Toledo’s mayor worse than Berkeley’s
I didn’t think it was possible, but it is:
The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave. Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.
“The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman.
The article doesn’t mention it, but Finkbeiner is indeed a Democrat, a detail that IS mentioned in this follow up article:
Mayor Finkbeiner, a Democrat, said yesterday that he ordered the Marines out because he did not want a repeat of the last time the Marines’ battalion trained downtown in May, 2006.
“I saw the military with guns drawn emulating warfare, and I observed the expressions of citizens who happened to just be coming down the sidewalk that particular Saturday noon in wonderment, asking, ‘What have I found myself in the middle of?’” the mayor said. “There was a look of wonderment on some people’s faces, and there was a look of fear on other people’s faces.”
Or, in other words, they scared HIM. The people of Toledo must sleep soundly at night knowing he’s in charge.
Here are a few more gems that demonstrate the character of Toledo’s mayor:
Some compared the flap to the one Mr. Finkbeiner set off during his first term in 1994, with his proposal that the city move its deaf population to land near Toledo Express Airport.
The Ohio Civil Rights Commission yesterday found “probable cause” to believe that Mayor Carty Finkbeiner’s administration engaged in an “unlawful discriminatory practice” when it fired or laid off three black employees last year. But the commission ruled that race and age were not motivating factors in any of the cases.
Instead, the three were retaliated against for “participating in a prior protected activity” — in one case defending another black city employee who had complained she was discriminated against.
The commission agreed that Perlean Griffin, the former director of Affirmative Action/Contract Compliance, was given the cold shoulder because of her advocacy of a city employee who had claimed race discrimination in being denied a promotion. The commission said the other two complainants — Dwayne Morehead, the former co-executive director of the Youth Commission, and Gary Daugherty, a former manager of environmental services — were retaliated against because of their association with Mrs. Griffin.
One day after Toledo City Council voted to clip his budget wings, Mayor Carty Finkbeiner proposed cutting the number of councilmen from 12 to 8.
The council reduction plan was part of a two-pronged proposal that Mr. Finkbeiner said was aimed at ending Toledo’s budget crunch.The city is facing a 2008 deficit of about $10 million.
The other prong involved his own paycheck: He recommended that the mayor’s pay be reduced by 10 percent, from $136,700 to $123,030. [I include this paragraph to give credit where it is due.]
This full article requires free registration:
“He’s a senior executive of a major city, and he needs to act like that,” [Captain Smith] said. Captain Smith said the confrontation “was very close to being physical” and that an administrator stepped in between him and the mayor. Mr. Finkbeiner denied the situation escalated to that point, but said both men stood from their chairs. “If anybody here thinks this 67-year-old man is going to take on a stronger, younger, ex-Marine with a revolver on his hip, you’re wrong,” the mayor said during a news conference.
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