until it's green got it
hello everyone again
i'm barbie crabill of the league of
women voters of metropolitan columbus
this is awkward because i should be
talking to you all
um
welcome to this rescheduled meet the
vacci candidates forum tonight's event
is hosted by um our organization by our
organization in conjunction with
the bexley chamber of commerce bexley
public library
national council of jewish women south
bexley neighborhood association and
temple israel
thank you to the city of bexley for
allowing us to use city council chambers
and for live streaming the forum
on the city's youtube
channel
we hope that this forum will provide you
with information on candidates and
issues for the upcoming november
election
please make sure that you have a voting
plan for november 2nd
if you want to vote by mail you must
submit a retin-written
absentee ballot request form to the
board of elections
general election absentee ballots are
available now and must be requested by
noon on saturday october 30th
for the november election
early in-person voting already started
on october 5th at the bet at the
franklin county board of elections at
1700 morris road
you can verify your election polling
place by contacting the franklin county
board of elections at of course nobody
has a pen out but six one four no no i
don't need it six one four
five two five thirty one hundred
in addition to candidate forums the
metropolitan columbus league publishes
the voter guide in which candidates
provide written answers to the question
to questions the voter guide lists all
candidates running for election in
franklin county our voter guide was
published in the october 10th columbus
dispatch and is currently available
online at vote411.org
the league of women voters is dedicated
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does not support or oppose political
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please visit our website to learn more
about the league or to become a member
which is open to men and women
again thank you for coming tonight
please turn off your phones now i'm
going to turn this event over to our
moderator cara looper
i really don't need a microphone but
i'll use it anyway
welcome to the meet the candidates forum
of course this is rescheduled the lights
went out
last time and uh it was all of east main
street so it was nobody who pulled the
plug on this event
the races participating tonight
are bexley city council
bexley city school board and bexley city
charter amendments the judicial
candidates had a conflict so they will
not be here tonight
remember bexley city hall requires masks
to be worn inside
candidates and barbie and i can remove
our masks while we're speaking so the
audience can hear us
each candidate will give a one minute
introductory statement
i will then ask questions
candidates will be permitted no more
than two minutes to answer each question
each candidate will have an opportunity
to answer the question and i will change
the order in which the candidates are
asked the question for each subsequent
question
candidates will have one minute to give
an uh closing statement
of the questions have been pre-written
many from the last time we were all here
and we may get to audience questions i
think the candidates will be willing to
hang around a little while after if you
have questions that did not get answered
tonight
the league reserves the right to reject
audience questions if they are
inappropriate or duplicative
the candidates can see our time keeper
right here who will indicate when the
speaker has 30 seconds remaining
10 seconds remaining
and when time is up
if a candidate continues speaking i will
say thank you and move on
first we're going to hear from the
candidates running for bexley city
school board
joanne pickerel eric saner patrick king
margaret jade
larry diaz ellison and jonathan baker
and candidate
we'll start with jonathan
and then larry you will get the first
question and if my mind is working i
will stagger it
around
okay you have a minute to introduce
yourself hello hello everyone i'm
jonathan baker candidate for school
board
i am a 25-year educator at columbus
state community college and the ohio
state university my background's in
mathematics and so that's helped me
become a data-driven decision maker
that's been for everything from
how to help my students intern for data
to how to help understand the trends and
behaviors in kova 19 how to respond
effectively i've been in bexley for 16
years
and i've worked shoulder-to-shoulder
with
the current administration and
with teachers around around the district
i was president of the
bexley minority parent alliance and i
feel like those experiences have helped
me to already start doing the work of
that of a board member
working with the administration to pass
policies to serve students and to
protect our teachers my candidacy is
based upon four principles
working with the students
the teachers
and thank you very much
that stop sign is read you can't miss it
larry one minute
thank you all for having me here tonight
my name is larry d'atley ellison my
pronouns are he him and
i am an almost six-year resident of
bexley here with my
proud father of my son dante who is 14
and husband to brian
this has been a great journey so far and
i am so excited to use my
skills and effort as a community
advocate
to
bring that to the school board
here in bexley i've been a member and
co-founder of bexley pride which is our
lgbt
organization a member of the bexley dei
the coalition of equitable policing
and from a
professional perspective i have been uh
almost 20 years in project management
for both business and technology and
those skills will serve me on the board
thank you
mark
hi my name is marguerite jay um i wanted
to start by saying thank you my first
political memories actually are going to
league of women voter meetings with my
mom all my siblings were in school and
then running votes on election night um
and my i would when i told my mom i was
coming here she's 86 years old and she
retired as the director of juvenile
justice for the state of minnesota and
she said the most effective board she's
ever been on in her entire professional
career was the legal woman voted so i
just wanted to give you guys a shout out
um i'm a 20-year resident of bexley i
have a 2016 and a 2020 graduate i'm a
30-year educator i've been a classroom
teacher i've been a professional
development specialist i've been a
teacher educator i have a master's
degree in public policy and a phd in
multicultural and equity studies in
education
i'm the co-founder and president of darn
developmental assets resource network
which is a local nonprofit in addition
my current job is convening across the
county um
across stakeholders people who are
engaged in increase in improving the
social emotional and academic outcomes
for children thank you
patrick
good evening
uh my name is patrick king
and i am running for bexley school board
because i believe i can add value to the
district
through my experience expertise and
skills gained through my professional
career working with over 200 ohio school
districts on their financing facilities
capital planning and policy needs
further i have 25 years of cumulative
board experience including 10 years on
the board of governmental entities
and three years
on a school board
within the bexley community i serve as
the treasurer for the committee for
bexley excellence which is the
2019 levy committee
and i'm a member of the school
district's financial advisory council
last but not least i'm the proud dad to
a first and third grader at cassingham
and husband to my wife kelly
we chose bexley as a place to live based
largely on the strength of the schools
and i bring a clear-eyed
focused and respectful viewpoint
to this campaign and to hopefully the
board thank you
thank you
joanne
my husband aaron and i have lived in
bexley for 15 years and we have two
daughters who are second graders at
maryland elementary
in my professional life i'm a
community-based advocate that's worked
to pass important state or federal
legislation on everything
from education to health care to
infrastructure
my kids got into kindergarten i decided
to take a hands-on approach and i joined
the levy campaign and i went door to
door for that and asked people to vote
for the levy
since then and really now on this
campaign i have talked with hundreds of
voters students administers and teachers
about how they want to improve our
district
i want each student to have a
customizable learning experience so they
get a great education and they're
equipped for the future and that's
socially academically emotionally and
culturally
and i want to make sure that our
teachers are also supported in the
classroom
and i want to make sure each student
feels
safe
validated heard and seen
thank you
eric
uh thank you very much i uh first came
to bexley in 1974 as a student at
capitol university
uh this my late wife and i were married
in 1981
but in 1980 i started teaching at
capital as a as a professor
we moved to bexley in 1982 to start our
family
susan was hired in to teach english
literature at the high school
later you might remember she was on the
school board
i have a little over 30 years of public
private finance experience
and as a professor
i see the end result of this thing that
we call the you know high school
education experience
i believe that my experience not only in
finance but also
in education and knowing how much fun it
can be to be on the school board
will allow me to represent
all of the citizens of bexley thank you
very much thank you
and now we'll go to the first question
larry you get the first question but you
will all get it to going around ending
with jonathan
how will you foster diversity equity and
inclusion in the bexley city school
district if elected to the school board
that is a fantastic question and um my
whole life has been around diversity
equity and inclusion
as a gay man and
i have a lifetime of experience
being othered in that space so i
understand what it means to be othered
and what it
means to feel
out of place or
as though you don't belong one of the
key things that we have in the school
district not just our school district
but throughout all the school districts
is the panorama survey which measures
students sense of belonging and i think
that's one of the key
measures that we need to look at to make
sure that we are
fulfilling that promise to make sure
that we are
being diverse
equitable and inclusive and those are
three
totally different things that result
when done right result in having an
amazing community of students within our
school district
making sure that we have diversity
really needs to look at not only the
the students that we have in our
classrooms but also the teachers that we
have teaching those students i want my
black son to be able to experience
having a teacher that looks like him
having
inclusivity is also important
especially around our trans non-binary
lgb
students
i know that we have many of them in the
school district and it is important to
me to make sure that they feel safe and
that they also to belong
we need to ensure that
we have those consistent hiring
practices to get diversity in our
teachers and that our policies like our
gender
our gender identity policy are being
followed
correctly and that we have policies in
place to make sure that all students
feel safe thank you
thank you
margaret you want me to reread the
question
okay
my entire professional career is
dedicated to educational equity that's
the work i've done it started as an
educator with teach for america in
oakland oh sorry
in oakland california and has continued
as an educator in san diego in columbus
and now as a educator
a teacher educator um so my work
around my work my academic work is in
coaching as an anti-racist practice i
think the ways that we support young
people to engage in dialogue in the
presence of their difference and support
educators to help young people have
conversations around different topics
and different lived experiences is how
we promote a
students who can live not just in bexley
but live anywhere in the world right so
how we creating environments that are
robust where students see themselves not
just in the curriculum but also in
approaches right because education and
learning is both cultural and social
right so the ways that we learn the ways
that we express ourselves are culturally
driven and so how do we create
environments both by recruiting new
teachers that represent the students who
live in our community but also by
supporting the teachers who are already
here to develop the skill sets they need
in order to
to provide dynamic learning environments
for the students who are here right so
it's about bringing in new teachers but
also supporting the teachers who are
here to develop a skill set for creating
those types of educational experiences
um i think we want to what's also
particularly important and i think the
bexar anti-racist process project the
young people who started it and the high
school students who are leading it now
have offered us an opportunity to see
the power in the voice of young people
right their sense of agency their
capacity to build coalitions to educate
adults and so the ways that we really
leverage the strength of students and
have their voice not just informing but
at the table
creating policy creating curriculum and
supporting how we provide education for
them because they are the biggest
stakeholders in this uh election thank
you
thank you
patrick you want me to reread it
i will thank you how will you foster
diversity equity and inclusion in the
bexley city school district if elected
to the school board thank you uh so i
think without question this
issue and this question uh gets to what
is the headline issue of this particular
election
without question we have
uh in forums like this and in
conversations with the community uh been
asked some variation of this and i think
it is incredibly important work and it
is work that the district has
prioritized i think it is important to
to say that the district has
uh
was one of the the first district in
central ohio to have a
dei coordinator role
uh the gender and inclusion policy
uh that bexley passed uh was was one of
the first and so this is something that
this community has prioritized
historically and i think it's always a
growth opportunity
as a board member i i believe in the
value of strategic planning i believe in
the value of policy and i believe that
one of the the
first things that the board will do or
should do in january is
look at the district strategic plan
which is now almost three years old and
and the world has changed in a lot in
the past three years take a look at that
strategic plan and see how these
concepts of diversity equity inclusion
can be updated and and modernized and
reflective of
the the world we live in i again i can't
overstate the fact that this is
important work this is a a headline of
this election and
as a candidate and as a potential board
member i am committed to
fostering diversity equity and inclusion
in our schools so thank you
thank you joanne
well thank you and
i also made this part of my platform
when i decided to run and one of the
reasons is when i reviewed the panorama
and oes study
from last year some students didn't feel
like they belonged here and that this
was especially for middle school and
high school students and i i found that
kind of heartbreaking that they felt
that way
so how are we going to actually in
create change in the short term in the
long term this short term we can
continue the work that the district's
doing to make sure that students feel
correct connected to the curriculum and
that's something i participated in last
year i participated in the equity audit
for english and language arts materials
for the high school in the middle school
and it was fascinating and when you read
the students comments and the teacher
comments
it was eye-opening and also we need to
make sure we're funding that change and
they're doing that the district right
now they're adding materials not only to
the curriculum but also to the libraries
making sure that we are allowing
students to have
room in our decision-making process and
community to do that making sure that we
have continue our efforts to ensure a
diverse teaching staff administrative
staff
and staff in the buildings
we want to make sure that we don't
tolerate any racially motivated offenses
and we take swift action no matter who
acts in those cases
we also want to make sure
that we're surveying the students on a
regular basis to see how they're feeling
and identify the ways they would like
the district and the district's culture
to change
i also want to make sure
that any community service projects
or ap classes they're attractive to all
students and we're giving each student
the tools they need to take advantage of
those opportunities
but also in the long term
and someone told me this recently we
need to start talking about why these
problems exist and how we can come
together as a community to solve them
and not only the ideas that i have but
actually asking community members their
ideas too and how we can what's feasible
to implement over the long term
and again i i really want to make sure
that each student feels safe and
supported in the district and the staff
does as well
thank you
eric did you re-read it please yes
how will you foster diversity equity and
inclusion in the bexley city school
district if elected to the school board
thank you
the
saying in sports is that you either
recruit speed or you chase it
and i believe here i would recruit a
diverse faculty and make
take steps to do just that
we have a great faculty at bexley my
kids my children and i hope your
children have all experienced a great
faculty here at bexley we have my
children i know have not experienced a
diverse faculty at bexley and we need to
change that
43 of our teachers have over 10 years of
experience so we're going to get that
opportunity
just on the basis of time but i would
make it a priority and i would direct
superintendent fine and the principals
of the schools
to start looking now not wait for the
resumes to come in to start looking
bexley is a very attractive place to
teach don't uh don't let anyone tell you
short on that it's a great place
and i think we need to make
the potential candidates aware of that
the other part of that is i want to see
our teachers living in the district it
was a priority for susan and i when she
got her first job in teaching which was
here
it's been a priority for her big sister
it was a priority for my mother when she
was teaching at the high school level
i want to see our kids interacting with
their teachers on a social basis
whether it's at graders or johnson's or
at usp's around the corner or giant
eagle but i also think we have to
recruit what we want and i believe we
would be benefited from recruiting a
diverse faculty so i will take steps and
make direction to have exactly that done
thank you thank you
jonathan sure
when it comes to
scooting the microphone back a little
bit
when it comes to
having diversity in our district i'm
focusing on three areas
awareness
allyship and alignment
awareness in terms of the diverse
programming with
hispanic heritage month like black
history month that's not just for
those of that community that's for those
who are who are from outside that
community also learn about those those
cultures
uh also we have in bex we have the
parent institute
another opportunity to to bring that
kind of awareness to the parents as
president of the brexit minority parent
alliance we brought implicit bias
training to the district to help equip
our teachers to be able to better serve
our students
allyship we work with mentoring programs
across
where middle school students were
mentoring elementary school students
high school students mentoring middle
school students my kids were part of
that my kids been on both sides that
reaching back and also reaching up
as being pa
president i worked also to hire the dei
coordinator that was referred to earlier
and to also bring others to this
district
alignment
we need an alignment between our
policies and our practices i think that
we've had some challenges here recently
quite honestly and i think that
the lack of attention to this this uh
discrepancy between policy and practice
can lead persons of
who are others as mentioned earlier to
feel like they don't belong that they
don't feel safe
and one key tenant in my campaign is to
have
safer learning environments for all of
our students that includes masking that
includes social emotional that sort of
thing and one more thing about diversity
diversity for me
reflects opportunity my children right
now have more education than my
grandfather did and i'm very proud of
that in the sense that bexsay has opened
up the door to give them a quality
education
where they're not even so much
completing middle school and high school
and college that sort of thing but
they're having great experiences along
the way i thank you for that
thank you
next question marguerite that starts
with you
the climate surrounding school boards
has been quite hostile lately not just
here in ohio but around the country
leading to what feels like additional
division in the community during an
already challenging time
what would your approach be
to working together respectfully and
collaboratively and how would you listen
to the opinions of students family and
the community
that's a lot of question
thank you
my job now is i am the director of a
collective impact backbone agency so
what that means is my job is to bring
together
um
cross-sector organizations to work
towards a common goal that's what i do
all day every day right and particularly
to have people do it towards the end of
equitable outcomes so it's not only
trying to bring people together but to
bring people together in spaces where
they're going to be a little bit
uncomfortable where they have to talk
about race and class and gender and
sexual identity and uh sexual
orientation and immigrant refugee status
so creating spaces where people feel
safe comfortable and confident to
negotiate those conversations in the
presence of difference so i think as a
school board member
one of the things that's exception
that's really important is how do you
look at what how do you help people
articulate what's important to them what
their priorities are right and fine so
you have the community groups you have
community groups with people in school
you have community members with people
outside of school you have students you
have educators right you have business
owners there's lots of different
constituency constituencies in our
community but one of the things that
makes bexley super great is everybody is
really highly committed to education
right highly committed to our young
people the schools index they have sort
of an outsized role in the community
because we're such a small community and
the schools that hold such a great point
right so when you can find something
that people can agree on what do we want
for the young people we love the young
people we serve or the young people that
live in our community and what is what
do you want what is what does a
community member want who doesn't have
kids in school what's important to
somebody in the elementary school or in
the high school what's important to our
business community and how do you find
things that people have in common and
keep people to work together towards the
things that they have in common and once
you can get people to work towards
things that they have in common and
collaborate then you can get people to
stretch a little bit and try to do
things that might be a little bit
outside of their box so it's really
about making sure that every one of
those constituencies has a seat at the
table and and feels as though their
voice is is influential in that space
so thank you i think my time thank you
thanks patrick you want me to reread the
question yes
that's what i used to do for a living
the climate surrounding school boards
has been quite hostile lately not just
here in ohio but around the country
leading to what feels like additional
division in the community during an
already challenging time
what would your approach be to working
together
respectfully and collaboratively and how
would you listen to the opinions of
students family and community
thank you uh i i think that um
i sort of look at this
in a couple of different ways
um there's there's the external
conversations with the community
and and throughout this process i've had
a lot of those i've spoken to a lot of
different people with different
viewpoints and i think what i
have come away with is that people want
to be heard people want to be listened
to
people want
to to be understood and and at least in
this community i believe people
understand that
not everything is going to go exactly
the way that they want
but as long as they are engaged in the
process of decision making and and play
a role in
the the
the decision making that occurs by the
board
that can accomplish a lot i think
another element of this is internal
within the board and i think that what
is important as folks look at
board candidates is to understand the
importance of
being a good board member and
facilitating
conversations and discussions within the
board that accomplish the goals
the collective goals of the district
that's something i have experience with
on a school board as a tenure member of
a of governmental boards
um so i i think i have uh some of the
skills to do that and and have
understood some of the viewpoints that
have existed in bexley and currently
exist in bexley so
thank you thank you
joanne want me to reread it
yes please
the climate surrounding school boards
has been quite hostile lately not just
here in ohio but around the country
leading to what feels like additional
division in the community during an
already challenging time what would your
approach be to working together
respectfully and collaboratively and how
would you listen to the opinions of
students
families and community
yeah so for me to be successful in my
career
i have to listen to others and build a
plan by building consensus around ideas
i've built large and small coalitions of
community stakeholders subject matter
experts
to share ideas build consensus and then
actually make a plan to move forward on
important causes
and i value collaboration
and inclusivity whenever i make a plan
i do four things anytime i sit down on a
work project or a community project
i always ask myself who's sitting at the
table when we first meet there's great
people here but who else can we add to
it and how are we going to go out and
ask them to join
us then i always
talk about the data behind why we're
here
and what are some
ways to solve the problem the data
behind that and what is actually
feasible in the time frame we have to
solve a problem or create a plan
then when you build the plan you need to
do it together
and everybody you've brought in and
that's what your goals your mission
objectives and most importantly to me
is how are you measuring your outcomes
and making sure the community knows what
those measurable outcomes are
and all through the process from the
beginning you have to over communicate
the plan the reason why you're here and
your progress to date
because being transparent throughout the
entire process with whoever wants to
listen
really leads to trust and accountability
and improved outcomes
and i value input
my family and my friends we've all
volunteered and we've gone door to door
and actually we've knocked on doors and
we've talked to voters
i'll tell you there are some common
themes out there that i think if we can
come together we can actually move the
needle on and those conversations have
been very valuable to me
and i appreciate everybody who's taken
time to either meet with me or come to
an event
or open their door to me
and i think that's just a starting point
for me to move forward as a board member
i won't forget those conversations and
when i'm a board member i'll probably
still be knocking on doors
thanks
eric read it again
uh no thanks i i got it got it um
i will tell you how i am at 330 south
roosevelt avenue i am one block dead
east of the tennis courts stop by
uh i am usually walking with my friend
at 8 a.m in the morning
feel free to join me i have a dog
who would love to meet you and there's
another dog i usually walk with as well
so if you can stand dogs i you know
you're welcome to join uh my office is
downtown at 35 uh north fourth right
next door to hearst you're welcome you
know i would ask you to make an
appointment but you know feel free to
stop by ring the doorbell chances are
i'm in the back working on either a car
or motorcycle um but that's how i'm not
on facebook i'm not going to be on
facebook i'm not going to be on the bus
i do not want my
the people that i represent hiding
behind a keyboard if you've got an issue
there's something that needs to be
discussed come join me i have been to
three football practices i've been to
two soccer practices i've been to four
field hockey practices i look forward to
going to amy blosser's concerts and i
look forward to going to the theater i
am out i love having lunch it sounds
like tinder i love having lunch
i love having lunch at johnson's come
join so i am out in the community uh
don't try and and instagram me or
snap tick tock me or whatever just come
find me i'm again i'm
just dead east of the tennis courts
usually walking the dogs so i look
forward to your comments
that's one of the reasons we moved here
that's one of the reasons we ran susan
ran for school board she loved it come
knock on the door tell tell me about how
you want to get timmy and jimmy's class
in kindergarten probably won't be able
to do anything about it but you know
we'll be happy to hear about it if that
if that's a concern of yours so you know
come seek me out i'm not that hard to
find i'm a big old guy
um you know just come just come find me
again 330 south roosevelt look forward
to seeing you
thank you
jonathan you want me to reread it no
that's okay you're good okay uh when i
heard your question i thought about it
in terms of three parts i thought about
in terms of how
we can build people bring people
together i thought about in terms of who
what you're gonna do with the people and
then i thought about me personally what
kind of experience do i have with these
opportunities
in terms of how
the first thing we want to think about
is
how where can we find common ground
amongst all parties involved
and one thing i've learned through this
campaign
is that quite honestly bad news travels
faster than good news
and i think we have to do our whatever
we can to
kind of reverse that trend and that
comes by listening by understanding by
seeking to understand the other person's
side and their perspective
i think once you sit down and listen
establish some goals some kind of
structure that you can both agree upon
and follow
now i do agree with eric in some regards
about the electronic challenges that can
happen
uh i think there there is that challenge
there
i think we also need we can overcome it
by meeting face-to-face and talking and
talking things through and that's been
one of my strengths as well
so electronic could be a place to start
to post something if you want to do it
that way but at some point i've learned
in this campaign it's better to talk it
out face to face
as far as who we're talking about
students we're talking about families
we're talking about community as far as
students i'm willing to go to campus to
meet with the students to rearrange my
schedule and to communicate with them on
site i've done that before with uh
different
affinity groups for for students
i also was at the middle school football
game recently just minding my own
business and someone had questions like
okay well here's an opportunity to talk
this through
uh with families you have coffee people
like coffee and they like to get
together and talk and so they're playing
coffee shops here in bexley to do that
kind of thing
community we've learned and during this
campaign we've learned that the library
has been a great resource for us i think
it's an opportunity for us to kind of
grab a room grab an opportunity to talk
things through
personally i have experience as a
department chair where i had a disarmed
faculty or a student disarmed faculty
too
disarmed students who had a problem with
mathematics
and and i've done that same kind of
thing with when there's a tough time
find a way to disarm find a way to build
a bridge and work it out
thank you
larry
you know jonathan you are so right my
coffee budget in the last month and a
half has like skyrocketed it's crazy
um
i think we personally paid for the
remodel at starbucks
anyway i am
you know i think the question goes to a
bigger question than
um
just the school board really i mean it's
not a school board thing to solve it's
more of a community thing to solve
i really think that the school district
and our school system is a reflection of
our community and i think that we're
fortunate to live
in the city that we do because we have a
good community it's
open
it is diverse
there are opportunities and gaps that we
need to fill but overall i think that
our school system is doing a good job
with those things
but it comes down to a sense of respect
and
as other candidates said listening to
other people
people have
accused me of being a nice guy which
actually i like that's a good thing that
i'm quiet but just know that i am
more of an analytical
processor i like to listen and take
information in
but make no mistake that i'm willing to
stand up for the things that are right
when it's a right decision i'm willing
to stand up for that
i think that there is some perception
with members in the community that the
the school board process makes it
difficult to be heard as a community
member and that's something that i think
that we can take a look at
being open and accessible to the
community as eric's saying is important
i don't know exactly what that looks
like whether that's
monthly coffee chats
back to jonathan's theme of coffee or
town hall meetings or something but
having that engagement with the
community and being open and transparent
and our communication will go a long way
thank you thank you
you started this i did okay
patrick
this is the last question
and then i will
give you each one minute
to do a summation or a summary
and this is an audience question from
this audience
what is the current financial situation
of bexley city schools what is one area
you would recommend additional spending
and one area you would reduce spending
and patrick
uret
yes
yeah where do i start
as a member of the districts
as a member of the
district's financial advisory council i
do feel
qualified and and
enlightened on this topic we had a
meeting
last tuesday i think to look at the
district's five-year forecast and
talk through some of the scenarios for
future levies
the reality is there will be a need for
a future levy
it will not likely be
nine mills like the last levy
it will probably be in the next two
years
and
uh it will be important it will be an
important piece to
uh keeping this district on track
uh financially
and uh and and will be a a big lift uh
to to
to pass similar to the last one
in terms of where to direct
funds uh i i sort of struggle with this
question because
uh i think that
the district does do a good job
allocating the resources in the
direction where it needs to go where
they need to go i do think there's
opportunities for growth
in my
community conversations i have heard a
lot about special education and some of
the challenges within the district
around special education
but i can't i can't say if that's a
spending issue or an alignment issue but
that would be an example of something
that
making sure
it had appropriate resources would be
very important so
um
thank you
and i think that's
joanne
[Music]
yes so as a board member it's your role
to really work with the treasurer and
the superintendent to review
the financials and that's not only your
projections
but also your actuals and
your balances and your revenue
as patrick mentioned the district will
be facing another levy
i worked in the last levy when we
started out we knew how challenging it
was we made sure we're out in the
community talking about it
the number was big and we hadn't been on
the ballot for a long time this will be
different this year
i know how important it is
you know over 90 percent of our revenue
comes from
local taxes that's an important
responsibility as a board member
on the spending side
you know i do feel as though any money
that we're pulling down from the federal
government as it relates to
recovery
dollars
in the american rescue plan and the
resources of that i mean if we can if
it's possible to direct some of those to
fill any gaps that occurred after covid
do we need to hire more
tutors in the district or contract with
tutoring agencies to help close that
gaps how can we do more summer programs
or programs during the break and there
are those dollars to potentially go
after
also on the special ed side
my children don't have an iep or 504
plan but i've spent time talking to a
lot of parents whose children do
i know we ha we need to hire more aides
how can we make sure that happens and we
need to look at the resources for that
program are we getting all the assistive
and adaptive technology tools that
students need
in the in the classroom and are we using
our resources to do that i want to make
sure that each student has the tools
they need to succeed so on a spending
site if there's more resources that's
something i would advocate for
we also need to make sure that our
teachers are supported too i think as we
go through our next phase of our digital
audit in the district making sure that
we're surveying students and teachers
about what they need i think before i
make any spending decisions it's going
to be what do people want and need
what's the plan to use them
and how are we making sure that we're
giving money out with benchmarks to
actually get the next set of money
moving forward
thank you
um just to uh add to the previous
question i've also been an arbitrator
for over 20 years so i'm used to getting
in the middle of people having arguments
and bringing both sides together
i would rephrase your question though
and ask it this way what blows up the
budget and i ask that
of uh our previous treasurer and our
current treasurer
on the expense side
and and this might surprise you i don't
know on the expense side it's medical
that is what they they you know the
treasurer feels they've got a pretty
good handle on everything but you never
know with medical it's the one thing and
some of you over 60 percent of the
households in bexley don't have kids in
the school district and i'm willing to
bet you kind of look like me and so your
medical expenses are something that
really concerns you
on the flip side is the income side and
there this was fascinating to me it's
income tax revenue
our income tax revenue is highly
correlated with
the stock market
that is the number one driver of our
income tax revenue that
to i could not believe that but you look
at a chart and you could lay one over
the top of the other and it it's it's
scary um the second thing is lose a levy
we're going to have a levy over 80
percent of our budget is for salary and
benefits we've got great teachers
the bad news about having great teachers
you got to pay them
you know unfortunately they will not
work for free and there was a
a gentleman who said you know if you pay
peanuts you get monkeys i don't want
monkeys teaching our kids the reason
we're here is because this is a great
community and part of this being a great
community is we have a great school
system
our children are you know feel wanted
and nourished our kids have gone on to
do great things
um so to that end we have to pay
attention to those items and we have a
levy coming up and i plan on working for
it thank you
thank you
thank you very much for the question um
so
first and foremost uh as far as what to
cut i believe that i'd rather not cut
anything per se
i think things that maybe motivated me
or compelled me to
run for office or to run for a school
board if you will i do want to take a
look at some of our spending habits in
the last few years
i think that a decision to cut things
would be more of a
group decision if you were from the
board overall
in terms of insurance and so on and so
forth and spending at the executive
level so just looking closer at those
kind of things
i did reference earlier
some
a conversation i had at the middle
school football game it was about
facilities it was about uh the
20th century nature of some of our
facilities if you will and this is now
we're into 20 20 21 going to 2022 so
looking at that
i think we need to be honest
and look at we are still in a pandemic
and we have still had numerous families
who shouldered the burden themselves
financially to help
kind of
attend to gaps if you will that were not
provided by the district whether that's
in terms of technology tools that were
referred to earlier
so i think we can't we can no longer
have those families continue to succumb
to these kind of stresses
uh
in a practical sense um
bex has done a great job of
attending to to students who are kind of
in the in the major part of the the bell
curve
my middle daughter was uh you know twice
exceptional if you will she was you know
on one hand she had a speech delay on
the other hand uh she was very talented
and so there are programs there that
were helping her
and i just want to make sure that those
are and that kind of helped her now as a
high school student and so we want to
make sure that all students are
benefiting and those services are not
getting cut thank you
thank you
thank you it's a
really hard question to answer in two
minutes but um i applaud everybody for
giving it a really good effort um i
think what i would say is that um
i think you know i think about this from
a school board member perspective and i
know that
um
from the outside looking in it looks
like that we should have
people that are really focused on
specific skills and knowledge and
education and background
and
really the way that i think about it is
that um it should
be almost
as though
our community members who are sitting
around the coffee table in the morning
having
breakfast or lunch or whatever
are asking each other questions and i
know that i've heard really good
questions from the community
around our finances and so
when i'm sitting at home with brian and
we're going through our budget you know
he may be asking me questions like well
why are we paying 200 for wow cable i
mean you know that's kind of crazy
and so we have to have that discussion
and i think the board of education is no
different um joanne mentioned it before
you know we have a treasurer we pay that
treasurer to
do our financial forecast and to
make sure the bills are paid and and all
of those things that are supposed to be
taken care of financially they come to
us and present us with information as
good board of education members we need
to ask the tough questions
we need to engage with the
administration with the teachers
with the students
with our athletic folks or our theater
folks with the community at large and
ask what are your priorities in my day
job we follow a technology delivery
approach called agile and that
looks to give us a backlog of
things that we want to do we have to
prioritize that together
so that's how i would approach it thanks
thank you
so much
um
so i think our financial as
our financial situation as you know has
been is solid and we're gonna have to go
for 11 right so both of those things can
be true
um and if less than 15 of our finances
are discretionary so we're talking about
sort of a small part of the pot that
we're
thinking about what are the choices and
those choices are aligned with sort of
values and priorities
um and
if we one of the things that i think
about looking as opposed to
maybe cutting or adding is thinking
about how do we realign
and reprioritize expenses in a way that
that are centered on having a direct
impact on classrooms and student
learning right how are we spending money
in the ways that it has the most impact
for the young people that we serve
because that's what schools are really
designed to do
so making sure that our facilities are
safe making sure our facilities are
connected making sure our facilities are
designed in a way that creates spaces
for collaboration create spaces for
innovation but in the end what it really
has to do with was what happens inside
those classrooms right not necessarily
the classrooms themselves so when i
think about prioritizing i think about
prior to prioritizing uh
finances around teacher professional
development the research is
exceptionally clear
right teachers have the biggest impact
on student outcomes so if we want to if
we want to if we want to support
students if we want to make sure that
our students are both are socially
emotionally and academically strong then
we have to
prioritize spending money in the spaces
that they are and the people who spend
the most time with them which are the
educators so i really think thinking
about how do we prioritize our finances
around teacher professional development
teacher support in creating spaces and
environments where um both teachers and
students thrive and i think one of the
ways we do that is to center student
voices in how in what is most important
to them and educator voices and what
that professional development looks like
thank you thank you
and now we'll start with joanne you each
have one minute to summarize yourself
well thank you again for having us
tonight for the second time um
well i think that my skill sets which
i've talked about tonight really will
help me and help the district
really update our strategic plan to make
sure it's cohesive collaborative and
inclusive
the last time the strategic plan was
written my kids weren't even in the
district so that's exciting for me i'm
able to think long term how i want the
district and how i want them to fit
inside our district in each student
and i want to make sure again that each
student has access to the tools they
need to be successful and that's each
student it's making sure they have
innovative tools and innovative learning
on college and career readiness i want
them exposed to all options so that's
four year two two-year career tech or
the military so they can choose as a
family unit how they want to succeed
really making sure meeting special needs
and 504 plans continuing the culture of
diversity equity inclusion and ensuring
that kids have access to social
emotional
learning tools and curriculum that's
very important to me but thank you for
having us tonight and this is our last
form
so i've enjoyed running and i've joined
running with all these candidates we see
each other a lot whether we're at
starbucks or knocking on doors or here
and i think we've all had a really great
time running and you asked about
respectful environment
we've had that here in this race and
that's really great and i also think
it's a reflection of our community thank
you thank you
eric
bexley uh was where
we started our family raise our kids in
1982.
in 2017 it's where we celebrated susan's
life
after she passed
it is where i have decided to carry on
with mine
i care about this community i care about
our schools
we are all blessed and i am honored to
be part of this group
my
sister-in-law susan's big sister has
been superintendent at several school
districts
and she is absolutely stunned at the
quality here
we are all variations on a theme but
that theme is great schools
so whoever you pick
i think will serve us well
i encourage the citizenry
engage with them individually
knock on their doors meet them for
coffee
i'd prefer buy me a beer but
you know engage with us individually we
look forward to it and thank you very
much and thank you for being moderated
tonight
you're welcome and thank you
jonathan yes thank you very much uh as i
mentioned earlier i believe i have the
experience and the expertise to be an
effective board member for brexit city
schools i want to bring stability to our
leadership at the executive level i the
the four areas of my campaign
reflect the brown students faculty
as uh community
and and families and along the way
i've i've received some endorsements
from different teachers
i receive endorsement from franklin
county democratic party
i receive endorsements from neighbors
but
that's nice but it's made me feel more
of a responsibility to fulfill the an
obligation to them to be a better
candidate to endure the parts of the
campaign that we don't quite like
but because i've had this strength and
support from others that's forced me to
go forward
and i want to carry that momentum carry
that dedication carry that commitment uh
to the rest this campaign and hopefully
in the weeks to come thank you
larry this is a one minute about you
thanks carol well really it's not it's
less about me and it's more about our
community and and
mo more specifically about our our kids
in our community um i'm really
passionate about them
and i want to make sure that we have an
education system that works for all
students and i mean all students i get
focused sometimes
in special education because my son has
learning differences and we've navigated
through that process and it's been
really frustrating at times and we've
got iep meetings coming up soon and
we're already dreading that piece of it
but
um i've been an advocate in the
community through bexley pride through
dei
the coalition for equitable policing i
volunteered for special olympics for
over 30 years
worked as technical director at bexley
united methodist church
but above all i have
an mba and professional skills that i
think make me
an asset to the board of education i
look forward to being given that
opportunity actually i have a great
set of candidates to choose from so
um
choose wisely and um look forward to
earning your vote thank you thank you
marguerite
thank you i want a second joanne um in
this just appreciate this opportunity
because like eric said it's been a
really
i think when you asked the question
before about hospital
we haven't really had that experience
necessarily within the community even
with the questions and all the panels
that we've been or even amongst each
other um and so i it has been like a
great learning opportunity and in terms
of the conversations that i've had or
people that i've met in prospectus
because i think sometimes like my kids
are graduating right so really focusing
on talking to people with younger kids
and understanding sort of as long as
well as people who don't have kids in
the community it's been a great
opportunity to re-engage with the
community and just to have thoughtful
conversations about what's important to
people so it's been a great experience
um i think
most of the time
um no i'm just thinking about jonathan
like sometimes it's hard hard sometimes
it's hard too
um
no no not for you no
uh but i think as i think there's a
there's a there's a really strong
benefit particularly at this time for
having an educator on the school board
somebody who's years of experience in
education who can who can live between
those two worlds and really support the
school to become not the great not just
the great school that it is now the
district that it is now but the
potential of what it could be and i just
think that bexley has an incredible
potential and i'm hopeful that i can be
there to support that thank you
thank you patrick
i um i think i've made it clear uh in
answering these uh questions and
my introduction that i do bring a
specific skill and expertise in their
area of
school finance and i'm i'm i recognize
the value in that but i i think it's
important to note that i'm not just
about the finances i think that allows
me
to make decisions
based on information to use critical
thinking skills and and my network of
over 200 school districts allows me
access to
practitioners and best practices and
conversations that
will certainly be useful
i am not here to
provide direct programmatic guidance to
the school district i am here for the
long-term vision i am here for
the the
balancing that against the urgency of of
day-to-day matters and i i think that's
a really important position i i have
been to hundreds of school board
meetings presented in hundreds of school
board meetings across the state i
recognize a lot of this work is tedious
i recognize that it is challenging and i
i
welcome that challenge and
uh look forward to the opportunity so
thank you thank you all wishing you all
good luck and please vote for three of
these candidates
[Applause]
now i get to sit down
john offenberg is going to talk
to us about the bexley city charter
amendments we're not going to do
questions but john
thank you for joining us they've got
your name in the middle
you stand for an hour
[Music]
thank you carol
harvey and elizabeth
green
i'll move it closer
15 of our citizens spent 15 months
reviewing
our current
charter listening
researching discussing
and then presenting a number of proposed
amendments to our charter to city
council
it was then city council's
responsibility
to
decide which of any of those amendments
would go on the ballot and how they
would be packaged there are
five amendments to vote on
the first amendment
consists of four sections
that will be added to the beginning of
our charter
following
the preamble
the first section is recognition and
intent
it is recognizing that there has been a
history of racism and discrimination in
our community as others and in our
nation
and that it is the attempt
of our city to confront this
the second section is non-discrimination
in citizen participation
the third section is diversity in hiring
and contracting
in the fourth is interpretation of
ordinances that they be
consistent with our city's values
and
that we replace
gender pronouns with
gender neutral pronouns and terminology
the second amendment is to create a
citizen's review board which has been
done
this would just make it permanent
the third amendment is to create
staggered terms on our boards committees
and commissions
and to
excuse me allow council
to create boards committees and
commissions to deal with zoning and
planning currently our charter creates
one board for each this would give more
flexibility going forward
the fourth proposed amendment is to
allow the mayor with the consensus of
council to terminate a relationship with
the city attorney
please understand this does not reflect
on our current city attorney
mark fishel it was mark fishel that
suggested this and brought this concept
to the group early on
the thinking behind it is that ethically
a client should be able to
terminate a relationship with their
attorney at any time
the citizens the citizens of bexley are
the client they are represented by the
mayor and council so they should have
this ability
the fifth amendment calls for
electronic communication for calling
council for
special meetings
and also for notifying the electorate
you
for
ballot issues that concern bexley like
we have
it would also provide
for
municipal
issues to be on the ballot in the even
years as well as the odd years the
charter currently says that
those issues can only be presented in
the odd years which
is the municipal election
and it should
be available
in the state elections also
this might save the money of a special
election
at madoff may also make it more
convenient
i encourage you all to vote yes on all
five issues
these issues are available easily on
bexley.org both the
five amendments but also the current
charter
thank you
thank you john
take a second while we get our city
council candidates
organized up on this
days
very good to see you
good evening so far the lights are on
i'd like to ask each of you to summarize
your candidacy in a minute each and then
i will start the question and glorianne
i will start with you and then i'll
start the questioning with monique
and uh we'll go around with the
questions and
many of these were submitted last time
um i'm happy i believe we can take some
questions from here we'll see how long
things go you have a minute for your
opening statement
two minutes for an answer and then at
the end a minute to summarize uh laurie
anne
tell us about you
happy wednesday everyone i'm lorie ann
fibel and for eight years i have been an
integral part
of our city's prosperity and progress
elected to serve as council president
for two consecutive terms something that
hasn't happened in over a decade i am
the first president to lead a majority
female council
and the first president in over a
hundred years
to lead a community through a pandemic
i will continue
to protect our city its businesses and
most important our most vulnerable
citizens
now more than ever it bexley needs the
stability that my leadership offers i'm
a community builder i have worked hard
to keep our community connected
i'm a listener i have worked to be sure
that my constituents see me out in the
community
available to hear and address their
problems and concerns
i'm an analyst i have worked hard to
look at data and create solutions to
challenges
i am a change maker and i have worked
hard to make positive updates
such that bexley will stay relevant far
into the future thank you thank you
thank you
monique
good evening everyone i'm monique lamke
and i'm running for re-election for city
council
i've lived here for 21 years and i'm the
proud mother of two extraordinary
daughters who have attended bexley's
public schools
i just launched my oldest a few weeks
ago to college and my youngest currently
attends bexley high school
while i grew up in southern texas i
graduated from stanford university and
osu law school
i'm a litigation attorney and i've
practiced in both the public and the
private sector
i've also taught law in the academic
sector
i've been a volunteer in our community
stemming from split splash dash our
youth triathlon
to school room parent and playground
monitor to also being a wish granter for
the ohio make-a-wish foundation
as your council member for the past four
years i know and appreciate the
important conversations that we
and especially your children
are having about covid
the environment
social justice
gender identity and expression and aging
grandparents but there's more work to be
done and i would look forward to serving
bexley for another four years
thank you
thank you sam
thank you uh splish splash dash say that
three times fast money for us my name is
uh sam marcellino um i was born in
boston and my family moved here in 2001.
a bexley high school graduate and
currently i'm a managing partner at a
private practice law firm here in
columbus ohio um i moved back to bexley
in 2016 after law school and sought out
as many opportunities as i could to get
involved with the community as i was
appointed to the charter review
commission which you just heard about
from mr othenburg and served on that
committee with 14 other dedicated
citizens again please vote yes this
november um recently i was appointed as
the bexley complaint liaison by mayor
kessler to hear complaints about city
employees and help them
help citizens file complaints against
those employees if they have them i also
serve on the board of directors of
several organizations around central
ohio including wexner heritage village
my uh my platform is based around
communication community and creation and
i'm sure that we're going to get more
into that here shortly thank you
thank you adam
hi i am
i'm adam scharf and i am obviously
running for city council and it's great
to see all you here i really appreciate
you all being here tonight i grew up in
bexley i am i'm from here i went to
montrose elementary school graduated
from bexley high school and after
earning a master's degree at yale
university i came back home because
bexley is my home and i know many of you
feel the same way
living through the pandemic one of the
things that i've been proud of is our
community's response and i'm glad that
we have had a task force that has been
charged with trying to help us navigate
through this crisis one of my big
campaign goals is to create a similar
task force that is broader a disaster or
emergency response task force i don't
know if any of you heard but there are
now hackers attempting to
hack into water treatment facility
plants and that's just an example but if
something like that were to happen in
columbus i would like us to have a plan
ready so we know what we're going to do
and we're not shooting from the hip
so public safety is a big passion of
mine i consider myself extremely
pragmatic and practical and i'm looking
forward to answering more of your
questions tonight thank you
monique starting with you and i'll ask
each of you this question
what will be your main priority if
re-elected to council
thank you carol my main priority right
now is obviously is trying to navigate
the end of this pandemic i'd really hope
that a year ago that we would not be
looking upon that this upcoming winter
but here we are 18 months into it with
no end in sight
as part of those responsibilities as
your council members not only do i get
to vote on legislation
regarding our finances but a lot of your
finances have been impacted by covid a
lot of your community has been impacted
by covid we've been blessed to have a
task force that has dedicated so much
time and expertise
on how to support our community house to
support our families
families that need assistance through
organizations like darn
but also you've had a lot of
residents who have lost their jobs have
to shift and work from home maybe
they've lost their daycare and they're
now
having to work from home while watching
their own children so i think the
priority for me is trying to work as
quickly as we can to get through this
pandemic i think bexley's done a great
job
of hosting pop-up testing sites i would
love to see a pop-up vaccine site
but
making sure that we get back to normal
as quickly as possible for me
has to be the number one number one
priority
[Music]
thank you
sam
yes thank you very much the uh main
priority for me when elected to back to
city council will be improving
communication it's the first portion of
um of my platform the first thing i want
to do is make sure that we are allowing
for both questions and answers um during
city council meetings uh currently i
know that citizens have five minutes to
present their you know their their issue
however we don't necessarily have the
dialogue that we once had so i want to
hopefully bring some of that back and
increase those opportunities
additionally i want to make sure that
the information we're providing is
accessible by all that being said i want
to make sure we do an audit of the
current website to make sure that it is
completely ada compliant you may or may
not be aware that there are issues
regarding pdfs for people that are
visually impaired and using screen
readers to access that information as
well as fillable forms so i want to make
sure that we are ada compliant upon all
of our communication represented the
community and as an attorney i'm
thinking from a liability standpoint is
there has been an increase in litigation
regarding ada compliance so certainly i
want to make sure we tackle that to
start out and then i also want to think
about the future population that bexley
may hold
currently i don't think that we have a
large spanish spanish-speaking
population but i think that in 10 years
that could be different so therefore it
wouldn't be very expensive to
change our website and have a
spanish-speaking portion of it as well
so that way we can advertise services to
the community surrounding bexley as a
whole and i also want to just make sure
that we're making doing our best to
listen to all residents not only the uh
the people that have been involved in
bexley for a long time but also our
younger residents by perhaps creating a
program where we work with city with the
student body uh council
to meet with city council on a quarterly
basis and hear their input for what they
want from the community so overall
communication will be my number one task
thank you
adam
yeah uh my campaign is is focused on on
three main things i'm gonna sort of
cheat my answer to the question but uh
they are the the liberalization of some
of our zoning laws to permit more in-law
suites to be built and to allow them to
be uh
larger uh term limits so we can have a
more diversity of opinion and more
candidates here it is very difficult to
run as a challenger against incumbents
and i believe that if we have term
limits we will see a greater
representation of the citizenry
citizenry of bexley uh participating in
our civic life and the more people up
here uh the better
uh and finally the thing i talked about
a bit earlier is a emergency or disaster
response committee um you know we are
very blessed to have um you know our
police response time is extremely good
it's about two and a half minutes for
the roughly 18 000 calls that they
respond to a year uh that that's pretty
incredible
but you know a lot of those are pretty
standard run-of-the-mill everyday type
emergencies and
we can't really
we're not quite prepared for the
unprepared enough and that that's
something that that is a real passion
um of mine because you know if kova does
taught us anything it's the value of
preparedness uh i don't know if you all
remember early on in the pandemic when
people were running to the grocery store
and buying toilet paper for for no
discernible reason whatsoever because
you know you may run out of food but but
thank god we all have toilet paper um so
we need to have some some protocols and
policies in place so we don't have that
sort of
rash thinking that leads us to make
choices that in the moment seem great
like getting 30 rolls of toilet paper
but upon further reflection may not be
the best thing for the city of bexley
and so i really want us to to be
proactive and to take measures that will
uh keep bexley safe and prosperous for
years to come thank you
thank you
gloria
staying relevant
is what i am going to make sure that i
stress um during the next four years um
the development of innovative policies
programs services and infrastructure are
essential if communities want to attract
strong businesses and diverse residents
continuously out and about my community
i'm always available by email and i have
steady contact with my constituents
um and there's never an end to the
insightful ways that my constituents
think that we can make this great city
even better
which ideas to implement and which ideas
to put on the back burner for another
year is a constant
budgetary quandary
being good stewards of the city's
finances this is arguably the most
important duty of bexley city council
member
having a solid working relationship with
the administrator and the auditor
is imperative when assessing the
feasibility of the latest community
brainstorm
prioritizing new projects
and being certain that our city cannot
only afford the project today
is only step one
the step that is even more important is
the questioning whether bexley can
financially sustain the project into the
future
strategic planning
prioritizing
and saving are essential to any city
that wants to be relevant and prosperous
far into our future thank you
thank you
next question and we'll start this with
sam
how should the city go about evaluating
its police force what metrics should be
used
thank you very much
policing in america is at a crossroads
and we we need to do everything that we
can to make sure that we have the right
people in the right places making the
right decisions so as we're evaluating
the police force here in bexley we need
to do an accurate audit as to what's
actually happening in this community i
know there's been a lot of information
presented um by certain groups here in
bexley that is pretty damning and and
the fact of the matter is that if that's
out there we need to do all we can to
make sure that uh that's not accurate as
to what's what's taking place so so the
first thing that i would do on council
is make sure we do an audit of the
information that we have to make sure
that there is no discrimination taking
place within our community from there we
need to work with the police to see what
they need to give them the best
resources that we possibly can to make
sure they can do their job
and so we need to evaluate not only the
personnel that we have but also the
equipment that we're providing them to
do these jobs and when you couple those
two things i think you're going to find
a stronger sense of community policing
here in bexley it's one of my
predominant issues that i want to
address upon council is improving the
community policing that we have when i
was in high school here you know it was
very common to see a police officer wave
to a police officer know who that police
officer was if not
including their their children as well
today i think we lack that relationship
with the police and i want to do all
that we can to bring that relationship
back to bexley but that really starts
with an honest audit of the police
department not only in what's happening
in their policing but in addition to
what the resources are that we're
providing the police to do their jobs
and also how we can work together as a
community and perhaps provide them with
a stronger place in our community
perhaps providing other incentives to
get them to remain living in bexley or
stay involved in the community thank you
very much thank you
adam
yeah so evaluating the police force is
obviously a multi-faceted task there's
not just one thing you can look to and
say well we have you know evaluated them
because thing a is good
but i believe a good starting point is
to talk about the the response time
again about two and a half minutes for
eighteen thousand calls a year is is an
extremely good number
i also wanted to look i looked earlier
today or yesterday i looked at some of
our use of four statistics in the past
few years uh there have only been six or
seven instances of force being used in
the past three or four years and that's
in roughly you know 50 to 70 000
uh police calls so i think we we are
lucky to be living in a community that
has police that are not having to use uh
force a great deal and i think we should
be
happy with that but we also have to
recognize that there may be things that
go unreported uh there may be people who
are afraid to come forward and that's
why i think the citizen review board has
been a great step forward for the city
um in terms of i mean there's been the
issue of whether or not there is
discrimination in our police force and
there has been data released by a number
of groups the city of bexley released
some data with regard to the
demographics within a three mile radius
of the city of bexley in response to
this breir issued a study where they
went through six months of traffic stop
violations to determine if there was
discrimination uh
to be honest i find both studies a bit
inconclusive because we never could
establish a baseline for the traffic
flowing through bexley on a given day
and i believe that you would need
something like that to determine if
there is discrimination uh with regard
to our traffic stops but i'm i'm saying
that it's inconclusive i'm not saying
that it's not happening
and so we do need to continue to to
investigate these areas uh and to take
complaints seriously and i would
encourage anyone who feels that they
have been wrong to make use of the
review review board thank you
thank you
lori ann
our city cannot prosper if individuals
don't feel safe
on our streets and in our homes and so i
will continue to support our police with
resources and training
to be certain our department is a model
for other communities
under my leadership as president
community policing looks uh very
different than it did four years ago the
faces of our police officers look
different than they did four years ago
uh we have reformed the way we
do traffic stops um our department um
policies comply with eight can't wait
uh bexley voted to establish citizen
review board becoming the first in
central ohio to do that
um bexley was active um and increased um
not only the number of minority officers
but we've also tried hard to be um
uh instrumental in creating a partic um
police citizen listening sessions so
that we can learn from our citizens and
we can hear their voices
i believe in listening i believe in
analyzing and then i believe in then i
believe in changing
um when we have shown while we have
shown great progress there's always ways
always ways to improve
uh instituting the city's participation
in project taillight
and supporting policies
suggested by our youth interaction
working group provide opportunities to
improve
i recognize that change does not happen
overnight
but bexley is surrounded by a very
beautifully diverse
communities
which increases our responsibility to be
even more sensitive to our borders thank
you
thank you
monique
regarding the police i can support four
things first i can support a strong
community policing model but frankly we
need our police they are retrieving
dangerous guns weapons knives drugs
keeping us safe from home invasions and
protecting us as we sleep and live in
bexley however in this community we
should all be pro-justice pro-black life
pro-accountability
and pro-racial equality
second i can support strong training and
equipment and standards for
accountability for all our officers that
training should include training
regarding mental health issues
de-escalation implicit bias
it should include continued compliance
with the 8 can't wait regarding police
techniques program
it involves a strong citizens review
board that will hold our our officers
accountable and that citizens review
board is on the ballot this uh november
2nd so please vote yes on that
i'm also interested in seeing what
policies come out of our youth
interaction working group which is
comprised of experts from children's
hospitals from the high schools the
middle schools and other experts
regarding interactions with our youth i
also support body cameras those body
cameras that our officers currently wear
were requested by the police department
because they wanted everyone to know
exactly what was occurring during each
interaction
i've also personally advocated for
digital rapid fingerprinting id machines
and i put that in the budget and that
was successfully voted on by council
third i can support strong community
education on safety i've organized
community education pieces on human
trafficking
active shooters
scams regarding our seniors
and i've also put together a community
education piece on racism in the
criminal justice system
fourth i can support a fair mayor's
court the mayor and i were just
discussing that this morning
we have a public defender appointed for
mayor's court
the city of bexley works on a fine-free
system for those who meet income
standards and we also have a very
diverse mayor's court staff i'd invite
you all to attend it when you can
thursday every other thursday at one
o'clock thank you
more fun to attend and watch than to be
part of it
next question adam starts
what are your views on bexley's budget
are there items you would increase
funding for are there items where you
would decrease funding
yeah thank you the the first thing that
would come to mind in terms of
increasing the budget has to do with our
seniors i am in favor of a permanent uh
senior center to be located somewhere in
bexley i think we should establish a
committee committee
to look at potential sites for that i
know there are uh some other temporary
plans in progress but i think you know
our seniors give a great deal to this
community
uh and they should be um
you know we should value that we should
value them as people and i think
sometimes unfortunately it's easy
to kind of look past the people who may
not be as mobile or as active in the
community as they used to be but they
are they are definitely worth it
in in terms of of things i would like to
cut that is always a very um
difficult question
um
and
you know i i i can't
i can't say that there's anything that
that jumps to mind real quickly
um
but but i i would say that i would like
us to to spend our money wisely i think
everyone
um
would agree with that um
but but i do want want to answer this
question uh in a serious manner and i
and in terms of what we should cut and i
think that
uh you know given the fact that you know
many people are in a pandemic we should
look at the potential
salaries of our elected officials and
maybe in a show of solidarity take a
small pay cut
i don't know if everyone would agree to
that or like that but i think it would
be a show of good faith to the community
that we are serious about decreasing the
budget and what's more serious than our
own pockets thank you
thank you
lorianne
we are so very blessed and bexley to
have such an amazingly strong budget
um for for eight years i have made sure
that we have scrutinized our dollars and
and what we have spent
but i can i can tell you that we are
blessed in the last five years we have
put over half a million dollars into our
rainy day fund
and this year we will do that we will we
will put another at least
a hundred thousand dollars into our
rainy day fund
our big problem is deciding should it go
in the rainy day fund
or you know what everybody really loves
the bexley pool
and
it's gonna need some help soon it's
starting to show its age i know all of
you remember
and it seems like it was just yesterday
that it was beautiful and brand new
but it wasn't just yesterday
um
so as long as we continue to scrutinize
our dollars and that we're smart about
it
cutting is not something that we
necessarily do need to do
argue about where we should put our
extra
is a fabulous a fabulous thing to do
and the rec department is always one
that i love the services that that
department gives to our community
is amazing
the elderly is something we should make
sure that we take care of especially
during this pandemic they need a healthy
place to be but so do our teenagers they
need a healthy place to be
and our parks are something we need to
look at because we all know that we've
been visiting people a lot outside
lately and that is something we need to
make sure that we have lovely places
lovely places to be and of course
safety and our services are really
important
really important and valued in our
community something we all stay here
because those are so
so well taken care of thank you
thank you
moni
as a council member i think my key
responsibility is voting on the budget
our budget your budget your tax paying
dollars
i'd like to think that i protect your
tax paying dollars by closely
scrutinizing that budget and just a few
weeks ago your city council had a
financial retreat and i laid out some of
my priorities on what should be included
in this coming falls budget that
included catching up on a very aging
infrastructure
we've had to suspend and pause some of
our infrastructure repairs because of
covid and if now is an opportunity to
perhaps catch up
i
asked my council members and our mayor
to please consider putting that in the
budget
i also wanted some additional money put
in to beautify our green space
especially havenwood park
it's the smallest of the parks in bexley
but in my mind it needs a lot of love
i also asked for money in the budget to
promote short-term issues and fixes that
i see coming out of the joint livingston
avenue
steering committee of which i'm a
non-voting member of
there's been some proposed short-term
solutions as well as some amazing
long-term solutions but those are not
going to be without cost and expense so
i wanted to make sure that we were
prepared when the time comes when those
fixes can occur that we have the money
to put them forward
and finally the last thing i asked for
to be included in this budget was
additional money to
further examine the feasibility of a
senior center i'm so excited that when i
was on council just even a year ago that
city council set aside thirty thousand
dollars for a feasibility study for
senior center and just recently your
very generous bexley community
foundation
awarded the city another thirty thousand
dollar grant to implement a
short-term
senior center so i'm very excited that
hopefully that is underway as well
i can tell you that our grants dollars
are up 154 thousand dollars our real
estate tax revenue is way up so right
now while we're blessed to have a
healthy budget
it's not to say that we can always
sustain that so i'd be cautious
going forward
thank you
sam
thank you very much um to start i don't
actually think that we need to cut
but i do think that we need to be
critical
when we're making decisions we need to
really think about what we are spending
our money on we need to determine
whether tax credits for a home
improvements are worth it whether the
city really needs that extra
maintenance work or whether we need
additional resources for our police and
i'm not saying we don't but we just need
to be critical as opposed to necessarily
cutting back
increases for the community i too would
like to
increase
resources for our aging population
unfortunately this past summer i lost my
father when he was 83 and as we were
dealing with this issue we didn't have
any resources locally all the resources
came at a federal or a state level and
frankly to try and get answers and you
know while a loved one is bouncing
between the hospital and and hospice
care it doesn't really happen so i think
that we need to create a task force here
in bexley to provide resources to our
aging population that can work as a care
coordinator potentially assist
people with late life planning earlier
in their lives so they're more prepared
for these scenarios as well as
potentially a wills clinic so talk to
several colleagues that are willing to
present these wills clinics for free for
our aging population so that way
everything's in order um as that time
approaches in addition to that we need
to make sure that we're investing in
safety of the city um and i'm thinking
specifically into the livingston
corridor i know there have been a lot of
studies taking place and i just attended
a meeting last week in regards to it but
we need to make sure that we are getting
out there and uh placing the right
resources behind those uh that that have
a strong plan for that um and so as we
look to things like uh the the
livingston corridor we also want to
consider our police and again as i
mentioned the first things we want to
make sure we're providing them with the
resources that they need so as a whole i
don't want to cut but i do want to be
very critical with what we're spending
and i want to make sure that we're
keeping everybody safe and thinking
about all members of our community thank
you
and we start with laurie anne this time
what can council do to improve and
increase interaction dialogue between
residents and council
especially at city council meetings
i am
thrilled that this question is being
asked
um
there has been
so much
false
information spread on social media
concerning the ability for individuals
to come and speak to counsel
we want to hear from our constituents
we are eager to hear from our
constituents
i have under my leadership i have made
sure that the public can come and share
comments and ask questions
that's why we instituted a reasonable
time limit on public comment
uh so more community members have time
to share their thoughts
at some point
there were some meetings that went so
very late that people never had an
opportunity to speak because they were
dealing with
children at home that they had
babysitters for
but
if you limit
individuals opportunities
to speak
always because they can't get a word in
edgewise because others are speaking it
it does not it's not healthy
citizens can talk
they can talk for five minutes the
beginning of a meeting
they can talk for five minutes at the
end of the meeting and they can speak on
every
ordinance that is brought before council
the last two
meetings uh we had
12 times for individuals to speak
if you do the math you'll come up with
60 minutes that one individual could
spoke
so
it is a fallacy to think that people
can't we want to hear from people we
want to hear your emails we want you to
come to council
we just want everybody to have an
opportunity just not a select few thank
you
monique
dialogue between myself and my residents
is extremely important to me
and i have to share with you that i
truly love hearing from residents not
just in council meetings but our
residents are so great about finding
ways to reach out and contact me whether
it's a text a phone call showing up at
my front door
running into me at the grocery store the
dentist and letting me know what's
important to you i think that while it's
hard sometimes to be an elected official
it's always a blessing to hear what's
important to this person and what's
important to this person
so hearing from our residents is always
extremely important to me
but as part of that dialogue process
what's even more important is that i am
listening to you and that i listen to
you for the sole purpose of
understanding what it is you're trying
to tell me
not listening
with the purpose of quickly responding
or trying to find a way to to disagree
with what you just told me but just
simply listening and absorbing to what
it is that's important
at city council meetings as lori ann
mentioned
the current speaking time is five
minutes per resident
but we have designated agenda items in
our meetings you can speak at the
beginning of our meeting for five
minutes you can speak at the end for
five minutes and you can speak once on
every single piece of legislation each
time
i have personally seen in our city
council meetings that sometimes have run
so long
where residents who have lined up
babysitters because they wanted to come
in person and tell us what was important
to them or how they wanted us to vote on
a piece of legislation those meetings
ran so long that they had to leave
without the ability or the time to give
us their comments and i thought that was
awful i recently worked with council
to redo the agenda so that we move up
the important votes to the beginning of
the meetings so that our residents who
are able to attend can at least be here
to hear the votes
but i know that our meetings run long
and i would encourage all of you to
please contact each city council member
we'd love to hear from you
thank you sam yes thank you very much
and uh indeed i would like to give kudos
to current city councillors i do think
that they have
provided or increased the amount of time
that residents can come speak to council
to uh five minutes so certainly i think
the presentation is there the only thing
that i would like to improve is the
ability to then uh potentially provide
answers from council to residents uh you
know a lot of times people come to city
council meetings with not only concerns
but questions and i think that more
recently sometimes they've left without
those answers and while i understand uh
the need for a change in the past
potentially i think it's time that we
bring
back the ability to get answers to um
questions in a formal setting of city
council i do say that as an attorney i
reserve the right to say i don't know
the answer to that and then perhaps
bring it up as old business at the next
meeting but certainly i think that
questions need to be answered and i
would like to improve that ability upon
being elected to city council in
addition to that we need to be mindful
of the of the world that we live in now
and that not all people feel comfortable
coming to city council meetings and so
while i do again hats off to city
council they went on the fly off the hip
here to make it accessible to all i
think that we've now been familiar
enough with zoom and other technologies
to perhaps improve upon that and the
ability for residents to participate um
from their home if they don't feel safe
coming to council meetings so again
really the two things would just be
making sure that uh residents have the
ability to ask and get answers at city
council meetings and on top of that uh
potentially just trying to improve the
communication i think we've done as well
as we possibly can to date but i just
think that now is perhaps time to
evaluate and see if there's a better way
to do it thank you very much
thank you
adam
yeah so it's um
i don't think it's any secret that in
the past four or five years there were
some contentious things that were
discussed on city council there were
some
council members who weren't behaving
properly and i think in a certain sense
we can say that there were some steps
taken to kind of make sure we were again
engaging in civil dialogue
and i think you can make a very strong
case that at the time of those changes
to the the protocols and how citizens
could ask questions were warranted uh
but i i do think that they they deserve
to be reevaluated and i think the fact
that this is even a question brings up
the fact that a lot of citizens think
that it needs to be reevaluated um
so it is a a real concern and you know i
i do believe that city council members
should be asked questions on the spot
you know it's going to be uncomfortable
um you know no one likes to say i don't
know i don't quite have the answer but
there's something else too that has also
not sat completely well with me with
regard to the the current policies and
protocols in terms of how citizens can
interact with council members and heads
of the department and the mayor at city
council meetings and that is that it's
extremely difficult to pose direct
questions to the mayor and heads of
departments in a city council setting
now
maybe there is some some reason for this
but i think that they are elected
officials or they are officials serving
uh the city of bexley they are public
servants and they deserve uh to be put
on the spot you know it's going to be
uncomfortable but i think we have to be
if we are going to be good public
servants good elected officials we need
to be vulnerable and we need to let you
know we need to engage in the difficult
act of governing and dealing with our
constituents in a way that might make us
feel uncomfortable thank you
thank you
time to
wrap up and monique will you start with
your one minute
summary
thank you so much for for kind of
staying with us to the very end here as
your current council member i want to
assure you that i understand the city's
finances services and resources
and i also understand your needs and
wants as residents
i enjoy drafting well-reasoned
legislation reading the fine print as
the lawyer sometimes i'm the one that
writes the fine print
and also like seeing issues from many
different perspectives
i enjoy listening to residents with the
purpose to appreciate and understand
them
i want our residents of all backgrounds
to succeed here and i continue to see
the potential for growth and improvement
in our community
i want to continue advocating for our
seniors protecting your tax dollars
making bexley as green as possible
reimagining our business corridors
maintaining
our infrastructure reducing crime
and giving back to this community that i
treasure so much
please vote yes for monique lemke for
city council november 2nd
and if you have any questions my website
is monique lamke for bexley.com i'd be
happy to talk with you thank you
thank you
sam
i am the qualified candidate for this
position both professionally as well as
personally professionally i'm an
attorney i spend my days listening to
clients listening to their issues and
finding solutions for those i will bring
that to council professionally i've been
involved in the community i sit on
several boards i was on the charter
review commission i've studied the
charter i understand
where bexley currently sits and where we
needed to go
i've had experience writing amending and
presenting legislation to the state
house so there's not going to be a
learning curve when you vote for me
i will be ready to go i'll be ready to
put my action items into action tomorrow
so
professionally i'm there but personally
i'm there as well bexley's currently at
a crossroads there have been many issues
regarding uh regarding racial issues uh
diversity equity inclusion and and i've
personally lived those experiences so as
we're writing legislation and thinking
about the bexley that we want to be here
in 10 years i think it would be good to
have somebody who has personal lived
experience there i would be the first
black city council member in bexley
that's a pretty crazy thing for a town
that considers itself pretty progressive
so therefore i would ask that you
support me on november 2nd so i can
bring my professional and personal
experience to city council thank you
thank you
adam
well first of all thank you all for
being here and for for sticking it out
it's been kind of a long haul tonight
and i really do appreciate it i would
encourage all of you to go to
sharp4bexley.com
uh that is my website you can find out
more information on me there uh it's a
better way for you to get information
from me than uh
than me trying to list as much things as
i can in a minute but i i do want to
thank you all for being here and remind
you that voting is a civic duty i mean
it's a responsibility and i think
sometimes that i know i take it lightly
and i want to remind you all that
when you're in the voting booth you know
no one else is watching you this is your
time to let your conscience speak and so
i would encourage you all whomever
you're voting for whatever you're voting
for vote your conscience um because
otherwise you'll regret it and i really
want you to take that to heart uh and
vote for the things that you care about
on november 2nd thank you thank you
lorianne
thank you
um
bexley is a city whose citizens see good
education as a must
not a luxury
citizens who understand that being
progressive is not a destination but a
journey
citizens that prioritize safety
and look out for one another
when you vote for me
you get a woman who understands that
living in bexley is a blessing
when you vote for me you get a woman who
understands that affording to live in
bexley is a choice that many cannot
afford to make
when my mom and dad could not have made
what you get when you vote for me is a
woman who is a proud mother of three
who wants for every child in bexley what
she wants for her own children
what you get when you vote for me is not
someone who understands all the
challenges
our community members face
but someone who listens and empathizes
someone who feels the pains of others
and wants to strategize
someone who builds an infrastructure to
be the change needed thank you
thank you
i know you could have all gone on for a
much longer time and i apologize for
stopping you but that's my job
hopefully hopefully you can hang around
a little bit and they'll leave the
lights on hopefully for a bit if anyone
has a specific question or a specific
candidate to ask
please just
do so
thank you for being here
[Applause]