VIDEO: "ANNEXATION" - BIG IN CICCHINELLI'S RE-ELECTION BID; BIG ISSUE IN THE 50TH OHIO HOUSE RACE, "THE PROXY EFFECT?" WILL CICCHINELLI "PRIVATELY" SUPPORT CREIGHTON OVER MEEKS?

One of, if not the prime reason, major reason that Francis H. Cicchinelli is running for re-election for a seventh term as mayor of Massillon is "unfinished business" in bringing Massillon back to full economic viability by the use of what he says is the economic tool of annexation.

Annexation Director Sam Sliman of Canton (the self-described "Darth Vatder to the Townships) has the same quest for Canton.

Though one is a Democrat (Cicchinelli) and the other is a Republican (Sliman) they couldn't agree more on the importance of annexation used to the hilt to help rehabilitate city economies.

On the other hand, there are township-oriented folks like Stark County Commissioner Todd Bosley and state Representative Todd Snitchler that see the matter as more a "preserving the townships" principle that they agree that the annexation law needs to be modified to enhance township preservation.

These annexation differences could factor into the political campaigns underway this year (Bosley v. Snitchler, 50th Ohio House District) and next year for Cicchinelli in his bid for a seventh straight term as mayor.  Also, it could factor into the Creighton (Republican) versus Meeks (Democrat) county commissioner race this year.

Readers will see on the accompanying video that Mayor Cicchinelli is very displeased that former Jackson Township trustee and now Commissioner Steven Meeks voted with Commissioner Todd Bosley to deny the Poets Glen annexation.

While he denies that he will support Creighton,  he qualifies the denial by saying: "in a public way."  Hmm.  Privately?

The Report does not view Meeks as a out and out supporter of the "township" view of annexation as Commissioner Bosley seems to be, even with his Poets Glen vote.  Remember, his close political ally Randy Gonzalez (Jackson Township fiscal officer among a number of other public roles) brokered the annexation agreement between Canton and Jackson Township.

So why did he vote to deny Poets Glen?  The SCPR believes he got caught up in the passion of the moment and got steamrollered by Bosley.

Back to the annexation issue in and of itself.

The SCPR's view?

Annexation is not an "enduring" economic tool.  It is quick fix at best.  And, it by its operation - within Stark County and Ohio - it is designed to take from one entity to add to another.

However, townships should not be content to be as townships have always been.  We are in the 21st century and townships need to be just as much economically engaged as are Ohio's villages and cities.

The Report gets the take that all too many township officials have a idyllic sense of the township form of existence and are not fully engaging nearby cities for the mutual benefits of both types of government.

There probably does not need to be any change in annexation law.

What is needed is township, village, and city officials working in a corroborative and sensitive fashion that is a win-win for both the townships and corporate entities.

The Report has taken videos in the SCPR library and edited into this single video a representation of the importance and significance that Cicchinelli, Sliman, Bosley and Snitchler attach to the annexation issue.

DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE WHOM CONTACTED WHOM IN THE NORTH CANTON - ACME "ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?" FLAP?

UPDATE: May 14, 2009 at 4:00 P.M.

The SCPR has received a reaction from Mayor Francis Cicchinell, Jr of Massillon. Mayor Cicchinelli takes exception to North Canton Council president Daryl Revoldt's assertion that Massillon could not find an adequate facility for Myers Industries to relocate within Massillon.

Mayor Cicchinellli says that Myers Industries officials told Massillon officials that the facilities Fleming Foods had vacated were large enough, if retrofitted, for Myers' needs.

Cicchinelli says he believes that North Canton (Ohio Department of Development) money trumped the adequacy of facilities question.

UPDATE: May 13, 2009 at 12:30 P.M.

REVOLDT RESPONSE:

Wooster paid a very heavy price for denying Rubbermaid a small abatement.

In the end, as noted, the situation helped sever the emotional relationship and the company declined to work with the community upon exit...  

Wayne County is now recognized as one of the nation's fastest growing microcommunities. Visit the Wayne Economic Council Website for details.

I would submit that one of the reasons for the county's success (Wooster and Orrville) after losing Rubbermaid was the change in its development thought process. The mind set today re development assistance is 180 degrees from 10 years ago.  Ask yourself, why is Wooster more successful than Stark County in business growth? What differentiates the two? It's not like they are in two different time zones.

If this situation occurred in Wooster or Orrville, there would be little debate.  Why? Because both took the Rubbermaid lesson to heart.

Just last week, Wooster placed $100,000 into a city business development account. In effect, it did what NC did recently (and which Chuck attempted to strip away). Why? Because the account can be a useful lending instrument.

There's no point in beating a dead horse. But if one wants to be successful in business, one needs to think like a business person. And that means a strategy to attract AND RETAIN business.  As in many relationships, the little things matter. There is a psychology to these relationships. Communities ignore it at their own peril. The city discounted the cost of the Acme project. 

North Canton does have a plan:  it added an economic development director. It has multiple incentives, including a long standing and large community reinvestment area. It has a well funded CIC. It has established a good working relationship with its primary industrial partner, IRG.  It has attempted to hold down taxes. It has applied for and received state and federal grants for economic development related infrastructure and industrial sites.

One final note, relocations within stark county are inevitable. Sites, like shoes, no longer fit companies when they grow. When the state helped Hoover research move 200 jobs from the city  to TTI's Cleveland facility, the city didn't whine. The move made business sense. 

When Brown Mackey outgrew its W Maple location in N Canton, the city HELPED it find space in Jackson township.  No one read about Jackson poaching from NC or moaning about lost imcome etc. It was a good situation for all of us... Brown Mackey was GROWING. Great!

Myers could have relocated to PA. The company worked with Massillon for nearly two years (and I called Bob Sanderson and directly asked if Massillon had any viable site.... it did not). So, the jobs came to NC.

With regard to Schorer, it had outgrown its Whipple site. It literally had become the Old Woman and the Shoe. People were jammed into every corner. DeHoff had ample opportunity to relocate the company to another facility. None worked. Jackson Twp in fact knew the company was looking and could not
provide an alternative

Would we have preferred the Schorer Headquarters go to Akron? Or do we wish it stayed in Stark County?  We know the answer here.

Right now, IRG is working on a $900M Goodyear project (headquarters, general office, retail)  in Akron. It has a JRS grant, state loans and city and port authority funding. The project is deemed vital to the revitalization of the East Akron area.  It keeps Goodyear in Akron.... both the jobs and the PRESTIGE (here we go with an intangible) were deemed important.

Do you actually believe that every tenant in the general office will be NEW to OHIO? If we insist that be the case because public money isinvolved, the project will fail and with it hopes for the revitalization of East Akron.

Keep this in mind:  most economic development is the expansion of an existing business. Rare are the new starts or the new to Ohio projects. So, if we acknowledge that expansions can occur in one of two ways, at the existing site or at a new site, we can cut the debate. As a stark county [sic] strategy, we should encourage expansion at the existing site, but when circumstances don't allow it, help it happen at the new stark county site. 

ORIGINAL STORY BELOW
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North Canton citizen and one time North Canton councilman Chuck Osborne generated a controversy in North Canton Council over a $6,600 property tax abatement that North Canton has granted Acme (actually the F.W. Albrecht Grocery Company - Acme's official name) for some improvements that are going to made ($1.2 million worth) at the company's North Canton store.

North Canton Council approved the abatement this past Monday.

The apparent issue was whether or not North Canton went running to Acme with the abatement dole out without Acme having ever asked for it.

As the SCPR is wont to do, yours truly created a "tongue-in-check" graphic to poke a little fun at North Canton officials. Obviously, North Canton does not have a vehicular unit, as pictured, designed to go out a spread the "good news of tax abatement" for North Canton connected businesses in hopes of inspiring thoughts of job creating expansion.

But the reaction by some members of Council to Osborne begs the question: why so sensitive?

Is there a grain of truth or more to Osborne's allegation that North Canton's economic development team is working hard to give away taxpayer money for nothing in exchange?

Hum?

Councilmen DeOrio and Davies (whom abstained in the Acme vote for conflict reasons) for two seem not to favor creating an "anticipatory business environment friendly" economic development tool that Council president Daryl Revoldt (a former Ohio Department of Development official and mayor of North Canton) promotes. DeOrio and Davies favor a BUT FOR approach, that is to say: Company X will not come North Canton unless the company gets a subsidy."

Revoldt, if asked, will go into great detail as to why the annexation agreement recently worked out between Canton and Jackson Township on a specific Jackson-located strip of land is not a sustainable economic development model.

The SCPR agrees with Revoldt on his Canton/Jackson Township analysis which is based on calculable plus and minus tax revenue factors.

But not on his "anticipatory business environment friendly" model.

It is hard to believe Revoldt jettisons his numerical approach so easily in promoting this latter model. For him to do so, is utterly un-Revoldt like. The "anticipatory business environment friendly" model is more like a hope and a prayer approach that, at best, can only serve as an augmentation to a "real" economic development plan.

Even at that, shelling out taxpayer dollars and getting "no value added" in return? Tax revenues are in short, short supply in North Canton, aren't they?

To get a more complete picture of Revoldt's concept, Council's reaction, Osborne's input, Economic Development Director Eric Bowles take and Acme's response, CLICK HERE to see the minutes of the April 27, 2009 North Canton Council meeting.

Interestingly enough, Canton economic development director Robert Torres says he is a BUT FOR administrator.

Now back to the original question.

Does it make any difference whom contacted whom first in the North Canton/Acme scenario.

Clearly, it doesn't.

Let's assume Osborne is incorrect: North Canton did not run the SCPR fictional mobile unit up to F.W. Abrecht Company located at 2700 Gilchrist Road in Akron and rain showers of financial blessing on the company at North Canton's initiative.

Does anyone believe that Revoldt (whom the SCPR believes controls North Canton Council and perhaps is even the de facto mayor of the Dogwood City), given his anticipatory economic development philosophy, wouldn't have shepherded through an abatement request once Acme officials realized subsidies are to be had for the asking and invoked the formality?

The larger issue is not whom asked whom. Such is like the doomed passengers arguing about rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titantic.

The main issue is this: what entity in Stark County is going to develop a "real" economic development plan with long term infrastructure creation and improvement that in time reinvents the entity's economic viability?

The SCPR believes that there is no township, village or city in all of Stark County that has a viable (sustainable) economic development plan. Nor does Stark County itself.

North Canton is out getting business from Massillon and Jackson Township (using Ohio tax dollars via Job Ready Site money) to relocate a few miles into the city and rewarding its businesses for being a "good corporate citizens" with tax breaks.

Canton (with Annexation Director Sam Sliman, who self describes as the "Darth Vader to the townships," is targeting the unwilling in his quest to solve Canton's severe economic woes through militant annexation.

Jackson Township is consorting with Canton in a vain attempt to preserve its identity for the next 100 years.

Massillon is mimicking Canton's Sliman.

Only one of Stark County's three commissioners has the slightest clue about economic development.

What a mess!

DISCUSSION: WHAT CREDIBILITY THE REP HAS IS FAST VANISHING?

It is unfair to compare The Repository to The New York Times except on a relativistic scale.

The famous masthead motto on The New York Times is, of course, All The News That's Fit to Print.

For a newspaper like Stark County's only countywide publication - The Rep - the motto ought to be All the STARK COUNTY News That's Fit to Print. But it is not advertised to be so nor does it in fact do so.

The fact of the matter is that The Rep is arrogantly withholds news from the Stark County reading public the Rep "powers that be" decide among themselves that we Stark Countians do not need to know.

Case-in-point.

When the Canton/Jackson Township annexation was in full swing a key meeting took places between city of Canton officials, a Jackson Township official and Repository officials that had newsworthy content but which The Rep kept to itself.

Who were the public officials participated in this meeting (The Meeting)?

• Canton City Council President Allen Schulman,
• Canton City Council Annexation Committee chairman, William Smuckler,
• Canton Annexation Director Sam "Darth Vader to the Townships" Sliman, and
• Jackson Twp Fiscal Officer Randy Gonzales (also an employee of the Canton Municipal Court clerk Phil Giavasis)

So?

Obviously, the meeting itself was an effort by political kingmaker Gonzalez (who The Report believes to be into controlling the future make up of Stark County) to convince The Rep powers to use whatever influence The Rep has remaining in Stark County to side with Canton/Jackson over and against North Canton in the annexation battle that has been joined.

So?

Here's the key. According to a source of the STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT (The Report/SCPR), one of the points made by either Schulman, Smuckler, Sliman or Gonzalez - perhaps, in combination - is that North Canton chief administrator E.E. Wise, Jr (popularly know in political circles as EJ) and North Canton City Councilman Pat DeOrio were supportive of the Canton/Jackson annexation.

The Report thinks this is big county news that should have been reported by The Rep to the Stark County reading public because of the ethical implications of the suggestions as well as economic implications to various Stark County communities.

This is where the interplay of politics and government becomes murky.

Regarding E.E. Wise, Jr.

E. J. Wise is a highly respected Stark County Democratic political figure (who has pedigreed entree into Stark County Democratic circles through his father, former 5th District Court of Appeals judge Earle E. Wise, Sr.) : among the most respected in the entire county. It is well known that he aspires to be a judge. He, a former prosecutor associated with the Bob Horowitz prosecutorial team, ran against incumbent judge Dixie Park (of the Stark County Probate Court) in 2004 and ran a relatively close race.

E.J. did try to get Governor Ted Strickland to appoint him to a general jurisdiction Stark County Common Pleas judgship when Sara Lioi was appointed by President Bush to the federal bench (March, 2007). But he was up against the equally "highly respected" Democrat Canton Law Director Joe Martuccio and the properly "politically credentialed" Taryn Heath. Heath ended up with the appointment.

For anyone to suggest that E.J. is "playing North Canton government for the fool" (because of his personal political ambition) is not credible. However, it is newsworthy and the Stark County public's right to know was taken away by the "deciders" at The Rep.

Regarding North Canton City Councilman-at-Large Pat DeOrio,

Pat DeOrio used to be one of the most powerful Republicans in Stark County. Stark County political observers (including The Report) were stunned when, a few years ago, DeOrio announced he was turning Democrat.

It could be that DeOrio reads the political tea leaves better than any other Stark County Republican. Since his switch, Republicans have been completely shut out of countywide political office (except for a few judgships, which for the most part were obtained through gubernatorial appointment in the first place).

Instantly as a "new-born" Democrat, he became the favorite of Stark County Democratic chairman Johnnie A. Maier, Jr. The Report believes that the "new" Democrat DeOrio was Maier's (and probably - associate party honcho Randy Gonzales) choice in the 2008 Democratic primary for county commissioner which Pete Ferguson emerged from as the winner).

Somewhere along the line DeOrio ends up on the payroll of whom?

So?

Canton Municipal Court clerk of courts Phil Giavasis. Isn't this interesting?

Who else works for Giavasis? Can you believe it? Jackson Township fiscal officer Gonzales!

So?

Well, how about this.

North Canton council members are so sensitive the ethical implications of the Gonzales/DeOrio relationship that they had North Canton Law Director Chris Goldthorpe check with the Ohio Ethics Commission as to whether or not DeOrio and fellow Councilman Doug Foltz (who works in the Canton Parks Department) should be voting on issues involving both Canton and North Canton interests.

The ethical remedy (apparently suggested by the Ohio Ethics Commission): Council has asked council president Daryl Revolt (when joint interest questions come before council) to excuse DeOrio and Foltz from the meeting and then DeOrio and Foltz "accept" the being excused and do not participate in the deliberations and any vote on those issues.

North Canton City Council believes this process protects the integrity of the proceeding both from Council's standpoint and from the standpoint of the individual councilmen.

Going back to The Meeting.

Given all the political dynamics at play, wouldn't one think that The Rep would report The Meeting made suggesstion that DeOrio had divided loyalities on the question of Canton/Jackson Township annextion?

Divided loyalities?

The Report has learned on a previous North Canton City Council (not the current one), DeOrio was putting pressure on Councilwoman Marcia Kiesling, who was chairing Council annexation issues at the time, to enter into existing negotiations between Canton and Jackson Township.

So?

The Report's source is convinced that DeOrio was putting pressure on Kiesling because Randy Gonzales was putting pressure on DeOrio to put pressure on Kiesling.

Obviously, DeOrio could argue and maybe he does posit that working for Gonzales in the city of Canton milieu is merely co-incidental and that he viewed it in North Canton's interest that North Canton be involved in the Canton/Jackson negotiations and that his working for Gonzales had nothing to do with his stance.

With legal counsel in-tow (on the recommendation of another council member), Kiesling did attend at least one session with Canton/Jackson officials.

But eventually negotiations on the North Canton phase of negotiations failed because of :

• "the 99 year agreement not to annex without Jackson Township's approval" provision, and
• North Canton Council's determined that at the end of the day, when one considers the "make whole" property tax provision in Jackson's favor and the 50/50 split on income tax revenues from the annexed area, an agreement with Jackson Township was not in the financial interest of North Canton.
  

THE BOTTOM LINE?

Executive Editor Jeff Gauger was so audacious as to announce publicly and boldly that The Rep would filter the Boccieri/Schuring citizen input in the run up to the November, 2008 election to determine which would succeed Congressman Ralph Regula as 16th congressional district representative.

Now we have The Meeting report.

Critical information that bears on important issues affecting the interests of all of Stark County and The Repository determines that the content of discussions they have with key Stark County officials is not newsworthy?

So it appears that between Executive Editor Gauger and publisher Kevin Kampman Stark Countians are not getting "All the News That's Fit to Print."

Rather, we Stark Countians are getting what local news managers Gauger and Kampman decide we get. They are, after all - "the deciders-in-chief."

Readers can depend on the STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT (The Report) to keep not only Stark County government accountable, but also Stark County's only countywide news outlet!

The Rep is a local news monopoly.