The Winner Takes It All

It is readily apparent that the Cicchinelli comeback plan includes perpetually repeating the mantra that he, the Extraordinary One, our Once & Future Mayor for Life, was not responsible for any of the fiscal distress being felt by our city.

That he has no part in placing our fair city in fiscal emergency.

That his 24 year reign as Sovereign of the City was Massillon's glorious time of renaissance.

That his time in charge was truly Massillon's days of wine and roses.

And that his successor, the Usurper, "That Woman," Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry absolutely and completely screwed up all his good work in her mere year and a half as Tigertown's chief executive.

He left it perfect.

She destroyed it.

Now, such an explanation would require the voters of the City of Champions to take leave of their common sense and require a complete white wash of the past.

Let us reflect.

Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry didn't build a golf course.

She didn't add a questionable nine hole expansion which required the entire course to be rebuilt.

and, she didn't unload the resultant debt on the Parks Department.

Cicchinelli claimed that his proposal "was not a big scheme to have the parks department cover the golf course's expenses" (The Repository, December 17, 2002).

Well, actually, it was.

It wasn't Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry who got us in to the hotel business, propped up with our community development block grant money, and leaving us with a $1 million dollar balloon payment that our broke and bankrupt city has no conceivable way of paying back.

"It (The Hampton Inn) was a good expenditure of tax dollars and the city is better off for it" (Frank Cicchinelli, The Independent, May 8, 2009).

No, Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry didn't try and build a 6,500 seat hockey arena, and she wasn't scammed by a financier who subsequently went to prison, who represented he could get a loan from the Banco de Brasil, but couldn't properly spell the name of the bank.

"Cicchinelli still wasn't concerned because construction trailers and equipment have been removed from the site. He remains optimistic The Arena will be built" (The Repository, May 14, 2003).

No, Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry did not allow her department heads to rack up massive quantities of overtime while the city couldn't pay it's bills.

These decisions all rest squarely on the shoulders of the Extraordinary One.

But that isn't the story he needs to tell.

The story he and his team need to tell is how he only did extraordinary good work, and "That Woman" ruined everything.

And this is the tale they shall spread throughout the land.

And this is the tale they need the citizenry to believe.

Let's check in and see how they are doing.

Are the people buying it?

Nope.

The Independent is running a poll;

Who is to blame for Massillon's fiscal emergency?

The winner so far?

You guessed it.

The Extraordinary One.

His vote total is over two and a half times the vote total of Kathy Catazaro-from-Perry.

It's a landslide.

Team Cicchinelli clearly has some work to do to get folks to believe none of this blame rests with him.

We wish them good luck.

They are going to need it.