Needs of Middletown

The only way to save Middletown is to make it attractive to businesses and citizens!

Our city government thinks that to attract businesses and people they must:

1. Have one of the poorest performing school systems in the state. (#599 out of 612 districts)

2. Have crumbling infrastructure.

3. Have an overbearing corrupt government (using zoning, “international housing code” and sign ordinances to run businesses out and to keep them out).

4. Have an overbearing corrupt government that refuses to do its responsibilities (repairing the streets, opening the swimming pool, maintain the parks and the cemetery, take care of the hydraulic canal, separate the combined sewers and on and on) that steals every dime they can from the citizens and businesses.

5. Have an overbearing corrupt government that would install red light cameras with illegally short yellow light timing setting up an entrapment, just to steal more money. (Some citations were sent out even when the driver got stopped. I guess that they wanted to steal more money than the entrapment would bring in and thought that many people would pay rather than lose two days of work and have to put up with our kangaroo court.)

5. Having government that pays the highest pay scale for those that made and used recordings between attorneys and their clients and other corruption that has helped destroy our city.

6. Having government that seem to think that having some of the highest property and income taxes plus any other way they can steal money is a real attraction. (paying for curbs and gutters when stimulus money was used, paying for your own streets while stealing millions for the Auto and Gas Fund, using the “international housing code” to steal money [ remember the 160 citations that were issued to businesses downtown for violations that ranged in severity from “bare light bulb to a stain on a ceiling tile“. Each of those were hauled into court and fined $100 plus court cost. I believe that none of those businesses are still in Middletown] and sign ordinance {remember suing Lennie Robinson using this ordinance).

7. This list could go on for many more pages of what is wrong, but what is most important is what can we do to improve the negatives and add many more positives.

My opinion of how to turn our city around:

1. Government should be open to the most scrutiny possible. No more secret and semi-secret meeting out of sight of the public unless absolutely necessary.

2. Attracting jobs should be the #1, #2 and #3 priority. More jobs means more people moving into more vacant homes, more tax dollars and less need for section 8 housing.

3. Every dime that the city receives must be spent wisely and for its intended purpose. Especially money for our streets, sewer separation, cemetery, parks and swimming pool (I don’t think a pool that is paid for with our tax dollars should have to make a profit - where do all of our tax dollars go? Certainly not to help the citizens). Income tax should be lowered to 1%. 1% of a billion is better than 1.75% of a million.

4. Corruption must be rooted out of our city building. We cannot build a new future with the same city employees that destroyed the old one. I am tired of hearing “we want to look forward not look back” which is city speak for let the crooks keep right on doing as they wish. Anyone involved in the recording , handling, use or knowledge of the recordings of conversations between attorneys and their clients in the city jail should be fired and held personally responsible for the civil rights violations they committed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled eight or ten years ago that civil rights violators must take personal responsibility and not hide behind their government job or insurance company. Those that committed the crimes should be repaying the city (we the citizens) for every dime spent keeping them out of prison. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the corruption in our city building. Because of the corruption the jail should be closed (use the county jail like Hamilton does) saving us millions of dollars in cost and millions more from not being sued. The Middletown court should be cut to the minimum since most corruption could not go on without the support of the court. The prosecution should be cut to bare minimum. It was the court and the prosecution’s use of the recordings that got Middletown sued. Not to mention prosecuting business for bare light bulbs or a stain on a ceiling tile. Does anyone believe that harassing and hauling into court struggling businessmen over such nonsense will help us attract jobs? Is that really what we want our prosecutors and court doing? Or do we want them to bring down the high crime rate. (I know a stain on ceiling tile is considered a high crime in Middletown, But I think robbery, rape, murder and theft should be a priority.)

To be continued