Tag: Lynda O’Conner

Trick or Treat in February at Lakota: Darbi Boddy wants to remove masks and give parents freedom of choice, the LEA wants to impeach her over it

The Union Wants to Impeach the School Board over Mask Freedom

I watched the school board videos from January’s Lakota meetings several times, and I still think they are very good. But apparently, the mask police at Lakota is so insulted by Darbi Boddy’s proposal to remove mask mandates from the Lakota school culture and give parents the right to choose has caused the LEA union to begin proposing talk of impeaching the young school board member. During the last meeting, you would think it was trick or treat at Lakota as the mask lovers got up and left while Darbi was talking, obviously meaning to show her disrespect. But none of that is a surprise. This has been a problem for a long time at Lakota, where the inmates run the asylum. Actually, that’s how it is in most public schools, the unions run everything, and the school boards get sucked into believing their goal in life is to show uniformity. I would argue that the point of having five members on a board is to fight it out and debate to convince two other voters to either approve or deny a resolution. The goal of a school board is not to get along but to run the business of a local school the way our “republic” was designed. And to me, that’s what I see happening. This was Darbi’s second meeting, and she’s very passionate. There are a lot of high expectations behind those who went door to door for her to win, and she feels the need to get there and get something done instead of just being another bobblehead on a school board. She ran on getting rid of masks in the schools, as other schools have done around the state of Ohio. So short of getting more comfortable with the rules of school board business and not feeling like a sell-out for doing so, I am more than happy with how the Lakota school board is functioning for the first time in three decades. 

I know people are wondering, especially the sweat bees from the teacher’s union, what my relationship is with all this. Just remember what some of those same people who are all stirred up over Darbi, what they did to me about ten years ago in the parking lot of Kroger by Lakota East. Julie Shaffer played her role in that along with Joan Powell and many other tax increase supporters back then. So now is not the time to play innocent. I’ll stay mad over that forever; I will never forget. But that isn’t the fault of the current crop of kids moving through Lakota or many of the characters who are now involved that want to make the public school work for the benefit of the area’s parents. It took Lynda O’Conner more than a decade to win me over to believing that she was a Republican. I know her to be a very good one now. But I used to be so angry at the Lakota school board that everyone on it was what I thought were scum bag liberals. It took seeing Lynda at many GOP events over the last several years that I learned that Lynda was one of the good people. We have very different ideas about the worth of public education. She really believes in Lakota and is hopeful about public schools’ role in all our lives. I personally want to blow it all up, metaphorically, as a concept given to us by the significant progressive loser, John Dewey. I had been asked to run for school board many times, but that just wouldn’t be fair. We all pay taxes to the school, right or wrong; I’m happy to not get in the way if people like Lynda who want to fix it to the best of their ability. I’m also happy to offer solutions or help people who want to be part of the solution find their way to the school board by helping connect all the right dots. But for me personally, I’m all about getting rid of the Dewey system completely. 

Lynda and I usually agree to disagree on education, and when we see each other, we talk about other things besides school board business. Usually, we have a shared interest in GOP-related topics locally and nationally. If we talk about school board items for too long, I quickly blow it all up intellectually, while she desperately wants to save it. I tell that little story to those who are wondering, which are quite a few people these days. And I can also relate to the problems that new school board members like Darbi and Isaac Adi are feeling now that they are inside. It’s empowering to help be a part of the solution. The rules of the game are there to make it something of a functioning republic, and most of the time, no single person gets it their way all the way.

In Darbi’s case over this mask resolution issue, it’s her job to get two other votes on the board to support her. Many people backing her might think it’s a sell-out to work with people on the board. But they aren’t on the board. It’s tough, at best, to represent so many people and still do what you think is right. I have a policy that I do not pick up the phone, or text anybody ever, like Sheriff Jones might do, to never put my hand on the scales and threaten people to vote a certain way. I would never call up Lynda and tell her that I wouldn’t like her anymore if she didn’t vote the way I wanted her to. I believe firmly in finding people who want to do a job correctly and putting them in power to do that job. I may not always like what they do, but they should know more than me about it in a republic, which is why they are my representative there. You must trust the people you vote for to do the ultimate right thing and always keep the big picture in mind. If they don’t, then you vote them out. That’s the way the game works. 

But for the teacher’s union at Lakota, they already don’t like Darbi because they can’t imagine how they might get her under control and intimidated by their presence. That is something they have been doing for years, threatening school board candidates first with the offerings of friendship but then taking away that civility if they step out of line. That was what was implied by them walking out on Darbi in the second meeting of the year while she was speaking. I can understand not liking what Darbi was saying. It may not be their politics. But if they really wanted to understand what’s going on in the district, they would know that Darbi represents people in Lakota who think worse of public education than I do. I’m a moderate on the issue, believe me, there are lots of people who hate it far worse, and to them, Lynda might as well be Satan incarnate because she doesn’t put everyone on trial and burn them at the stake. Nobody will ever make everyone happy, but what we want is for good people to do good work on behalf of the kids and taxpayers who are stuck paying many thousands of dollars a year for this ridiculous product. And there isn’t a lot of tolerance for these teachers’ union shenanigans. As Issac and Darbi get more acquainted with the conduct of these school board meetings and the agreed rules of the game, they will get better. But so far, these meetings are what I think all school boards should look like. They may be a little bumpy. But I’ve never liked a lot of hand-holding, especially when millions of dollars are at stake and many lives are impacted. And for those who are used to bullying their way into a one-sided argument, well, those days are over.  

Rich Hoffman

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Lakota Gives Teachers Raises Mandating a Tax Levy in 2022: Lynda O’Conner stands alone against a wave of liberalism

Lakota Schools Seeks a Tax Increase to Cover Their Deficit Spending

I remember watching Brad Lovell’s campaign material on what he thought a school board was for.  I wasn’t going to make a big deal about his naivete, I didn’t care much about the issue so long as Lakota wasn’t asking for more money, but I was embarrassed for him.  He stated he wanted to get elected to the school board to support the leadership staff at Lakota, such as the current superintendent, the treasurer, etc.  The school board’s role is to manage the district and provide that leadership, not to punt to chaos and let the teacher’s union run the school.  And after the late Monday night vote of April 26th, it was only Lynda O’Connor who voted against even more raises for the latest teacher’s contract.  In voting yes, Brad and three other school board members, including the current President Kelley Casper, who is up for reelection this year, have guaranteed that there will be another Lakota tax levy in 2022.  They will wait to put the levy up for a vote because it will be between elections for the school board members.  They’ll have to due to the massive deficit spending that Lakota has been engaging in over the last several years.  Only Lynda O’Conner has shown any interest in managing the money of Lakota.  On the other hand, Brad and Julie Shaffer have turned over all that responsibility to the “leadership team,” which they seem to have forgotten, works for them as elected representatives. 

There were options, with the way that Covid has been, this would have been an excellent time to play chicken with the train of the Lakota Education Association.  They have very little leverage currently to use a strike to dispute a lack of labor contract.  The market conditions being what they are now could challenge a lot of the payroll that Lakota is committed to and force some legacy teachers to retire early.  Parents, after all, have become used to not having a school to take their kids to due to Covid problems, so the brand of Lakota would at least have withstood some scrutiny.  And given that Lakota is a destination community for many people, it would not be hard to replace any fresh out of college teachers and full of vigor for the job, making about half the wages of a legacy teacher of $100K or more.  Those are management decisions, hard ones, but the kind of decisions that we elect school board members to conduct on our behalf.  Instead, what happened was that only Lynda O’Conner had the guts to vote no on a new teacher contract that has unjustified raises contained within it.  The rest of the school board caved to the teacher union demands and have signed us all up for a levy fight next year.  Brad and Kelly are up for reelection this year, so that’s not a good time to put a levy on the ballot.  And in two years, Julie Shaffer will be up for reelection.  That makes next year for a levy to be just suitable for the politics of the school board at Lakota that is much more concerned about making progressive, expensive, and overrated teachers happy rather than working on behalf of the community to keep costs in check in a challenging time.

Many people who are voters in Lakota have been seriously restricted in their professional lives, going without pay increases since Covid started, or they have lost their jobs due to layoffs or forced early retirement.  Because of Covid, more people are working from home, have learned to do other things with their children since schools were closed, and many of these teachers were home sitting around doing nothing. Simultaneously, the pandemic was used politically to reshape our society into a more progressive one.  The voters aren’t going to be too happy to hear that all these teachers are getting a raise and because Lakota didn’t have the money to give them a raise, it’s going to force a tax increase proposal on their property taxes.  Due to Joe Biden tax increases, increases in the cost of gas, government tampering with market economy needs, and unemployment that is much higher than when Trump was in the White House, Lakota is planning to demand more money for their lack of leadership with deficit spending. 

Lakota had it made; they had a community of high-income wage earners with expensive property and many businesses to tax.  They had declining enrollment, which meant they were bringing in more money than they were spending, by quite a lot. That’s why there hasn’t been a levy request since 2013, when the last levy was passed.  However, Lakota has managed to deficit spend its way anyway by giving teachers raises over time that wasn’t needed.  They are mandating that they now have to ask the community for more money because of their lack of leadership in a changing public education landscape.  The pre-Biden administration problems of charter schools are still present.  The social movement to attach tax money to children instead of the school district is still a hot topic, and it’s going to change shortly out of necessity.  School board members like Brad, Julie, and Kelley at Lakota can drag out the inevitable for a while, but it’s coming quickly, and these reckless spending habits that they are so used to engaging in will be a thing of the past.  Soon, Lakota will have to compete with other districts in a very real way, and this kind of behavior in a very suddenly cost-conscious culture where everything is now getting more expensive due to the reckless spending of the Biden administration will change voting patterns dramatically. 

But you could hear in Brad’s voice the problem from before he was even elected to the school board. Like many people who run for that office, he has no idea what it’s supposed to be doing.  He likes to be someone important in the community; it gives people who want attention something to do. Still, the hard stuff is punted to a superintendent supposed to be working for the school board as the source of leadership.  These people want to do the job as long as nothing hard comes up, such as voting on the teacher’s contract.  But as we have witnessed, only one school board member voted against it, and she was put under tremendous pressure to vote otherwise.  People like Brad Lovell care more about school board uniformity, even if it’s the wrong answer, than in the proper response and arriving there through debate.  Then, of course, the LEA teacher’s union knows this going into negotiations.  They know they have the votes to approve a raise for their members before the negotiation even begins.  Someone like Lynda O’Conner can try to negotiate and draw a hard line, but there was no incentive for the teachers to give up anything.  They only know to take, take, take.  They know Brad has a wife employed by the school, that he would like to see increases to the payroll budget because it ultimately helps him through his wife.  And that is the truth of the matter, something they won’t talk about in the newspapers or nightly news.  So prepare yourself for a fight, next year at Lakota, there will be a tax levy.  Due to this school board making terrible decisions and spending money that they didn’t have, they were confident they could steal it from the taxpayers due to their selfishness and sheer stupidity.

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior


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Bipartisanship on the Lakota School Board is a Fantasy: Why being a Republican matters when managing money is the objective

One thing that is very obvious, especially this time around within the Lakota school district, and specifically Butler County, Ohio is this complete falsehood that any school board is a non-partisan entity sacrificing their time and energy for children. Wrong! School boards, especially the one at Lakota, are extremely partisan and they want to appear that way so they can get elected in Butler County to anything, due to the conservative electorate demographics that are required. When board members past and present like Ray Murray, Julie Shaffer and many others declare that there should never be an “R” or a “D” next to the name of a school board member they are wearing a mask of falsehood meant to deceive us all. They want to project that school boards giving children an education is “bigger” than politics and that people like me are trying to divide our community with partisan bickering. They are liars, and thieves, and no better. I would go on to say that they are scum of the earth because of their deceitful nature. School boards are nothing but partisan because of the liberal element that comes with every government school due to labor union membership. You can’t accept as an endorsement the school labor union but not the endorsement of the local political party and expect to make a case for neutrality on it, which is precisely what those two idiots have been doing.

Think about it, during this election season which ends on Tuesday November 5th 2019 we have continued hearing about this big budget surplus from Lakota of over $100 million, and rising. Ray Murray and Julie Shafer have been critical of the Republican endorsements of both Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn because in their view the school board is a non-partisan collection of community members, yet they were proud to get the endorsement of the LEA labor union. Julie will even say that she is a registered Republican. Well, all those statements are is a trick or treat mask. The labor union wants those two losers (Julie and Ray) on the board to make contract negotiations easier for them as Lakota blows a ton of money on a $200 million long term facilities plan entailing rehab, renovation, and replacements of buildings and much more which is not in that 5 year forecast that everyone has been beating on their chest in regards to that $100 million surplus. Believe me, the liberals on the board, wither or not they call themselves Republicans or Democrats already have that money spent, which is the cause of this emergency prior to the election for proper school board members.

Finally we have a choice to get a three vote majority. If either Ray or Julie get elected, that $200 million project is getting greenlit and that $100 million surplus is gone. If voters stay home that night and don’t vote, the endorsed labor union candidates will get elected and this chance to safeguard the budget will fly right out the window and it won’t take but a short time for us to go into another levy fight. While its true, I’d rather think about other things than this stupid Lakota school issue, because honestly, I’ve never been a big fan of the work government schools do with children. If we are going to have a big, giant black hole of a government taxation agency programming our children into liberal propaganda, then at least we can elect a school board to manage the money with true Republicans who are fiscal conservatives, or at least can read a balance sheet and understand what the treasurer tells them.

I’d rather not dig into the lives of these people, and I call them losers for a good reason. Especially the more I learn about them. Between Ray and Julie, I’ve heard enough. I didn’t have a very high impression of them before this election, and now that we’ve been through a few months of campaigning, I’ve learned enough to be disgusted by them. I have no question that they are liars and completely inadequate in managing any sum of money. Julie Shaffer may be a registered Republican, but she doesn’t vote like one. She is clearly one in name only, and she want’s to keep that mask on to even have a shot at winning anything in Butler County, just like her predecessor Joan Powell and the many others following in her wake who have pretended to be Republicans only to turn into big, sloppy liberals. You bet it matters what political party they are affiliated with, that’s how we measure their basic values and getting the respect of a political party enough to get an endorsement means a lot.

As I’ve said before, school board members are our representatives to protect our interests. How can they do that if it is the enemy of our interests who endorse them? And yes, the teacher’s union is the enemy of our interests. When they negotiate for the next union contract in a few short years the leaders of the teacher’s union aren’t thinking about the kids, they are only thinking of making more money and if they don’t get it, they will threaten to strike. They won’t care one bit if the kids don’t have a classroom to go to or if they are serving a good example as adults while they negotiate with the school board. The teacher’s union want weak people to negotiate with which is why they are endorsing Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray. None of them want Lynda and Jim on a board together, you can bet that because they will vote no against a lot of liberal ideas the teacher’s union wants to do with our tax money, such as implement transgender bathrooms while they blow through that $100 million surplus like gambling addicts at a casino.

The only reason anybody would say school boards should be non-partisan is because they want to wear a mask to hide their true intentions behind. Julie is no conservative and Ray Murray is even less of one than she is, and they don’t want to talk about it because they want a chance to get elected. By making politics a non-issue they can continue to deceive voters into thinking it doesn’t matter, or placate them to stay home on election night while the vermin of the teacher’s union go out in droves and vote for losers so that their next contract negotiation is in the bag along with those $200 million facility improvements that nobody is talking about yet, quite on purpose. Are those harsh words, is it fair to talk about the character flaws of Julie and Ray during an election for a silly school that sticks its nose in our lives in very intrusive ways, all the time? You bet your ass it is. These are nothing but robbers who want to steal money from the rest of us and I get tired of them lying to my face, and to the rest of us. Where is Julie going to find $200 million for those facility plans if she can’t even find her pants? I can promise that the endorsed Republicans on the board, especially Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn would never be involved in such embarrassing situations, you know why? Because they are Republicans, real ones. That’s not to say that they are made of the robes of Jesus, but they are pretty much what they say they are, even in social situations. The politics of any candidate matters and there is a reason the LEA wants people to wear the masks of bi-partisanship—it’s so that they can rob the bank of Lakota and hold our kid’s hostage while they steal from all of us. And if that sounds harsh, I would argue that its not harsh enough.

Rich Hoffman

Julie Shaffer and Ray Murray Want Transgender Bathrooms at Lakota: Lynda O’Connor and Jim Hahn could stop them if elected

Another thing that voters need to understand in the Lakota school district as they vote on November 5th 2019 to cast a ballot for new school board members, is where they stand on the transgender bathroom policy. Clearly by the video below, and on many other issues there are two right thinking candidates, and two who are out of their minds. The two good ones are Lynda O’Connor and James Hahn. The two bad ones are Ray Murray and Julie Shaffer. What makes Ray and Julie bad are several things, but for this particular circumstance its their policy of allowing sex to determine the focus of a taxpayer funded education that makes them such villains. Lynda and Jim are against the proposal of taking away parental rights from their children by allowing transgender kids in locker rooms and in the general bathrooms. Transgender politics is a dangerous progressive platform that is driven by government schools and is meant to erode away family value so that children are raised under the umbrella of an all intrusive government. The issue is not about fairness, its about family destruction. Listening to Ray and Julie below I would say they are not savvy enough to understand the politics behind the movement. And that makes them even more dangerous to the Lakota school board, because they are pawns to a progressive policy without even knowing it. But if left to them, if Julie and Ray are on a board together, you can bet they will be voting for transgender bathrooms and locker rooms. Listen to them for yourself:

In many ways Lakota dealt with this years ago, and Lynda O’Connor was part of the leadership in creating an option for transgender kids with a separate bathroom. The continuation of this issue proves that the agenda is not about keeping kids from committing suicide because boys want to be girls, and vice versa. It’s about eroding away the values of students into instruments of progressive thought and turning them into activists for change into a liberal, anti-traditional family direction. To be clear, Jim and Lynda working together on the school board would prevent further transgender issues from becoming a distraction. Ray and Julie would perpetuate the issue and vote to allow mixing boys and girls into general bathrooms and locker rooms. They are weak people who are not very smart making them easy victims of the aggressive teacher’s union. The union has supported both of them because they know that Julie and Ray are easy targets for their agenda of progressive considerations. To prevent this issue both Lynda and Ray would need to be elected because currently Lynda is outvoted on the board two votes to three for approval. The only thing stopping it currently is this upcoming election.

Its hard for many people to admit, including school board members, but education is much less about teaching kids anything, but is more about changing them into progressive activists. In many ways, no discussion about sex should be going on with taxpayer funded efforts. Liberals have been pushing for years to continue lowering sex education among student populations into younger and younger ages. In many cases students aren’t even thinking about sex as public schools are proposing teaching about it in the fourth and fifth grade. Progressive planners at the state level who make up these curriculums know that most children are home alone and bored out of their minds as both parents work these days. And when kids are thinking about sex, they are easy to control especially at school because the teachers become the adoptive parents. Julie isn’t thinking in such conspiratorial terms and Ray is too busy smoking pot and digging his hands into the pavement of Chicago streets to think very deeply about anything. But those are stories for other articles. For this, they just do what they are told by the union. And believe me, the leadership within the unions are all about advancing the progressive anti-family national position of their liberal organization.

Transgender issues are a minority and to provide them with a bathroom to use is fair. Anything beyond that is disruptive to the other students. I could go back to my school days and tell lots of stories as these issues were just becoming part of the narrative. I was a very good athlete and obviously all the school coaches wanted me to play on their programs whether it was basketball or football. I liked playing the games, but I hated, HATED undressing and dressing in the locker rooms. I hated it with kids of the same sex. I can’t imagine it with people who were openly gay and girls who were claiming to be boys. Nudity for me was always a very vulnerable position. I grew up going to church every week. My mom was a housewife and we had a very traditional family structure so I had clear definitions of right and wrong and not being vulnerable around strangers.

We have learned over the last decade or so however that sexual manipulation is actually very common among coaches and students and creating conditions where kids are getting nude is meant to teach them to lower their defenses. With me, I never did. I just didn’t play the sports, because I didn’t want to be stripped of my clothing and assimilated into a Borg Continuum that they called a “team.” I would say that most people reading this are at least my age or older, so they likely had similar experiences and all this modern talk about transgender locker rooms and bathrooms is beyond their understanding. But its quite an obvious attack on our lifestyles in America and its on purpose. It is happening at Lakota. But it is happening everywhere that the teacher unions touch taxpayer money.

When Julie Shaffer says that over 70% of students are thinking about committing suicide, she is talking about 70% of something like 2% of the student population, overstated on purpose to exacerbate the issue for overly emotional people. Rather than deal with the exceptions the progressive position is to use the exceptions to change the standard and drag more and more kids into the confusing condition of sexual identity when most of them can’t even read a book or do basic math. And that is the real crime. Even if nobody wants to believe that progressives at the state and federal level are attempting to destroy the American family with these transgender policies, the truth of the matter is that while we are talking about these issues, kids aren’t learning what they should be, so a change is desperately needed if we are to save them at all from these dangerous educations. What is absolutely certain is that if either Julie or Ray are elected to the Lakota school board, then they will have the votes to advance this agenda. They both support it, you heard it from their own mouths. But if Jim and Lynda are elected, then the issue will be held off and parents will retain their rights to at least manage their children’s sexuality as they should have the responsibility for. Its not the school’s place to stick their noses into such a small topic of the human experience and anybody who says otherwise is looking to limit the intellect of young people with such a trivial topic to consider. Which to my mind should be a crime. But for now, its at least subject to a vote and with an election, we can stop the continued damage.

Rich Hoffman

Vote for O’Connor and Hahn to Lakota School Board: It isn’t about being nice, its about being effective

The value to a person like me of the Lakota school system is in how little they take from the community to offer their free baby-sitting service. I think we are in a time where the college myth is no longer relevant, that we understand the cost of a liberalized education is very detrimental to young minds. But a lot of parents could care less, they just need somewhere to park their kids for the day while they do whatever they do. And if there are sports programs, they can play the lottery with their children by hoping that they may get a scholarship to a college and save them some money. That’s my opinion of the public education system which might be bleak to many, but its my observation that, that is the essence of it, so in my view, it needs to cost the least possible. The real figures that make up a good community are the businesses that create the desire to move into an area. The school that happens to be there benefits from the quality of people who are drawn to the businesses of a region. It’s a really broken system that measures all the wrong values, so while we all figure out the future of public education, we need a bridge from here to there that has smart people managing the resources so we don’t end up with the kind of mess that we have had at Lakota during the last decade.

At the recent VOA Miami University Meet the Candidate night which took place on October 22nd, 2019 I attended to provide coverage for those who couldn’t be there, and video of the event is provided here. I see this work as a kind of public service. Feel free to watch the videos and make your decisions on the candidates. For me the unquestionable choice for school board in this upcoming election is James Hahn and Lynda O’Connor. Lynda has been around for a while and knows how to manage the board and keep Lakota in a win column so that they don’t scare off potential investors into real estate as a deal breaker. I don’t think Lakota is a lure, not in the way public school used to be. Other factors certainly are a greater part of the decision-making process. And that’s where James Hahn comes into play. He’s a business guy and would provide Lynda and the current board member Todd Parnell with that critical third vote to keep the district running well with the massive amount of money that we do give them.

Much of the talk from that debate night was what to do with the massive $100 million surplus that Lakota is operating under. I filmed many of the questions and answers but was out of the room away from the camera when Ray Murray proclaimed that it would take Lakota 37 years to spend all that money, which was astonishing. I’m sure somebody in the room filmed that comment. But the gist of the night was that Ray and Julie Shaffer were nice people who just didn’t have a clue how to operate in this tightly controlled Lakota district where business owners have actually stood up for themselves against the extortion tactics that public schools often use to get more money in their pockets so they can throw it at the teacher’s union. Looming in the room around that event were many of them from Liberty Township and West Chester. Sure, everyone shakes hands at the end of those things and gets along, professionally. But the resentment of the game is a clear dividing line and since much has been said over the last decade about the negative ways Lakota has interacted with that part of the community, it is clear that the skills needed are well beyond Ray and Julie.

What’s different now as opposed to even a few years ago is that “just pay more money for the kids” isn’t enough any more for public schools, and at Lakota that is especially true. There are lots of psychological problems that make people do what they do, and as I often refer to strong supporters of government schools as rapid animals with their minds soaked into delusion as to what the school can actually do for their children, what everything eventually comes down to is money. Lakota has plenty of money that they are taking in. The question is, what happens to it? Without a pro-business school board who knows how to read a balance sheet, that $100 million surplus will be wasted on everything and the board will come back to the community asking for more money in a few short years.

Nobody wanted to talk about a school levy, obviously I was there for everyone to see, and many members of the old No Lakota Levy campaign were in the audience also very visible. Without question that changed the course of the dialogue a lot from pro levy discussions which of course the teachers and administrators always want to hear and centered on more fiscal responsibility which seemed like an oblivious concept to Ray. I am still astonished about some of the things he said during the debate. He may be a nice guy that is very likable but being likable isn’t a qualification unless the job is a Wal-Mart greeter. When we are talking about budgets ranging in the millions and millions of dollars, many times you want someone managing it who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about being liked. Quite the opposite.

Lynda O’Connor has come a long way in her years on the school board. I’ve always liked her but, in the beginning, I thought of her as another idealist who was pro education and would work the Republican ranks because of the regional consequences. But she has certainly proven to me that she is sincerely conservative. She also has a lot of hope in what can be done with public education and so long as we have that as the means of educating kids, she is the right kind of person for a job like the school board. James Hahn is new to all this, and that is great too. So long as he can learn from Lynda, his business experience will be a big help in keeping the business community close and part of solutions. The other two, experienced board members and part of what was the problem originally would be a disastrous pick.

Let’s face it, without opposition Lakota would not have that $100 million surplus. It wasn’t some miracle trick in accounting. Lakota has a good treasurer, much better than who was there before her. And I think the new superintendent is a good one. I’m sure he’d like more freedom to promote the brand of Lakota as more the center of the community than what it is. I don’t think its bad at all to be part of that anger. I see it as healthy. Nobody wants to read one more boring newspaper article about these topics from boring, fossilized reporters. They enjoy my work for sure, and I think giving it to them with an animated zeal is good for the decision-making process. Public school is a boring topic for those who have their kids all grown up and have moved away. They certainly don’t want their taxes to go up. They just want to enjoy their community, their jobs and a nice place to shop and go out to dinner on a Friday night. They don’t want to hear that Lakota has blown their $100 million surplus and is asking for more money because the school board mismanaged it. To avoid that fate, vote for O’Connor and Hahn. And make sure Lakota knows you are watching them. Because the moment you don’t, that money and much more will be spent, and we’ll have another levy. You can bet on that.

Rich Hoffman

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Ann Becker and Mark Welch Work Together Down the Stretch: Lazy Lee Wong and many others fall short of a critical Tuesday election in West Chester

 

Now that we are coming down to the final days of the 2017 election for the West Chester Township Trustees it’s easy to see who really wants the job and who doesn’t—as well as who has the passion to do the job correctly, as opposed to those who only want the position for a social statement.   I was quite impressed by the efforts of Ann Becker and Mark Welch in the final days.  In the picture below you can see that they pulled together to go door to door on the last Saturday before the election which says a lot about them as candidates.  There are a lot of people running, but these two joined together to make a statement which reveals a lot about what kind of people they would be in office together.  It takes a lot of teamwork to pull together resources in the way that they have and in the world of politics, that is wonderful to see for a change.

We already know what we are getting with Mark Welch, he is the current president of the trustees and has done a great job.  Electing him only gets more of the same, which in West Chester is precisely what voters want.   However with Ann Becker, this is her first crack at the job, and she brings fresh ideas to that seat which would only expand its effectiveness.   I can’t imagine two better people running for a political office anywhere in the country than these two.  Ann isn’t a carbon copy of Mark Welch politically by any stretch of the imagination.  She brings her own flavor to the role, but as conservatives holding a very important office the team work they have shown during the campaign would naturally carry over into a good relationship working together to do the business of the people in West Chester.

That is the beauty of competition, and why we have competitive elections.  Most of the times the candidates put out a bunch of campaign signs and that’s it— those with the most money tend to get the name recognition because people generally don’t know who else to vote for but the name they saw on the side of the road at a traffic light.  They figure that if the candidate has enough money to put out a bunch of yard signs, that someone must like that candidate, so that is typically who they vote for.  But this year there are so many candidates with so many yard signs that they are all running together in the mind of the political novice, which most people are.  Few people pay much attention to-day to-day politics and the names behind them.  They just want the system to work like the gas gauge in their car.

Competition especially in this current election race has really separated the truly serious candidates from those who just want the social status of being elected.  That’s precisely what we have seen from Joan Powell the ex-school board candidate from Lakota.  In that position she was a big spender and had a reputation for caving into the union demands during teacher contracts which she paid for with tax increases against the public.  In the past she has supported cityhood for West Chester so she is one of those big government types—a person who thinks of herself as a Republican, but she’s more of a John Kasich Republican—a liberal who puts an “R” next to their name so they can get elected in a conservative county.  If Joan were running for the same type of office just ten miles south of her West Chester home she’d be just another Democrat that has virtually destroyed the economic viability of Hamilton County.   Watching her in some of the debates during this campaign season I would have thought that Joan was more savvy than what she showed, but she really fizzled out down the stretch.  She put out a few signs, but showed no energy in the days leading up to the election on Tuesday and even though I don’t support her, her presence in this competitive election was really flat.  Lucky for us all that we did have a lot of candidates to pick from because it has really exposed people like Joan for wanting the job more for a social statement in their personal careers than as a sincere person who really just wants to do a good job for the West Chester community.

Speaking of flat, Lee Wong is a current trustee and aside from a few signs has made very little effort to defend his seat.  One thing about Lee that is obvious to everyone, he’s just lazy.  He’s lazy as a trustee functioning from the politics of yesteryear where a trustee shows up for a few parades and expects free food when he goes out for lunch.  He relies mostly on his time served as a veteran to cover for his socialist tendencies as a trustee.   As an incumbent there is a lot of dirt on Lee that is floating around out there—a lot of smoke with some fire to feed it—you don’t see Lee out with his wife much.   Based on the smoke the fire that produces it says that Lee has issues with people—particularly females.  But that isn’t the most telling example of why he’s a bad candidate—he’s just a lazy person.  By nature, he doesn’t like hard work and it shows in the way he has been a trustee and in this competitive race, he’s far down the ladder as far as effort.  If people didn’t know better, they’d never know that he was running for re-election.

Lynda O’Conner is another one who put out a few signs next to Mark’s along the side of the road, but she hasn’t been out much to sell her candidacy.  In the debate that really counted, the West Chester Tea Party Forum, Lynda was a no-show, instead she sent a note.  As a school board member at Lakota she obviously thought that the run for trustee would be a lot easier than it turned out to be, so her effort matched that miscalculation.  I have supported Lynda as a school board member before, and she isn’t the worst in the world, but as trustee for the high-powered West Chester economy, she showed down the stretch that she just didn’t have the ambition to really make a name for herself.   Putting a few signs out in this election just wasn’t enough to show what kind of candidate she was, and she missed a lot of opportunities to make her mark yielding to Ann Becker when things counted most.  Lynda starting off was probably the best option but Ann clearly outworked Lynda by a lot.

That brings us to Jullian Kelley who has been a well-known socialite within the Republican Party of Butler County for a long time.  She has worked hard because she put her name out there and a considerable budget for signs—and she doesn’t want to lose.  In a typical election Jullian would likely win a seat just because of her name recognition, but in this competitive climate—especially during the West Chester Tea Party debate she has shown that she didn’t know much about the topics and was more like a room mom in school making treats for the kids in class.   Her heart was there, but her intellect just wasn’t prepared and she would likely be no better prepared for an average day at the office as a trustee than Lazy Lee Wong has been.  Getting elected into one of these positions is about more than just showing up and displaying that you can put out signs.  You have to actually know things, and do things.  On that account, Jullian is clearly lacking in competency.  Good intentions aren’t enough this time.

So on Tuesday November 7, 2017 make  sure to vote for Ann Becker and Mark Welch and reward them for a well run cooperative campaign.  Their partnership would only be good for West Chester.  As trustees it takes a lot of cooperation to manage a vast township like West Chester, which has enough people in it to be considered a city, but needs to stay small enough to maintain its competitive edge over Cincinnati to the south and Dayton to the north.  West Chester is the crown jewel of the I-75 corridor between two of Ohio’s best known cities, and it is the preferred destination for business and people of ambition who want to build a good life for themselves in a top 100 community in all of the United States.  It takes work and Ann and Mark have shown that they are willing to do the work, and to do it together—and those are the first foundations of success.  Before they can bring that success to the township however you have to vote for them, so be sure to do so.  You won’t regret it!

Rich Hoffman

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Ann Becker for West Chester Trustee: Except for Mark Welch, everyone else is a wasted vote

 

Problem solved in West Chester, Ann Becker is running for that open trustee seat being left by George Lang and that should take care of everything—to keep the percolating rats from taking over the stable ship of economic development in West Chester.   Now the voters of West Chester just need to make it official.  As I’ve reported over the past several weeks several former and present school board members from Lakota want to become the next trustee to work with the very liberal Lee Wong on the board of trustees to be a second vote against Mark Welch, who is the current president.  For many years liberal Lee Wong and Cathy Stoker worked a two vote crusade against George Lang driving up public sector wages, building unnecessary sidewalks in places not needed essentially so Lee could walk from his home to get free food at Sushi Monk, and many other big government conspiracies that extend too far into the past to chronically completely.  That is until George managed to help get Mark Welsh elected to the board in 2013 and since then the township big enough to be a city has managed to get its finances aligned into surpluses, make a pro business environment for continued growth and generally shrink government showcasing the region as the envy of similar communities all over the country.  With George Lang moving to a state seat that has left all the liberals audacious enough to wear the masks of Republican to come forth to mooch off the successful results—which has been a concern until Ann came to the rescue to offer herself as the best candidate on the ticket.

As I write this Joan the Hutt (Joan Powell) is rummaging through tape of past board meetings featuring Mark Welch trying to help her friend Lee Wong out with some undercover political theater.  She is the pro-union, anti-business candidate in this race and she thinks she has enough old school levy supporters from her days as the Lakota school board president most responsible for the runaway budget to call in enough favors to run for one of these open trustee seats and she’s most targeting Mark Welch.   The problem with that strategy is that there is even more tape of her from her school board meetings which can easily be used against her in the same way.  The big difference is that she was a terrible president at Lakota, a big spender with a horrendous track record.  Mark has been very successful, so that is something that will sort itself out in the coming month.    Joan the Hutt will soon learn just how much people hate her and have not forgotten how terribly she managed the budget at Lakota schools.  Mark is ready to deal with her.

Lynda O’Conner is learning how the business community has not forgiven her either for her role in the past Lakota school levies.  Lynda is someone I have personally endorsed in the past, but her vote in favor of the last tax increase in 2013 shows where her budgetary sentiments really reside.  She is not what I’d call a conservative and if politicians are learning anything around the country in the wake of the Donald Trump presidency it’s that people are sick of the status quo.  The Alabama election of Judge Roy Moore over Luther Strange should come to everyone’s mind regarding this West Chester election.  Lynda is certainly an establishment type of candidate.  She’s better than the old battle axes like Joan Powell who are so out of touch they might as well be in a different solar system, but she’s nowhere near as nimble on her feet as Ann Becker—who is already into everything presently.  Being a board member would just formalize everything for Ann and the community in a positive way.  The Republican Party spent over 30 million dollars and had the endorsement of Donald Trump to elect Luther Strange yet voters picked Moore instead—the reform minded populist who had no problem brandishing a gun on stage to set himself apart from everyone else.  He won easily over the Party pick and I see similarities with Ann Becker.  Ann won’t pull out any guns on stage as she’s not crazy about firearms, but she is otherwise very much of the same mind as Donald Trump and Roy Moore as far as the type of reforms that need to take place in American politics—and West Chester is similar in sentiment to that Alabama election.  Lynda O’Conner has a pro tax track record that will prove to be her downfall under Ann.

One thing that I see likely to happen is that this plot Lee Wong has hatched to surround himself with trustees who want to build sidewalks and spend money like a drunken sailor in a brothel is that he may actually diffuse out the voters who would otherwise look at him.   Mark Welch as a very successful incumbent should easily win so long as he sticks to what he’s good at and not get pulled into Joan the Hutt’s pro union attacks.  However Lee’s base may be spread out between him, Joan and the other lesser knowns on the ballot.  Having Lynda on the ticket might actually knock him off.  It’s quite possible that Lynda and Ann could end up on the board with Mark making Lynda the new liberal in place of Lee.   Lee really screwed up when he encouraged a bunch of union radicals to overtake a trustee meeting showing his political colors in a very negative way, then just a few weeks later protesting in Cincinnati to save the job of a person accused of treason to China.  The lady may have been innocent—but then again she may have been guilty.  Lee showed bad judgment and even more radicalism in putting his name next to a person accused of treason and that will come back to bite him in this election. Just like the NFL players thought they were too big to fail, and could use their elevated platform to protest some social cause, the public sentiment was that people started burning their jerseys and cancelling their season tickets.  I know Lee calls himself a Republican and he likes to flaunt his military service as a mask of patriotism, but he behaves more as a Global Citizen movement supporter which led him to defend a person providing secrets to China.  Lee has shown similar acts of bad judgment all through his time as a trustee and this time with Lynda on the ticket he may well have pushed himself out of a seat.

The important thing to remember however through all the noise is that Mark needs to be re-elected and that Ann Becker becomes that important second vote in the wake of George Lang.  Ann is a different kind of person than George, but they are both cut from the same fiscal conservative cloth that has made West Chester great.   In a lot of ways Ann would be perfect for the next step for West Chester because she has a good mind for making a lot of people happy, which is a tough skill in politics.  She’s ideologically pure enough to vote well and hold a hard conservative line on most topics, but she’s also very creative and can think out of the box—which she does often.  With some of the problems that need to be solved in West Chester that could be just the right approach.  It certainly puts her at the top of the ticket in my book.  I’m very glad she is running—I couldn’t think of a better person to run and win a seat as a West Chester trustee.  Everyone else is just a wasted vote.

Rich Hoffman

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