After Three Hour Wait, Township Residents Refuse Supervisor's Attempt To Cancel Meeting

Patch has been having some growing pains lately, and as a result of that, I have been unable to share my views about community issues. If you are reading this, I have a smile on my face, and some members of the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees most likely have frowns.

I originally wrote this op-ed on July 31st, but as I said, the Patch had some technical issues, so I was not able to post it. My first thought was that with today’s 24 hour news cycle, other things that I wrote had to be scrapped, but I feel that this piece is as relevant today, as it was three weeks ago, so I decided to post it.

This takes me to the “Very Special Meeting” of the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees on Monday July 28th. This special meeting was posted on Friday afternoon. This is a common practice for this Board. Kind of like the Friday news dumps that the Obama administration is so fond of. Post the news you don’t want folks to know about on a Friday afternoon, and with any luck, they will have forgotten about it by the end of the weekend, or in Plymouth Township’s case, they won’t hear about it until it’s too late to attend the 6:00 PM meeting on Monday.

This strategy worked only to a a certain extent for the trio that reside at the Plymouth Township Hall. While there was only one news crew, instead of two, and there were no folks protesting with signs this time, the meeting room was full. Every seat was pretty much taken. This tells me that folks have decided that enough is enough, and they are watching. They are not going to be tricked again by the three rogue members of this Board. Those three are Supervisor Richard Reaume, Treasurer Ron Edwards, and first term Clerk, Nancy Conzelman.

My first impression of this meeting was that this is going to be a bad meeting. No big surprise there. The quality, and professionalism of the Trustees Meetings has been on a downward spiral for quite some time now. I imagine that is why the above mentioned trio feel that they need 37 new rules to be enacted, to somehow gain control over the other four Board members, and the unruly public, or as certain members call us, the “crowd.”

So the meeting began poorly, and centered on a discussion brought up by Trustee Doroshewitz about the not so subtle change in the format of the meeting. In the original announcement on Friday, folks were led to believe that the “work session” on the 37 new rules would take place at 6:00 PM, and that a closed session to discuss yet another lawsuit brought against Plymouth Township, would take place after the work session.

When the official agenda came out on Monday, the order of business had changed, and folks who showed up for the work session, folks who had skipped dinner to be there, were surprised to find out that the closed session would take place, before any discussion on the 37 new rules would happen.

There was a space on the agenda for “public comment” before the Board retreated for their closed session, but no agendized space for “public comment” at the work session phase of the evening. When Doroshewitz asked pointed questions about whether there were changes made to the agenda, Conzelman, in her typically condescending fashion, informed Doroshewitz that there is only one agenda. When pressed on the differences in the announcement and the agenda, Reame mumbled unintelligibly about announcements and agendas, and finally the rest of the Board gave up on trying to get a clear answer, and moved on.

This is how Reaume operates. You ask him if there is going to be a sound system at his amphitheater, and he answers by reciting Kid Rock’s upcoming concert events for the summer. The man is the king of obfuscation. You’ll never get a straight answer out of him. You can ask him why he was driving around town with a Vietnam Veteran license plate when he never came close to setting foot on Vietnam soil, and he’ll drone on for ten minutes about the history of license plates, tell you he gave you enough of his time to ask your questions, and hang up on you. I’m still ticked off that he drove around town with that Vietnam Veteran license plate. I’m not sure if he still has it, but if he does, it’s a slap in the face to all of the men and women who served our nation in that hellhole. But I digress.

So anyway, the meeting moved forward, and there were a few public comments, all of them negative, except for one. The one that was not negative was simply a question. “Can you give us any idea whatsoever of how long we’ll have to wait?” The man indicated that, “I came here to see the discussion on these new rules, and I missed my dinner to be here, do I have time to go get a bite to eat?”

Reaume was his typical self. He would not give the man a direct answer. Now I will grant the fact that you can’t place an exact time on a closed session, as I have presided over them in my time as a Board of Education President, but I know for a fact that you have a rather good idea within roughly a half hour, on how long they will last, and furthermore, as the Chair, you can guide these things along, and steer them toward the desired time, within reasonable limits.

Reaume would not give the man anything. I found that to be a disrespectful way to handle a valid question, especially with the sneaky way the actual agenda differed from the original announcement, courtesy of the rather feckless Clerk Conzelman.

So our Board of Trustees adjourned to the inner sanctum of our Township Hall. They disappeared, and they were not seen again for the next three hours give or take. Three hours!

They took three hours out of folks lives. Many said that the Board was just waiting for the “crowd” to leave. That may or may not be true, but the fact that people even mentioned something like that, shows just how far this Board has fallen. It shows just how little trust folks have these days.

The amazing thing, the truly amazing thing, is that nobody left. There was a crowded Board room at 6:00 PM, and it was just as crowded almost three hours later, when Curmi, Doroshewitz, and Reaume walked back in from their closed session.

The most amazing thing was that the good folks of Plymouth Township were having their own little meeting. We all got bored, and courtesy of Sandy Groth, we all had a meet and greet. A meeting within the meeting, if you will. Everybody in the audience introduced themselves, spoke a little about themselves, and the reason why they ended up at the meeting.

Although I shouldn’t have been, I was shocked at all the various reasons folks had for attending this meeting. And here are some of them:

A former member of the P-CCS Board of Education just wanted to offer some advice on meeting practices.

Another member was here because of the LA Fitness lawsuit, Conduct of Meeting policy (37 new rules), and fire concerns.

Another member suggested pitchforks, tar, and feathers. The audience laughed.

Another member attended to hear about that stupid thing they are building in the park. (Either amphitheater or pavilion, or both)

Another member just wants them “to be honest and stop telling lies.”

Another member doesn’t like them “pushing those rules down our throats.”

Another was here about the amphitheater, but now, “there are a lot more reasons.”

Another had questions about the DeHoCo lawsuit.

Another said this whole spiral started with the new Township Hall.

Another member wished they would be like the Boards of the 70’s and 80’s, “when the Board worked for the people.”

Another urged folks to use the “group email address” for the Board, and write them your concerns.

Another does not want the amphitheater, and certainly doesn’t want to have to pay for it.

Another went to the July 22nd meeting, and was “shocked at the arrogance of the Board.”

Many thanked Carol Leroue of the Concerned Citizens group for her extraordinary work.

Another felt that, “Firemen and people are in danger because of Board actions.”

A former government teacher told how he always taught his classes that “They work for us, we are their bosses.”

Another member said that “I can’t understand how these people can be so arrogant.”

Another member just “wants to see the Township and the City work together.”

There were many more, but you get the point. This isn’t about just one issue. This is about many issues, and the latest spending spree by this Board was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So with this meeting of the taxpayers going on, Mr. Reaume walked into the room, and he looked kind of shocked. I’m not sure if it was because we were all still there, or that we were actually having our own meeting in his precious Board room. You could clearly see that he was not amused. I’ll just say this. It was far more professional than the meetings that Mr. Reaume conducts. But then, I’ve seen 5th grade Student Council meetings conducted more professionally than Mr. Reaume’s, so the bar really isn’t that high.

Now here is the part of the evening that I hope Mr. Reaume takes some time to think about. This is the part that he simply doesn’t get.

Mr. Reaume called the meeting back into open session, after folks had been forced to cool their heels for 3 hours. He called the meeting back to open session, and he had the audacity to tell this group of people that with the hour so late, and his closed session lasting so long, that he wants to cancel the work session.

The audience began to murmer, a man stepped up in back to say something, and instantly, Reaume banged the gavel twice, so hard that it could have been mistaken for a gunshot. I literally thought he may have broken his gavel, which actually would have been hilarious, if the circumstances weren’t so bad.

He began yelling at the audience that “We have respected you at the last meeting, and you better respect us!” Or something to that effect. Folks yelled back, and I was one of them. I said “How is making us wait for three hours respect?”

He stared daggers at me, but they bounced off my rather thick skin. He then called a recess, got up, walked by me, continuing to stare his little daggers, whilst I stared my bigger daggers back at him, and poof, he was gone.

If you are at the next Board of Trustees meeting, come and find me, and I’ll show you my “dagger” stare. It doesn’t work on my dog Deucey, he just laughs at me, but it must have worked on our Supervisor, because he went and got the police.

Yes, he returned a few minutes later, and he brought a Plymouth Township Police Officer with him. For the second meeting in a row, the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees brought in a public safety officer to protect them from their public. What a sad state of affairs that this man, our Supervisor, has such a low opinion of us that he would think we would be a threat to his safety.

What a sad state of affairs that this Board, really, it’s mainly just these three individuals, would act in such a way that the citizens feel the need to rise up and be so vocal in their disdain for the way they are running our township.

The Board ended up relenting, and they made a halfhearted effort to go over some, not all of the 37 new rules. Mr. Reaume didn’t even bother to have them up on the screen for folks to view, which in my mind, being the untrusting soul that I am, leads me to believe that they never intended to talk about the Conduct of Meeting rules to begin with. I think that when they saw the size of the “crowd” they scrapped that plan immediately.

Now I could speak about the halfhearted work on the new rules package, but I really feel that it will be a waste of time at this point for two reasons. One is that they really didn’t accomplish much. Heck, they spent 15 minutes just arguing about whether to actually discuss them. Once they began, they only dealt with the obviously ridiculous stuff in Conzelman’s little package. The truly heinous rules haven’t been discussed yet.

To be completely honest, and I’m just going by what I saw of the four Trustees, I think this 37 rule debacle is going to be gutted, if not scrapped altogether. I mean seriously, if the four Trustees actually accepted the 37 rules as presented, they would be voluntarily abdicating the authority entrusted to them by the voters of this community. From what I heard in their comments, and saw on their facial expressions, Kay Arnold, and Mike Kelly understand this, and want no part of it. Especially the ridiculous “super majority” rule, which is the most heinous of all.

So I want to close with a message for Mr. Reaume, Ms. Conzelman, and Mr. Edwards.

You people talk about respect. You people say we do not respect you. We hear it from Mr. Reaume all the time. We heard it from Mr. Edwards, when he was screaming at us at the last meeting. Well I got a news flash for you folks. You get respect when you give respect. You have to earn respect. Your position only gives you that six figure salary package, and it does not come with respect. That is something you have to earn.

When you make good folks sit for three solid hours, you are disrespecting them. When you station police officers at your meetings, you are disrespecting them. When you yell at the audience, you are disrespecting them. When you refuse to answer the phone, you are disrespecting them. When you refuse to answer emails, you are disrespecting them.

These are good people here in Plymouth Township. They are not going to beat you up. All they want is for you to listen to them. All they want is to have some input in how you spend their money. When they call, they want you to answer. When they write, they want you to respond. Heck, they are paying you to respond, to answer your phone.

I got just a few last questions for you three. When you went home after the meeting on Monday, how did it feel to know that the very people you just left, are paying for that nice house you live in? When you turned on the lights, did you think who pays that light bill? When you went to the refrigerator for a snack that night, did you stop and think that the good people of Plymouth Township are paying for that food? Do you feel that you are honestly earning that money? That house? That food?

There are a lot of people, and the group is getting bigger every single day, that feel you are biting the hand that feeds you.

I suggest that you think very long and hard about that little fact...