1988

At the end of his final debate against Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?"

Massillon's beloved Mayor for Life, King Francis the Eternal, has put a new spin on this phrase from the eighties.

In an interview in Saturday's Independent, Frank Cicchinelli discusses why the voters should re-elect him to a seventh four year term as mayor, and give him 42 consecutive years as a Massillon elected official.

"The question they have to ask themselves is, 'Is the city better off now than it was in 1988? I think the answer to that question is yes" (Frank Cicchinelli, The Independent, February 26, 2011).

1988

1988. Mayor Frank Cicchinelli's first year as Massillon's mayor.

Ronald Reagan was president.

A gallon of gas cost 91 cents.

Stamps were 24 cents each.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed the year at 2,168.

Popular movies from 1988 included Diehard, Rain Man, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Unemployment was only 6.2%.

And the City of Massillon did not owe any money for a golf course, a privately owned hotel, and had not yet spent money on an arena that was never built.

Is the city better off now than it was in 1988

Hard to say. We would imagine that very few people have a clear memory of 1988.

It was 23 years ago.

If you were an 18 year old Washington High school senior in 1988, you would be 41 years old today. Your biggest worry back then was probably who you were going to go to the basketball game with, not the economic conditions of the city.

Nobody under 40 has a clue if Massillon was better off now than it was in 1988.

And nobody over 40 remembers if Massillon was better off now than it was in 1988.

It's about the future

What is truly sad is that our mayor is so bereft of ideas for our city's future that he is framing the debate in terms of what happened 23 years ago.

We don't care, if we even do remember, any more about 1988.

Unfortunately for us, the future (and the present) look pretty grim as a result of the mayor's mismanagement and neglect of our city.

Let's talk about right now.

After years of making payments, we still owe almost $10 million dollars on a golf course that probably isn't worth $3 million dollars on a good day.

We spend over $200,000 dollars a year making the mortgage payments for a privately owned hotel. At the end of the loan agreement, we will still owe a crippling $984,000 balloon payment.

The voters of Massillon approved a .3% income tax for parks and recreation. The mayor treats that money as a piggy bank and uses these funds to buy a restaurant, and prop up the failing golf course. Meanwhile, our park system is grossly neglected.

We are two months into 2011, and the city does not have a budget. And the budget the mayor proposed is over a million dollars short.

Frank Cicchinelli approved legislation giving himself an annual, unvoted pay raise every year. His salary has gone up 74% since he signed this ordinance.

The city of Massillon is absolutely broke. Yet Cicchinelli negotiated 4% pay raises for the city's unions, stating "the dollars would be there."

They aren't.

The Dam at Reservoir Park has been given a first class hazard rating by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, meaning it poses a risk of 'probable loss of human life.'

Probable loss of human life.

Yet we struggle to find the$40,000 dollars to conduct a proper engineering study.

But we will find $50,000 dollars to make a restaurant payment on Club Legends.

We think the Massillon Review staff will head over to Club Legends for a burger today.

Oh wait, we can't, it's closed.

Massillon has many, many problems. Most caused by the poorly planned actions of our mayor.

And our mayor has no plans to deal with any of this.

Because the buck always stops somewhere else.

Because the mayor takes no responsibility for the mess he has made.

Which is why he is discussing 1988.

When he needs to be discussing 2011.