Posted: 7:00 a.m. Sunday, June 12, 2016

GOVERNMENT SPENDING

Middletown city manager defends need to work at ‘speed of business’

Use of emergency legislation raises transparency concerns.

By Mike Rutledge

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN — 

Sometimes it’s essential to quickly approve legislation to meet deadlines that state or federal agencies set for grant applications, City Manager Doug Adkins recently told his bosses on Middletown City Council, explaining why he sought seven ordinances and resolutions on an expedited manner May 3 — classifying all seven as emergencies.

Other times, a rush is required because the city needs to “move at the speed of business,” he said. But Adkins, noting he was mindful of the seven emergency items on May 3, also told council he had informed his staff: “You know, there’s a point where your bad planning does not constitute an emergency for me.”

Critics say routine practice of quick legislation approval can be abused, because it allows elected and government officials to avoid transparency. Proponents say it’s needed to quickly jump on economic development opportunities.

Vice Mayor Dora Bronston asked Adkins to address the matter in public after she received several phone calls from Middletown residents expressing concerns “that we were starting a trend to start voting on so many legislative pieces in emergency measure.”

“I asked Mr. Adkins if he would address that, so we would be transparent, and so residents could see our needs, if they’re not familiar with our routines,” she said.

An explanation by Adkins was needed, Bronston said, “so it didn’t look like we were doing anything really quick, and just getting things done, and without giving people opportunities to hear about it, discuss it, and maybe come in and give comments.”

“Other people were asking me, and I try to be transparent,” Bronston said. “I feel like whenever it’s necessary, then we need to take a moment and explain some things. It doesn’t take anything away from us. We just take an opportunity to address a concern, and then acknowledge it, and discuss it, and then go on with the rest of our agenda.”

So Adkins explained during the May 17 meeting that Middletown, like many Ohio communities, has a charter requiring readings at two meetings, which typically occur two weeks apart.

The reason for that requirement? The time gap gives residents and business people a chance to learn about legislation they may oppose — or may like, but wish to see tweaked. City legislation typically takes effect 30 days after winning approval.

“What that means effectively is that there are 60 days between when something is introduced and when it actually takes effect, and we can spend the money, we can do whatever it is that we all believe is something that should move forward,” Adkins said.

“Now, the problem that I’ve had is, as I’ve taken over, one of the comments we had is we don’t move at the speed of business,” he said. “We have economic development opportunities. We have grant opportunities. We have donation and volunteer opportunities. We have things come up.”

“To give you an example, if tomorrow morning someone walked into my office and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this really cool thing that city council should adopt and it’s going to cost us this amount of money,’ the first time I could bring that to you would be June 1,” he said during the May 17 session. “The second reading would be June 15, which means that July 15 would be the first time we could take any action on this cool thing that somebody brought to us tomorrow. A lot of times, that opportunity’s long gone in 60 days. And so we do bring things to you on an emergency basis.”

The chairman of Xavier University’s Political Science Department, Mack Mariani, said emergency legislation is “technically against the rules, but it’s done by most towns and cities, with the idea that you can only do that if there’s unanimous consent.”

Quick approval of legislation can pose problems for transparency, Mariani said.

And: “It can be abused to rush something that really is controversial, but you have a unanimous group of people in the legislative branch, the city council, who want to move things along and want to minimize the amount of attention or disruption or attention that’s going to happen if they consider this within the letter of the rules,” he said.

One emergency item Adkins addressed May 17 from the May 3 meeting with its seven emergencies involved $10,000 for civic clean-up projects that he first outlined during council’s January retreat.

“We had been approached by several civic groups that say, ‘We have organizations ready this spring to go out and renovate all your parks. We’ll give you all the free labor if you can get us $10,000 in mulch, paint, and things to do it,’ ” Adkins said. “Well, they don’t want to do it in July. They want to do it – they’ve got them organized and ready to go. So we brought that to you as an emergency.”

Another item Adkins requested be expedited at the May 3 meeting was the purchase for $20,000 of the former Middletown Area Senior Citizens Center at Columbia Avenue and Verity Parkway, which Adkins informed council before its April 19 meeting represented the amount the owner, Higher Education Partners, had “incurred to date in purchase and carrying costs associated with the building in lieu of marketing the property to the public.”

Adkins had asked council to approve the purchase at the April 19 meeting, but Dora Bronston was on vacation and Council Member Talbott Moon, a new father, was unable to attend because of a family emergency just before the meeting.

Because the city charter discourages expedited decisions, at least four of council’s five members must be present, and all present must vote to consider legislation on an emergency basis.

The emergency-approved purchase became more controversial after council had approved it May 3, when the Journal-News reported that Adkins’ verbal and written descriptions to council were inaccurate: The city hadn’t sold the building to HEP. Instead, Middletown had donated it to HEP in 2012.

Adkins, who later told the Journal-News HEP had faced administrative costs connected with the property’s transfer, said he hadn’t asked to see HEP’s carrying costs, and said he had been asked by HEP not to reveal why it needed the sale approved on an expedited basis.

HEP officials have not returned calls from the Journal-News to comment on the matter.

Some residents were not impressed afterward by the city’s transaction: “Middletown needs to stay out of the real estate business,” one Facebook user wrote on the Journal-News’ website. “They suck at it.”

Adkins, who has been city manager almost two years and is paid a base salary of $125,000, has complained the city has been “bombarded” by opinions that residents have expressed about a variety of issues he believed were raised prematurely in public.

After a young professionals group in November 2015 proposed a dog park, and the Journal-News two months later reported sites the group was proposing, Adkins said, “I’ve been bombarded on a dog park we haven’t decided if we want yet.”

In January, the Journal-News and other media outlets quoted Adkins saying Middletown was investigating how its former fire station on Tytus Avenue could be repurposed into a halfway house for heroin users. Adkins was quoted, saying Law Director Les Landen was drafting a possible lease.

Adkins later said: “We’ve been getting calls all week on the fire station we haven’t looked at repurposing yet. The list goes on and on.”

Mariani said emergency legislation often is used harmlessly, “but it can be abused — so if a city council wants to avoid transparency on something, or to push through something before opposition can somewhat rally against it, you can imagine it being abused in that way.”

“The legislators and councils in an ideal world would be weighing that, and not abusing that power,” Mariani said.

Transparency is helped because the country has more than one political party, Mariani noted: “One of the good things about having two parties is they kind of serve as a check on one another, like, ‘No, this is something I want to hear,’ ” rather than going along with speedy decisions.

Adkins in late January also outlined plans to council for his Transform Middletown initiative, a group of people to clean the city during the summer. The $33,580 spending for that was another item he raised as emergency legislation at the May 3 meeting.

Two weeks later, he explained the need for expediency with that issue.

“The Transform Middletown group, again, I could let that go until July, but we’ve been getting that ready to go for a few months, and we’d like to get that on the street as much as possible. Could have waited, but again, my request was that we get it going so I could get them on the street (in) early June, and get that extra month-and-a-half, two months, of cleaning up the city.”

As for May 3 emergency legislation involving $425,000 for work on several roads, including a new, two-lane access road for AK Steel’s research and innovation center, “With ODOT, we had passed earlier last year that we wanted to do it,” Adkins said. “Well, the paperwork came, and ODOT says, ‘Oh, by the way, I need this in about two weeks.’ The only way to do it is by emergency ordinance that allowed me to go ahead and sign that.”

Other May 3 emergency legislation dealt with a broken city water-production well and its estimated $42,375 repair, which he recommended be awarded to the second lowest bidder, National Water Services LLC of Dayton, which bid $42,375, rather than to the low bidder, HD Water Services of Groveport, which bid $42,002.

“We had a broken well, in one of our water wells, it was already open and being worked on by the company that was the second-lowest bidder by $300,” Adkins explained two weeks later in his discussion of the seven items. “It’s foolish and uneconomical to close it back up, bid it, wait two months, open it back up. To save $300 — we wouldn’t have saved $300. Again, it’s something that should have come by emergency.”

Another May 3 emergency item he discussed was the transfer of Bicentennial Commons and AK Pavilion to MetroParks, which officials had been concerned could be controversial. Adkins explained two weeks later: “To move forward, the Butler MetroParks had to come to us and say, ‘You have to release your easement so that we can close with the Miami Conservancy, so that we can make our September construction schedule.’ And again, they can’t move forward until we released our easement. It had to be done by emergency. These are things that happen on a regular basis.”

One piece of May 3 legislation he did not mention in his May 17 explanation was his emergency request for $5,500 to “begin purchasing awards without further delay” for employees, to maintain morale, including a “Bright Idea Award, Extra Mile Award, Customer Service Award, Longevity Award, Middletown Way Award and Employee of the Year.”

Adkins told council city government is getting “more sophisticated and faster,” and more electronic, and is working to operate with speeds similar to “business around us.” So he cautioned them: “There are going to be a lot of times where, if we’re going to take advantage of the opportunities, if we’re going to get that economic development project, if we’re going to move these things forward at a speed that business is ready to operate at, we’re going to have to be flexible.”

He told his bosses they could say at any time, “‘Doug, on this one, we want to slow down. We’re willing to consider it as a first and second reading, but we don’t want to do it as an emergency.’”

“You always have that ability,” he added, “and I hope you won’t use it very often, or that we can talk about it. But that’s why we do what we do. And again, we try to think about each one as we go forward, as to why we move that forward as an emergency.”

Was Bronston satisfied with Adkins’ presentation?

“Yes, I was,” she said. “I thought he did a good job explaining.”

Bronston said she hadn’t heard reactions from those who expressed concerns about the issue, “but I hope that they watched it on YouTube, and saw that we did address the issue. I’m not checking YouTube to see how many people are watching.”

Bronston said she believes it’s important “to communicate clearly to everyone in Middletown, not just a handful of people, but if there are any other people that have the same concerns, then we can address it, very easily — it only took a few minutes — and satisfy the curiosity. That way, there’s no confusion. I think Middletonians will learn to trust their council person.”