Take a look at the precinct numbers in Tuesday's results in Massillon on Issue #6, the proposed income tax increase.
Only 5 of Massillon's 26 precincts voted for the proposed .2 tax increase.
The SCPR's take is this result is a case in point that too many Stark County political subdivision (villages, cities, townships and boards of education) leaders fail to heed the admonition of perhaps America's greatest leader ever.
Front and center among the politically arrogant and therefore foolish among Stark County government leaders are the brains? behind the operations of Massillon city government.
It has been a while since The Stark County Political Report has focused on the likes of Massillon clerk of courts Johnnie A. Maier, Jr, his chief deputy Shane Jackson and Judge Eddie Elum who yours truly thinks are the de facto leadership of Massillon government.
As The Report sees it, Mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry can't make decision one without beating a pathway to Maier's office.
What is worse than that is the political machinations of the Machevellian order that politicos Maier (a former Stark Dems chairman and believed by many to be the "real" power in Stark County Democratic Party politics) and Stark County Dems Political Director (Maier's chief deputy) Shane Jackson appear to be cooking up which ultimately reveal them and cooks' assistant Eddie Elum to give actual expression to the saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth."
The SCPR has written many times about a belief that Catazaro-Perry being in cohoots with Maier, Jr, Jackson and Elum (her "kitchen cabinet") contrived the Massillon fiscal crisis post-election 2011. An election in which she had a smashing victory over Republican Lee Brunckhart.
The scenario?
Push State of Ohio fiscal officials to declare Massillon to be in a state of financial emergency before or at the beginning of Mayor Kathy's 2012 ascendancy to the Massillon mayoralty.
Over the next four years the mayor immersed in the wisdom emanating from the Massillon courts' administrative arm and partially from the court itself (Elum) would cobble together a seeming miracle.
Ideally, "the miracle on Duncan Plaza" would have been in place in time for the 2015 primary and general election.
But it wasn't.
Accordingly, Catazaro-Perry escaped narrowly with her political life in hand.
She came within as whisker (sorry for that, Mayor; just being funny) of losing to J.D. Ress in May, 2015.
And all she could manage in the general election was 40% percent of the vote which, according to the math of Maier, Jr. is tantamount to an "ass kicking," as compared to 65% against Brunckhart in 2011's general election.
One would think that the selfie aggrandizing geniuses (a least that's how Johnnie identifies R. Shane Jackson) would figure out that the grand plan of "how great Kathy is for Massillon" was not working and get back to reality.
But they didn't.
Maier, Jr. et al continued to play the fools game of thinking that they could fool "all the people, all the time" with the announcement in January, 2016 that Massillon had a carryover of $1.95MM as compared to some $400 when Catazaro-Perry predecessor Frank Cicchinelli left office.
On Tuesday, 4,537 of Massillon's voters filling the bill of one not being able "to fool all of the people, all of the time" rising up and turning tables on Kathy and friends to make guess who "the fool."
One SCPR commenter had this to say:
From: ... @aol.com Mar 16 at 11:41 PM
To: tramols@att.net
In order to look good the officials kicked various bills into 2016 so that they could say that they were doing a great job and now had a carryover of 1.5 plus or minus million dollars.
Well, when the public saw the carryover they felt the city didn't need the money and felt that the city was playing them by waiting to repair the roads to get the levy passed, so then the voters responded and the levy went down.
It would have been better to reduced the carryover and demonstrated the need was there than to engage in voodoo accounting.
It's like you write . . . you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
One must ask: Why would a straight-arrow-guy like Joel Smith want to be associated with the political fools who prop up the mayor?
The essential needs of Massillon reality makes clear to all but fools that the $1.95MM KCP administration braggadocio was a concoction to make her and the Maier, Jr. cabal look like miracle workers.
And yet it appears that those disrespecting the voter intelligence of a majority of Massillon voters were willing to risk the safety of Massillonians in a gamble that they could have it both ways, to wit:
- Brag about being a financial miracle worker, and
- Be credible in asking Massillonians to tax themselves more
However, the SCPR thinks that Massillon really did need the levy to pass and Tuesday's failure will cost Massillonians dearly in terms of the personal safety (fire, police and EMS) and being adequately served with "in-the-state-of-repair" streets and who knows what else.
It was a dangerous game that the KCP administration played over the past three and one-half months and a "foolish" one to boot, if you will, that the mayor got caught on.
If only she and her confidantes were the ones to suffer, one could take the tact "a pox on all your houses."
But they aren't. Some of them do not even live in Massillon.
Everyday Massillonians are in for a rough, rough time will the politicos of Massillonians toy with them!
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