Plain City council hears residents’ safety concerns

By Rob Treynor

Assistant Editor

“We need this to be respectful,” Plain City Mayor Sandra Adkins said to the 50 residents in attendance to Monday night’s council meeting. “We’re not going to allow this to get into bickering back and forth.”

Approximately 50 village residents attended Monday night’s Plain City Village Council meeting. The meeting was moved to the youth activity building at Pastime Park, to accommodate the large turnout. A grassroots Facebook campaign, called “Plain City Safety Awareness Organization,” urged residents to come to Monday’s meeting.

“We’re not going to allow this to get into bickering back and forth.”

With that, Adkins laid down the ground rules as to how the village council meeting would progress. The rules hold true for all council meetings: If a resident wishes to speak at a public meeting, he/she need to provide their name for the public record.

But this wasn’t an ordinary council meeting. So many residents were in attendance, the meeting had to be moved to the youth activities building at Pastime Park in order to accommodate everyone.

A Facebook campaign, started by a group calling themselves Plain City Safety Awareness Organization, organized the large turnout.

A post by the organization on Saturday echoed Adkins’ sentiment. “We are asking everyone that comes to the meeting to remember we are a team with the village. We do not condone sides. So let’s remember to keep cool and pleasant.”

Plain City resident John Rucker was the first resident to speak to council. He offered two and a half pages of complaints, critiques and observations to council. His concern: recent cuts to the Plain City Police Department.

Rucker posited that when November’s tax levy failed, council cut from the police force in order to protect council’s credibility. He said that he was sick of Plain City “…using public safety as a leverage for more taxes,” and that any future police levies would be “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Rucker alleged that Plain City was opening themselves up to liability issues by having only one officer scheduled for several shifts.

Rucker’s comments were met with applause from residents, but little more than a ‘thank you’ by most of the elected officials.

Council member Doug Saxour addressed the lack of reaction. “These people are looking for answers.”

Mayor Adkins said she wasn’t comfortable addressing the two and a half pages or allegations and comments without first absorbing all of it.

Council president pro tem Kevin Vaughn, addressing the money currently sitting in Plain City’s reserve fund, said, “We scrimped and saved and did what we had to do to be fiscally responsible.”

Vaughn listed what some of the money was earmarked for. “We have to pay $100,000 toward the West Avenue/Route 42 intersection. We have $117,000 to make up in the 2013 budget, and that will have to come from the reserve fund.

“And public safety also includes having funds for unforeseen emergencies,” Vaughn said, expressing the need for some savings to address emergencies as they arise.

Several times, residents had to be reminded to stand and state their name before addressing council, but tempers mostly stayed cool.

“We will review what you presented tonight,” Adkins said. “We recognize the necessity of full police coverage. We live in the village ourselves. If you’d like specifics, let us know. It’s hard to get into specifics in a large setting like this. Everyone has come to this meeting with their own knowledge as to how a city budget works. And if we got into specifics, we’d get bogged down in so many questions that we’d never get anything accomplished.”

The next village council meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 25.

The Plain City Awareness Organization, according to their Facebook page, are a “citizen group wanting our police department back to 2012 staffing levels so that our community, businesses and officers are safe.”

Plain City police officers Phillip Greenbaum, Tharon Prather, Brian Bowers and council member Doug Saxour follow the organization through Facebook.

Plain City Police Department posted the following status to their Facebook page on Monday afternoon, “This page is intended to provide interested citizens information regarding the police department, including current events, recent activity, crime alerts, and requests for citizen assistance regarding recent and/or unsolved crimes. This page is not intended for reporting crimes in progress nor is it intended to provide a forum for general communication or complaints. Those wishing to report a crime are encouraged to call (614) 873-4321 or 9-1-1, if appropriate. Those wishing to have generalized communication or wishing to file a complaint, are encouraged to call (614) 873-2921. The opinions expressed by visitors on social media page(s) do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the department. Comments will be monitored and the department reserves the right to remove obscenities, off-topic comments, and personal attacks. The department also reserves the right to ban users who violate these conduct standards.”