Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

Stop the Uher, Uher!

If you would take the trouble to check the PLSD website yourself, you would see that Board minutes and Board policies already have been posted there, along with financial information relating to the proposed levy and a web link to the state auditor's website where the PLSD's most recent CAFR reports are available.

You would also see that, with the resignation of our public relations director, we have lost our webmaster. I certainly do not know how to post anything to the website myself. I can say, however, that I have asked our administrators, several times, to post every item that I have mentioned. I will continue to ask, but that is all I can do.

As for transportation, if Yocum, Sigman, Sanders, Carlier, Geiss and Menoski had not fought Gail's and my efforts to terminate Laidlaw three years ago, when their contract was up for renewal, we would not be in this pickle today. As I pointed out at the time, Laidlaw was on the brink of bankruptcy and was telling investors how it would milk its existing school transportation contracts to dig itself out of the hole.

For us to do anything about the situation now, we need to bring the routing function in-house. To do the job right, we will need to purchase the computer software that Laidlaw should have purchased years ago, and learn how to use it. That will take several months but, if you have been reading the papers, you know that we already have taken the necessary steps to do that. Laidlaw's days of planning our routes have ended.

If you and others had not fought Gail and I at the time, we would not have built that boondoggle on Refugee Road, or dug our financial hole even deeper by resorting to so-called ''mininal new millage'' financing that will drastically increase our debt service over the next few years. This, as you may recall, is what provoked your barrage of, frankly, insane letters to my employer.

If you and your PLSD friends had not put up such resistence for all these years, I would not have had to fight tooth and claw to institute some semblance of fiscal responsibility in the PLSD, and to start bringing some accuracy to PLSD financial forecasts. Thankfully, with Wes' election to the board, the removal of Yocum and Menoski, and the promotion of Vince Utterback, who has done an incredible job dealing with Menoski's years of neglect, we are making some real progress. However, you continue to fight us.

Finally, if you and your friends had not fought Gail and I on document accessibility, you would have nothing to complain about on that score now. There was a time when even Gail and I could not get any information from the PLSD or its vendors that Yocum and his three school board minions did not want us to have. And, as you may recall, they did not want us to have anything. Remember what my quarrel with Fifth Third was all about? And remember your own insidious role in the matter.

Thanks to us, even the likes of you can now get any PLSD documents they wish. You only need to ask. There is only one qualification: you have to ask for documents that exist. Asking for documents that have never existed, like committee minutes, will get you nothing.

I do not know why you insist on making such a fool of yourself, but it is time you realized that you are accomplishing nothing more than that. Frankly, Uher, it's time to shut the hatch.

Incompetent Rigelman


Bruce,

How incompetent are you, Bruce? If you would take the trouble to check the PLSD website yourself, you would see that Board minutes are NOT available and they NEVER have been, you fool! There is a link, but it has NEVER worked and produces an error message. The link is just like your performance on the board ?… NON-WORKING, ALL Show and ALL BS!

Out of 800 employees, are you telling me that no one had the capability to communicate with the public except the public relations director? Do more than ask, Bruce. You are part of the majority now and have been for 18 months. Approve a resolution TOMORROW mandating the board minutes and financial information including the FY 04 budget, and the three CAFR reports in a pdf file be placed on PLSD website this COMING week. It does not take a rocket scientist, does it? Do you need me to write the board resolution for you to introduce tomorrow?

Why did you not purchase the computer software to monitor transportation functions and end Laidlaw's days of planning our routes 18 months ago? What are you waiting for? Again, you are now in the majority and it is time for you to stop blaming others for your incompetence. No one believes you any longer.

Stop living in the past. Stop the BS about how I intimidate you and how you were going to hire an attorney to bring a felony charge against my intimidation ?… you are making a fool of yourself.

That BS doesn?’t help with taxpayers?’ wallets today, does it, Bruce?

And speaking of BS, why aren?’t minutes from the Finance Committee available, Bruce?

Frankly, Rigelman, it's time for you to shut the hatch, stop the BS and start doing the job people elected you to do almost four years ago!!

Kiss of Death-Rigelman's Support


Bruce,

Before you open your hatch and spew more BS, you may want to log onto the Fairfield County Board of Elections website and just see how many people believe your BS.

In your neighborhood when you ran for election in 1999, only 17% of your neighbors voted for you and if 63 people out of 20,000 eligible voters would have changed their votes, you would not been elected to the board.

Why are you so very unpopular among your own neighbors ... people who know you the best?

And, it is a shame what you did to Bill Powers. If you would not have campaigned for him in neighborhoods like Summerfield, Glenshire, Haaf Farms, Melrose and Countrywood, he would have been elected.

Look at the election returns and look what happens to candidates that you endorse and oppose.

Sorry, Bruce, voters are smarter than your BS gives them credit for.

By Mark W. Uher

There you go again

There you go again, Uher.

You can't go for more than a sentence without name calling, threats or some other ugliness. That's your only answer, which makes it plain to everyone that you have very little to say.

I guess you don't recall your own roll in trying to deny Gail and I access to Eric Erickson at Fifth Third. Yocum and his three school board minions did not even want to allow us to ask questions. And when we tried to do so, you sent libelous letters, and made libelous phone calls, to my employer, and threatened to boycott Gail's business. You made up your now well-known story about armed masked marauders laying waste the property of levy supporters from the back of a pick-up truck.

And how did you obtain copies of my e-mails to Eric Erickson, Uher? If you did not already know they existed, it could not possibly have occurred to you to ask for them. Did you get them from Yocum, Carlier, Sigman or Sanders? Frankly, I do not believe you could have done what you did without their complicity. Why do you allow people to use you that way, Uher?

I will continue to ask that additional financial materials be posted on the PLSD website. But the PLSD will need to find someone who knows how to do so and, apparently, someone who knows how to maintain a web site. The PLSD, however, is a little short-handed right now.

In the meantime, Uher, if there is anything you want, you need only ask for it. Times have changed. Even people like yourself can now get access to PLSD documents. And you can go to the state auditor's website yourself if you want copies of the PLSD's recent CAFR's. I provided instructions on how to do so in one of my postings.

There are, incidentally, no such things as committee reports, committee minutes or anything of the sort. As you know, since sliced bread was new, school board members have participated in various school district liaison groups on matters such as buildings and grounds, transportation, curriculum and the like. These groups do not hold public meetings, make no decisions, take no votes, make no recommendations and, consequently, keep no minutes. They are committees of the school district, not the school board, and thus are not subject to the Ohio sunshine law. The finance committee, which apparently has become your latest bogey, is simply another one of these liaison groups.

I should add that every person who has served on the school board for the past 20 years has regularly attended nonpublic meetings of these groups. Thus every board member, including the two you apparently now favor, has violated the Ohio sunshine law in attending these meetings, if any board member has.

If I were you, I would take a long pause before participating in this or any other public forum again. If you want to contribute constructively to public discourse in this community, and not just pollute it, you need, frankly, to take some time to become a better person. I am sorry that I have to say that, but that's the way it is.