer, and that I was associated with a mysterious gang that in November 1997 supposedly had traversed the school district in the back of a pick-up truck, wearing masks and carrying guns, destroying the property of levy supporters. He claimed this same mysterious gang had threatened him with bodily harm in reprisal for his attacks on me, and that he had had to beef up security at his house. And these are just a few of the high points.
Mark made these ridiculous charges even though he knew (because I had worked on with him on the levy campaign) that I had strongly supported the levy that was on the ballot in November 1997 (to build our middle schools). I wrote my own campaign brochure and distributed it door to door. Indeed, as the primary author of the facilities committee report that was issued that fall, I probably had as much to do with the passage of that levy as anyone.
The lawyer that I engaged to review Mark's letters suggested that I sue him for libel. Although I am a public figure in Pickerington, and thus have a greater burden of proof in suing anyone for libelous statements here, I am not a public figure in Chicago, where Mark's poison pen letters were directed. I also considered filing criminal charges against him under Ohio's intimidation statute. Under Ohio law, not surprisingly, it is as much a crime to threaten and intimidate a public official as it is to bribe one. Intimidation of a public official is a felony, punishable by a substantial prison term.
However, I decided that becoming entangled with this person for however long a civil suit or criminal charges would take to unfold simply would not be worth the trouble. I regretted that decision when, several months later, Mark and Debbie Carlier decided to use this discussion board to make fun of my inoperable brain tumor.
And why, you ask, did Mark do all this? He did it, by his own account, because I voted, and argued, against ''minimal new millage.'' I continue in that view. But even if I am wrong, I ask you, is this the way that a reasonable, sane and mature person handles disagreements?
