We've received a lot of questions and comments since posting the blog post titled "The Puppeteering Professor". Mainly, we were asked if anyone from the general public could develop ordinances for the city. We were also asked why Joe Tompkins could get away with doing this. The short answer seems to be that he knows people and has control of directives over them. Why they listen to him is really a mystery if you ask us. However, to answer the main question, yes and no. The general public can develop ordinances for the city to consider. No, it's not as easy as it was for Joe to get it passed. In fact, one might actually argue that the proper protocol for enacting an ordinance by an elector was not followed. Therefore, some may also argue that the ordinance cannot stand as is and should be repealed and done properly. After all, if it was this easy for the general public to send something to a "friend" on city council and have them agree to present it so that it gets voted on, we'd probably be facing an onslaught of ordinances. But, never mind that for the moment. Let's get to the nitty gritty and let you all decide for yourselves.
Now, given the fact that the rental registration and inspection ordinance did seem to involve a subcommittee of council, one could argue that this one was done in a valid manner. Although, per our prior post we can clearly see that Joe was a major driving force working with city staff and his free attorney to bring the drafts for that ordinance to council. It may be more challenging to prove that instance, but we wouldn't say it's not a possibility to fight that fight.
However, the anti-retaliation ordinance is interesting. The first time that we heard anything publicly was January 18, 2023. This is the meeting where a resident of Holland Towers, a resident of Connect 55, and Joe Tompkins all spoke regarding alleged retaliation. Joe's comments were pretty specific to residents of Connect 55. During the open dialog that occurred after Joe's comments ended, a request was made for them to act on what Joe was saying. To close out, Mayor Kinder asked if anyone had any questions for Joe.
When Joe states "I think that what we're thinking about is something that's much broader, much stronger", one may think that sounds like he already has a thought in mind. You'd be correct in that thought process.
This email is dated January 25th, however, take note of the date of the draft of the anti-retaliation ordinance that's attached. January 16, 2023. That was two days prior to the city council meeting where Joe asked them to do something, and where he said what they were thinking about.
Let's move on from that though and focus on the contents of this email, shall we?
First, it's interesting that the Zoom meeting has Allegheny in the link address. Is Joe using his work time and his work equipment to host this meeting? Who knows. It seems possible though.
Joe states he plans to spend about 30 minutes going over the basics of the draft. Meaning Joe is the driving force behind this ordinance, not any member of council. What is concerning about this is that Joe sent this to Autumn and Gretchen, as well as to his free attorney, Robert Damewood aka Bob. Autumn and Gretchen are both members of city council, they also serve on the community engagement subcommittee together. This meeting seems as though it could be a deliberation and/or discussion of a proposed ordinance. This could be in direct violation of the Sunshine Act.
The last line is the most pertinent from that screenshot.
After that meeting, Bob Damewood sent a copy to the city solicitor.
After a brief email exchange between the two attorneys, Autumn confirmed with city manager, Maryann, that the ordinance would be on the agenda for the next meeting, which was on February 1st.
You're probably saying, Autumn is ensuring it comes before council, that is a legitimate thing that she can do, right! If you accept that, and council accepts that, then they would have to consider all ordinances brought to them by everyone. It would simply take one member of the council "shepherding" it to the rest of council. Let us be clear though about who really brought this to council, because it wasn't council who came up with this ordinance.
We are including this small section of Joe's comments because it shows that either a) he has no regard for the time limit that is given to all who show up to speak publicly at council meetings, or b) he is in control of city council and city staff, and they let him get away with doing whatever he wants. We'll let you decide which you think it is. Maybe it's a bit of both?
At the next meeting of council, which was on February 15th, the anti-retaliation ordinance was tabled, due to the city receiving a letter from "the landlord's lawyer." After such, Joe reached out to Bob, and asked for his thoughts. Meanwhile, council sat idle while Joe fought to defend his ordinance. He then took the time to update a few members of council, the city manager, as well as the city solicitor.
Apparently, the solicitor had made a suggestion and Joe went back to Bob for his thoughts and then sent the reply to Maryann.
Shouldn't an ordinance be everything you want it to be when you pass it, and not something that you pass knowing that you will be amending it to include the language that the city's solicitor suggested? But wait, this story isn't done here.
Yet another secret meeting, done on the web.
Again, we state, members of council should not deliberate agency business outside of their public meetings. There's no other way we can interpret these meetings aside from a way around the public being involved in the discussions and decision-making process.
We also should recall back to March of 2022 when the prior city solicitor reviewed the Sunshine Act with city council.
This ordinance did ultimately pass council on March 8th, after they held a special meeting to vote on this ordinance. Let's now take a trip into what one may deem proper procedure, and what third-class city code spells out in regard to initiating ordinances by electors.
Summarizing, 100 qualified electors of the city must make a written request to the city clerk. But that's not where it ends, the city clerk upon receiving said request and a copy of the proposed ordinance shall prepare a petition. The petition can only be signed in the city clerk's office.
How many signatures do they need?
In case you're now wondering about the votes cast for Mayor in our last election;
That's 2,733 votes cast for Mayor. 20% of that would be 546.6, likely it would need rounded to 547.
After the signatures are collected and totaled, what then?
From that point, council would have two options;
Now it's up to all of you to decide, should this Allegheny College professor have this much control over our city? Last we checked; Joe Tompkins didn't get voted onto council. We have proper processes in place, per third class city code, in order to ensure equal access and opportunity. Are we bending the rules for our friend? This Hellbender? (Not a term we came up with for the group Joe is involved with, they have named themselves the Crawford County United Hellbenders).
Again, if council allows this and accepts the process that occurred here as proper, then they must consider any and all ordinances given to them by the voters. Otherwise, they could be faced with a case of discrimination. They also should take care to pay attention to the sunshine, mainly the Sunshine Act. It's there to help ensure transparency in the local government.
At the end of the day, our trees should be shady, our city council should not.
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