A Somber Afternoon for the Massillon Review

It has been a somber afternoon at the offices of the Massillon Review, and it isn't just the bad winter weather that has us depressed.

The Massillon Review has been provided with countless stories as a result of the words and deeds of our beloved Mayor for Life, Frank Cicchinelli.

His foibles, insider deals, and vindictive and controlling behavior have provided us with endless hours of amusement and entertainment.

His legendary thin skin, and need to personally control every member of city council, so that they are merely rubber stamps for whatever policy he wishes to push through has made the Massillon Review so much fun to run.

We are fearful these glorious days are coming to an end.

Kathy Catazaro-Perry has filed petitions to challenge our mayor for life in the Democratic Primary.

While we are confident that our beloved Mayor for Life will vigorously defend the golf course and its staggering debt, raiding the park income tax to subsidize that debt, spending our tax dollars to pay the mortgage for a private hotel, buying a restaurant at the golf course without first having a business plan, enacting a scheme to grant himself unvoted pay raises for life, spending money on an arena that was never built, and ramming unbalanced budgets through his rubber stamp council, we are fearful the residents of Massillon ain't buyin' what he's sellin' no more.

We are afraid that his undisputed reign as the King of Tigertown is coming to an end. And after just a meager 38 years as an elected city official.

No, he won't go down with a fight, but Catazaro-Perry votes against his hotel mortgage scheme. She tried to overturn the unvoted pay raises for life ordinance. She voted against buying the restaurant and opposes his unbalanced budgets.

And unlike our mayor's last challenger, Tim Bryan, Catazaro-Perry will actually fight back when the mayor goes on the war path.

No, his 38 year uninterrupted run as Massillon's monarch may be reaching its conclusion.

What will we ever do?