Public Comment began at 8:45.
Jan Oros: I have a question on the shared services [with the church] which was talked about last meeting. I did not see iton the minutes. ou talked about charging the church for plowing every time. I had some questions on how it all might work.
Jason: Everything needs to be taken into consideration. I hope Brian Summerlin can take that back to the church. [Brian and Dottie Summerlin were both in attendance.] I tried to put a dollar figure to everything.
Jan: There are three entities using the services.
Jason: Nothing that I put onto the sheet I submitted to them is iron clad. I juist tried to split those costs up.
Jan: [Blogger: Some hypotheticals that I did not follow came here.]
Jan, continuing: The second thing is that a friend of mine told me they were in the Civic Center and there were a lot of bees.
Sue Skrovan: They sprayed last Wednesday. There was a craft class _____ [missed a word]. There were a couple of bees, but we swept up a lot of dead ones.
Terry Ronak: If you need anything from Warehouse Club, I have a membership and drive there every week. You don't need a membership.
Terrie Nielsen: I noticed some blacktopping was done at the school at the handicapped spaces. Whenever that is done, because I work for the Board of Elections, I need to check to make sure the lines are correct. They are not.
Vic was startled at that.
Terrie: Spaces have to be eight feet wide plus five feet of white line. For a van it has to be eleven feet.
Vic: That was from the contractor. I was cleaning at the same time and asked them and they said they were doing the lines right. They said, the contractor. This was the elevator contractor. If I would have known we would have paid to have the whole thing done. Now that I know it is wrong, I'm glad we didn't. Please do check.
Terrie: It is flat. The level is good.
Dave Pollard: Three things. First, Susan and I hosted an after voting get together after the election. We had our best turnout. People seemed to be pretty much in favor of it. We got enough donations to cover our expenses and put aside some for the next event. We are hoping (I will check with Terrie Nielsen) to be able to use the room on the top floor at the opposite side of the school [eventually].
People have accepted it and are looking forward to it. The poll workers would like to be able to just go inside the building.
About the bell tower: If Hummel puts in a bid at least it will be done in a professional manner, unlike the elevator. We are about 6 months behind where we thought we would be for completion.
The other thing is that it is over and done now, and some people will say it doesn't matter. But a couple of days before the election a bunch of signs sprouted up along SR 44 and SR 82. I doubt that anyone asked permission. The state owns that property. It violated the Zoning regulation. As a sitting trustee [to Jason] you should have known that. You didn't put the signs up, but someone working for you did. Someone from outside said it looked trashy.
I know for a fact [still to Jason] that it cost you and Matt some votes. [Somewhere in his remarks, Dave cited the township zoning resolution by number.]
You can laugh, Mr. Festa. Go right ahead. It is just an indication of how you . . . . [Even after three repeats on the recording of the meeting, I could not get what Dave actually said.]
[Blogger: Just to remind everyone of what they already know: John Festa was not up for election, and so he didn't have a dog in this hunt. But he sure launched himself into it. In case he hasn't ever noticed, Jason has absolutely no trouble taking care of himself, including threatening to call the sheriff if someone disagrees with him strongly enough.
[What follows reveals character and the real attitude toward our township government of several people.]
John Festa: This is one of the most cordial elections we have had in a long time. I am proud of all the candidates that ran this year. It doesn't matter about where the signs were--it was very cordial.
[So if you rob someone, for example, it's OK if you are cordial and smile while you do it? Apparenly, for John Festa, the answer is yes.]
Jason: The election is over, and thje signs are down. Time to move on.
Dave: It still violated zoning. The people who feel they were unnecessarily hassled and cited and threatened with legal action by Mr. Dickey would have every reason to feel to feel bitter that an elected official did not have to observe the laws.
John Festa: I just wanted to make known that it was a very cordial election.
Dave: Thank you for reminding me of that. That was what I wanted to say. It does not take away from the fact of the violation.
There was more back and forth with John Festa.
Jason: Call the state and have them taken down. [Blogger: Because I was smoking my pen across the page, I did not see Jason when he said that, but his tone was odd and contained a hint of mockery--the kind of tone that is used against someone on the playground or as now in adult life when one person has the power or has gotten by with something and the other can do nothing about it. Class.]
Carole Pollard, 5359 Allyn Road: I wasn't going to say anything tonight BUT the issue was observing out zoning regulations.
Jason: We have already talked about that.
CP: No, we have not, because John Festa said you would not ignore or violate your own zoning regulations in regard to the bullpen. Now you have done that.
John Festa: We didn't put the signs up.
CP: So who's running the township?
JF: We didn't have time to make any kind of action about the signs. That night they were gone.
[Someone, not I, said, "So that makes it right?"]
John Festa: Are you going to turn a very cordial election into a shouting match over the signs?
CP: That's a nice spin.
JF: Let's move on. The election is over.
CP: And there's another one in two years.
[Blogger: Somewhere in the swirl of comments, Jason said something about the blog. I could not pick it up off the recording. Someone said it was, "Put it in your blog, Carole. Yep. Done.]
Sue Skrovan: This is not what I wanted to say, but I am glad it was brought up. Two years ago the same thing happened. This year they were up for two days. They looked terrible. I hope that our elected officials would follow our zoning standards. We hold you to a higher standard. John Dickey was trying to address them but failed miserably. It looks bad.
As cordial as people may be, the people running the campaign have the responsibility.
John Festa: We had no control over this. What are we supposed to do as trustees?
[Blogger: In my experience, this is the last resort of the completely ineffectual: There was nothing I/we could do.]
Sue: We are talking merely about your own campaign committees, the people that are helping you.
John Festa: Now you are insinuating that someone from a candidate's committee. . . .
Sue: Anyone putting a sign out should know what their campaign was doing.
John Festa: There were three different signs. [Blogger: There were four: those for Matt and Jason, those for two school board candidates, and those for Vote No on the school levy. Count much, JF?]
[Blogger: I think there may have been more wrangling, but Vic stepped in at that point.]
Vic: I think everybody agrees that it makes the township look bad. This is freedom of speech and is hard to address. We have talked to Chris Meduri about it a lot--it is very hard to control
Sue: My concern is that when one is seen doing it, it makes it worse.
My original reason for signing in was to congratulate you--Jason and Vic--for a successful election.
Vic thanked everyone who supported him.
Jason: An election occurs on our own personal time. Everybody knows that for any election things go on that are ? and it gets nasty and ugly. The township here is all very cordial. The people running for school board can't say the same thing.
Jan Oros said something about the law.
Dottie Summerlin: I want to thank the trustees and the Garden Club for getting ready for the Christmas walk. We had 58 people come through, total, on both weekends. We didn't up on the program, bur we had an insert that went with the ticket. All of the houses were in other parts of the township and beyond. We got some people who came just because we put a sign out. One person was a KSU student who needed to do photos of historic places. This was a gold mine for him.
Historical Society officers have been elected: Dottie is the president; your blogger cannot decipher my note for vice president; Jodie Thompson is the treasurer, and Dottie commented on how nice it is to have an officer under 60. Linda Ehlert and MaryLou Selander are the trustees.
Dottie said, We are trying to take the museum to a new direction. So thank you.
That was the end of public comment. There was an executive session, but I did not stay until the meeting resumed following that.
