UPDATE: 3:50 PM
(NOTE: The SCPR's scoop has been confirmed by staff report filed minutes ago by the Canton local newspaper)
The SCPR has learned that Canton Safety Director Thomas Ream and Mayor William J. Healy, II have been searching for a "face saving way" (for benefit of Healy, of course) to announce the safety director's resignation for about a week.
The beginning of the end had to be case for Canton Safety Director Tom Ream when in the latter part of February he collaborated with Mayor William J. Healy, II to change the job description for the director of the Canton-Stark County Crime Lab (CSCCL) so that Ream personal and political friend and former Stark County chief deputy Rick Perez could be appointed as director.
Healy is politically close to Perez's brother Kim who is running for Canton auditor in the May Democratic primary. The mayor has told the SCPR that he endorses Perez in his candidacy which suggests to The Report that Healy was likely in full accord with Ream's desire to appoint Rick Perez as the Canton-Stark County Crime Lab director.
About a week after the appointment and a public hue and cry and a confrontation between Stark County Council of Governments (SCOG) Executive Committee chairman Thomas Bernabei (also president of the Stark County Board of Commissioners) in early March, Mayor Healy obtained Perez's resignation and in the process - in the opinion of the SCPR - threw Director Ream under the bus.
One had to wonder how a professional law enforcement man like Ream could stay on under Healy having been abandoned on a decision that Healy had to be in on up to his ears.
In resigning, Ream has done what a person of professional pride would do under similar circumstances.
This Ream resignation should be a "wake up call" to Healy.
He could be faced with a nearly impossible task of finding a replacement for Ream.
Who among Stark County's law enforcement professionals would want to work for Mayor Healy given his treatment of former safety director Tom Nesbitt and now Ream?
Healy needs to politically mature in a hurry.
The SCPR believes he lost his opportunity to be an effective mayor of Canton in his firing of Tom Bernabei as service director and chief of staff in the first year of his first administration.
Obviously, he did not learn his lesson then.
Not much longer after the Bernabei firing, he made life so uncomfortable for Tom Nesbitt as safety director (whom he brought in from a high law enforcement position in Nebraska) that Nesbitt elected to move on.
Apparently, Healy thinks he can be an effective mayor primarily through public relations initiatives.
But he wrong on that count.
The folks who are suffering under his unenlightened leadership methods are the people of Canton.
How long are they going to put up with his shenanigans?
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