$2.2 Million Dollars

In 1995, the voters of Massillon passed an additional .3% income tax to fund parks and recreation in the city. A joint city-school district recreation board was created to oversee our parks and recreation department. It was supposed to be independent. It isn't. The Massillon City schools were supposed to have input. They don't. The money was promised for parks and recreation. It has been misspent. The tax generates roughly $2.2 million dollars for parks and recreation every year. Our parks should be immaculate. They aren't. As a matter of fact, our Mayor for Life, and one of his appointed park board lackeys are exploring, with the help of Massillon's Law Director, which parks they can sell off.

The mayor has treated our parks money as a piggy bank that he can raid with impunity to cover the budget chasms he has created with the debacle that is the Legends of Massillon Golf Course. With the help of a complicit city council, our Mayor for Life merged the financially strapped Legends of Massillon Golf Course with the parks department. He did this under the guise of "streamlining city government." This was a ruse.

Our Mayor for Life did this so that he could raid the parks' coffers to cover debt and expenses for the financially troubled golf course. Just this year, the rubber stamps on city council appropriated $199,000 to buy out the concessions contract at the Legends Golf Course. They did this with no business plan. They paid as much as they did because the prior holder of the concessions contract had a sweetheart deal from the city that would make Haliburton's Iraq reconstruction contracts look like models of prudent bargaining.

Our parks are a mess. The Massillon Review has published countless stories and pictures of the neglect and disrepair that plague our parks. Sometimes we do it tongue in cheek. But it isn't funny. $2.2 million dollars a year. Ballparks in disrepair, and Massillon youth sports leagues charged extra to use them. What did the administration think the $2.2 million was for? $2.2 million dollars and you still have to charge our kids to use the fields? Neighboring communities running vastly superior park systems on less than half the money Massillon spends. Our park facilities in disrepair. Routine maintenance and upkeep sorely missing, yet we buy a restaurant at the golf course.

We have an arrogant city administration led by a man who hasn't been challenged for the 37 years he has lorded over the City of Massillon, happily ignoring the will of the majority, aided by members of council who are too fearful, lazy, or helpless to stand up and say no. Enough is enough. Perhaps the citizens have finally had enough.

Rumor on the street is that they have...