My acquaintance with Kim Maggard goes back to 2009 when I first started attending council meetings. By all accounts she seemed amiable enough and, being the auditor, somewhat numbers driven in her dry, toneless accounts at meetings. When things started ramping up in council with my objections to John Wolfe’s corruption and most of city hall’s inappropriate relationships with conflicts of interest, she started to become more verbal with me. I noticed that her arguments justified and defended others at city hall instead of right and ethics. That’s when my attitude first changed towards her. Everyone has an obligation to the truth and sense if they want what’s right, be it for community or workplace ethics or the family dynamic. When I see people not actively engaged in the pursuit of that goal, I know something is wrong and its usually a flagging of their character . This turned out to be the case with Kimberly J Maggard.

What ultimately did it for me was her incessant avoidance of the principals of ethics and trust in public office. I’m just an actor and waiter and yet, my sense of ethics regarding what was right and what was wrong was stronger than hers, someone already in public office. It didn’t seem right to me when I saw clear conflicts of interest being ignored by her and them instead of being heeded, that which builds a true trust with the people. There are only two reasons someone in these positions ignore conflicts of interest; a) they’re not very bright or b) they ignore them on purpose. Now, Kim Maggard, as well as City Attorney Mike Shannon, have a litany of degrees and education, (in particular attorneys who are weaned on conflicts of interest) and yet, the conflicts of interest weren’t heeded. Their degrees alone say they’re bright and educated which leads us then to the conclusion this naturally leads us to; that they are ignoring them on purpose, within the realm of public office. This is done by people with questionable ethics because principals get in the way of what they’re trying to do (which is usually in a self-serving way). Of course, in ones private life, what conflicts of interest you do or don’t heed doesn’t matter to anyone other than your family and/or friends. However, when they are ignored in public office, that is something which has the actual power to harm peoples lives. There is an entire post on this very topic;

http://votedixon.com/2015/07/04/why-ethics-in-public-office-matter/

As I uncovered the underlying complexities of their shared corruption, I liked her less and less and distrusted her more and more. (One well-known long-time resident told me, “Jerry, this towns always been run by about 10 to 15 people. That’s the way its always been and that’s the way I like it.”) So, Whitehall is apparently, not only a ‘good-old boys club’ but it truly is a corporation, a company town, the company of Whitehall. ‘Whitehall Corp.’, if I may. We’ve got the boss and the chain of underlings, on down to you and me, the drones. Well, apparently someone forgot to tell them that this is a democracy, a people’s government, run by and for the people themselves. But, I came to understand this intra-familial government more fully once I started to go deeper. I saw the underhandedness of John Wolfe, the utter lack of regard towards conflicts of interest (Which is a slap in the face to citizens. It says, I can do untrustworthy things and believe, because you people aren’t paying attention, that you’ll still give me your trust. She never did truly earn it and so it really should never have been given to her.) and the familial considerations and closing in of one another. When she ran for Mayor, John Wolfe himself waited so long to decide to run again that there were no other takers who wanted to take on his juggernaut until, conveniently, Kim Maggard stepped in. (Chris Parkevich too but, too late to be on the ballot other than as a write-in.) Despite her having an actual phyical opponent, the WCCA made her and John Wolfe the Grand Marshals because they were “the Mayor and the next Mayor” (don’t the voters get a say?!).

Myself, Dave Deluca’s sister and neice protesting Mayor Wolfe at the Independence Day parade.

In the meantime, underneath, was how he was using code enforcement; looking over fences, harassing citizens into leaving and yet, no one spoke out on it. When I asked Kim Maggard at her Meet and Greet at Tim Hortons about all this, she answered by saying that “the courts will tell us if we’re wrong”. Not sense, not an inner code of principals and morals that guide our sense of right and wrong but, the judicial system, that which most citizens in Whitehall can’t afford to pursue against the city. Shameful.

Through the election and into her administration, she consistently ignored conflicts of interest, denied citizens their civil rights and prized property values over the law of the U.S. Constitution. Also, again enforcing this attitude that if the citizens don’t like what she does they can hire (expensive) attorneys (which they can’t afford). When I rightfully protested over the summer of 2013 against her policies she called me a ‘performance artist’ In her response to the Dispatch instead of giving a mature, reasoned response to my upset and concerns. She changed the format of the State of the City address from the dais, where John Wolfe simply and without fanfare gave it, to one at a lectern on the council floor with lighting and glossy tax dollar funded pamphlets and slide presentations. It was apparent to me she was trying to impress people but I’d be more impressed were she to follow the law and respect the citizens and actually build the public trust by doing trustworthy things. Hoopla isn’t worth a dime if underneath there is treachery.

I can go on about several things which I already have addressed on this blog but, overall, here is why I can’t vote for Kim Maggard as mayor and why I didn’t the first time.

• She is of questionable character. She doesn’t truly do the things which build the public’s trust of her so I claim she is untrustworthy.
• She gets in the photo in every charitable situation she can as a means of self-aggrandizement, a lot of which she didn’t even have a hand in bringing to fruition. Using poor people as a photo-op while there are kids going hungry in Whitehall is gross, to say the least.
• I believe that Kim Maggard is a climber, she has her sights set on things much higher up than Whitehall and so she is using our community as a means to get there. I don’t believe she truly cares about our citizens, which is seen in how code enforcement treats long-time residents, those who deserve greater consideration and appreciation than what she gives.
• Anyone that would participate in schemes that essentially steal people’s rightful property for their and others gain is not only despicable as an elected official representing the people but pretty sorry for a human being too. I’m sick and tired of these fevered egos getting themselves into public office only to use it in turn to hurt those they’re supposed to be helping and raising up.
• Its her notion of herself as the boss and not the leader, best represented by this piece of literature she was working on and accidentally slipped out in which she doesn’t liken herself to being a mayor of people but rather the CEO of a corporation. It is a very telling peek into the truth of Kim Maggard…
  http://shoutout.wix.com/so/2785efa5-9901-43cd-845a-4d40eaea68f9#/main
• Ramps up her image by not actually being a good leader but pretending to be one. This has been seen in her State of the City speeches where she says things which are inorganic to her personality, like, “I will NOT put up with drugs and crime in Whitehall!” (Which the numbers then show she has failed at) I was there for that speech and just from the standpoint of an actor and speaker, she was badly acting like a tough mayor. (And Mike Shannon accused me of using council chambers as my stage!) It was to create an effect for the public consumption that she is a good and strong leader but in actuality she’s a bad actor and a poor speaker which, in itself, is neither here nor there, (nor something I would ordinarily criticize) but in this instance she is the leader of my community and underneath things she is not truly suited for the position and is only presenting this to convince you that she is something she’s not, and I have a problem with that. And why is this, you may ask? I see it as self-aggrandizing, that which promotes her forward and upward movement. If she were only simply herself I could have accepted that so much better but, like most politicians, they believe they have to be something they’re not in order to get elected and public office is so important to them that they’re willing to put on another face to achieve and keep that goal. This is not people who care about people, it is people that care about themselves. Their power, their ego, their rise as a public figure.

  The other instance of this is putting on a hard hat and tearing down the Schumaker apartment house at Fairway and Hamilton. This was a stunt designed to bolster her public image. NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (one of my personal political heroes) would have put on that hard hat and done the same thing but he would’ve done it because he enjoyed running the city and getting things done for the betterment of the people and their/his city, all of them. Mayor Maggard does things because they increase her power, bolster her image and further her aspirations. LaGuardia did things because he was earnestly there to serve and represent the people of New York City. Maggard does things because it increases the value of Kim Maggard. Thus then her ‘War on Blight’. This is a catch-all term used by politicians, usually to increase developers and realtors’ business and appear to the citizens like they care about you and me, and that she’s some genius of city planning that knows what she’s doing.

  One of my avocations over the last 16 years has been, nerd-ily enough, city planning. This old Whitehall boy has observed, listened to and read the record of the big boys and I can tell you from this that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Fine if you’re a citizen that doesn’t know city planning, bad if you’re a mayor. It appears someone in the city finally read the book I brought to Whitehall 6 years ago

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities

  which was summarily dismissed by the then Development Director Dan Lorek as he threw it back at me and ignored by John Wolfe. This is evident by Mayor Maggard recently referencing it at her ‘Town Hall’ meeting where she couldn’t name the author (Jane Jacobs) but called her “a really smart lady” (on that she’s correct). Even the Mid Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) brought forward its plan for the central Ohio area to council chambers to address the increase of population here by, I believe, 2050. It pretty much presented a lot of what Jane Jacobs addressed in her book in what is healthy for city planning. Whitehall doesn’t have the luxury of sitting around while the future closes in on them and this book and MORPC’s presentation can greatly clue them in on the route to get their. However, a mayor that’s not direct and honest with the citizens (or the citizenry who can’t bear hard truths) is bad for the city. She wants to knock down buildings but isn’t being honest about paths and what’s underneath. That is duplicitous and that should be most unwelcome in a healthy turn towards the future.

• Hires friends and associates over exhaustive applicants for jobs that will actually bring us the best talent for the money, as opposed to those she knows or are her friends.

The bottom line is this, character truly does matter. We can’t sit around and bitch about the state of things and then do nothing about them. We are either a decent society or we’re not. The representatives of decent societies don’t make profit from housing prisoners or from people’s health. They don’t use their positions in government to steal people’s private property or lead, in any way, with underhanded avarice, all while wearing masks of decent humanity. These things are not okay to good people. If we can’t run our communities with ethics and principals and scruples for the benefit of the citizens themselves and be citizen-centric then what are we doing pretending to be good people in a good city within a good country? We either are or we’re not, and if we’re not then if we believe in our better selves and the better communities we can muster from that, then we should in actuality do something about it. Not worry what Reynoldsburg or Gahanna or Upper Arlington is doing but what we, Whitehall, are doing, right here, right now. You cannot have that with characters that care more for themselves than the people they’re serving and the trajectory of their ego’s path. Anyone can surround themselves with good people who will help see the city’s path go right but not everyone, apparently, can do it with common sense, reason, decency and considerate, caring, people-centric principals. If you want an avaricious, money-hungry, ego-driven figurehead which won’t be there to improve the life of the community but rather her friends and the lives of businesses, then you can’t expect to live in a good community among good people, because those traits are antithetical to that goal.

I say then that if there is any war which must be waged in Whitehall, I pray it is against the likes of Kim Maggard herself and her ilk. They are and have been harming the decency and integrity of our good community, that whose spirit I see rising in spite of her actions and behavior. It is a community of decent people, I believe their leader should be a reflection of that and so, I truly believe Kim Maggard is the wrong person to lead good people.