What a tangled web!!!

I just finished watching the (second half only) of the last zoning commission meeting and I was appalled!!!

TVMiddletown should show this 24 hours a day for several days!!! It should be required viewing for ALL city council members!!!

Now friends, and enemies, I have been trying to tell you much of what was shown for years, but nowhere near as eloquently as Mr. Lennie Robinson and the other owners of the property in question for re-zoning.

I realize that I am often abrasive, and even sometimes verbally abusive (but only after someone really stupid ticks me off), while Mr. Robinson was as smoooooth as silk during his presentation.

Besides Mr. Robinson’s excellent overall presentation, there are several other items of note:

The chairman‘s near COMMAND to an obviously nervous small businessman who was looking towards Kohler and Ms. Scott-Jones's end of the “bench”: “Could you address the commission up here, please!!!”  The usual "ruler to peon" attitude of our city officials!!!

Ms. Paula Burke‘s comment: The new zoning is “Too difficult to meet”, and that to build anything you are “going to have to get more than one lot!” Perhaps that was exactly the REAL “planning", Ms. Burke. Force the small business people such as yourself to sell out on the cheap to “Friends of Kohler" (F.O.K.s), who will then package several lots and sell at a HUGE profit to the “big players”! (Where DID Thatcher disappear to when it began looking like this re-zoning scam was falling through?)

Don’t worry about not being allowed any parking for “car carriers”. Mr. Kohler intends to drive those tacky auto dealers out of Middletown, too!  If he thought he could "get away" with it he would probably try to outlaw that tacky I-75 that runs right through his real-life game of "Sim City", or at least make the exit ramps "gated" and "by invitation ONLY!" 

To the real estate broker/board member of MCS/Grace Baptist Church, Rod Litterel: There may be no business or economic benefit to the Ministry, but there certainly could be to F.O.K.s if he can succeed in forcing the Church to sell out to F.O.K.s on the cheap!

Of course, Marty claims that most of these problems have already been “sort of addressed”! I wonder what his definition of “sort of addressed” is???

“I would be very disappointed to hear that people DIDN’T [emphasis was Mr. Kohler’s] feel that they had a stake in the community, and were refused the opportunity to talk…”!!!

And it is EXACTLY actions such as this, as well as the punitive building code changes and residential zoning restrictions that make the CITIZENS of Middletown feel that THEY no longer do have a “stake” in our city. And WHEN, I ask, is ANYONE supposed to talk to City Hall AT ALL, other than in short, 180 second “sound bites” with NO dialogue and “not set up to give answers”, Mr. Kohler???

And people, I doubt that either the Zoning commission, OR the city Council, or (most importantly) the citizenry know everything that has been sneakily enacted as “housekeeping changes” (ironically designed to cause folks to LOSE their homes), code updates, and the like to give the City the power to cite virtually ANY house in Middletown for SOMETHING at the city’s whim!!! Unless, of course, you happen to be an F.O.K.!!!