Letters to the Editor
IT’S TIME: Don’t Sign Newbury Petition
IT’S TIME is a group that started with a grassroots effort to find out the facts of why the Newbury school district pulled out of talks with the West Geauga school district in April 2016. Since our inception, we have grown into a respected organization where residents come to find out reliable facts on the state of the Newbury school district.
In 2017, IT’S TIME supported Matthews, Sedivy and Zock, who ran for school board and overwhelming won against two incumbent school board members. We supported these candidates because they ran on reopening talks with surrounding districts for consolidation. Their large margin of victory verified the community was ready for transition to another district.
Our new board, after much due diligence, has voted to do a territory transfer with West Geauga school district. WG approved the transfer and the Geauga ESC (Educational Service Center) approved the transfer on Aug. 20, 2019.
ORC (Ohio Revised Code) allows a 30-day period for a referendum, which, if successful, would end the transfer and another attempt cannot happen until 2022.
Newbury Schools projects a $2.4 million deficit by 2023. Residents supporting a consolidation with Berkshire Schools need to realize that Newbury would not have the $4 million required by Berkshire and another levy would be needed to raise this money. Newbury residents are unlikely to pass a huge levy to raise $6.4 million, especially when a consolidation at that time with Berkshire is not guaranteed.
Additionally, Berkshire will be underway with their new school building and adding Newbury kids could require an expansion of this building, requiring new funds to be raised by Berkshire residents. Does anyone believe Berkshire residents will raise their taxes to pay for Newbury kids?
Right now is the time to complete this consolidation while we have the funds. The referendum group has hijacked our name in their attempt to collect signatures. Their signs read “IT’S TIME, SIGN THE REFERENDUM” and they chose to use our black and white color scheme. This is a ploy to confuse the residents into thinking that IT’S TIME supports the referendum. This is not true.
IT’S TIME encourages residents not to sign the petition.
Chris Yaecker
Newbury Township
Serious, Deliberate Oversight
I was disappointed in your reporting on “Hospital Parking Lot Project Angers Munson Residents.” Your story downplayed the serious and seemingly deliberate procedural “errors” on the part of UH and its consultants, instead focusing on secondary issues like aesthetics.
UH has a long recent history of construction projects around our region. Hess and Associates, among its other assignments, is the Village of Burton’s longtime engineer, overseeing the village’s new wastewater plant expansion, the new Berkshire School campus construction, the reconstruction of Goodwin Street and the proposed Hillside Village project — all of which you’ve reported on.
For Chip Hess himself to say in a quasi-judicial hearing that “it was an honest mistake” that permits and variances for the UH project were not obtained is simply not credible. These professional engineers, architects and construction companies do these projects every day, and follow the applicable land use, zoning and environmental regulations. They know better than to “forget” to get permits, variances or zoning approvals.
Given the professional expertise arrayed on this UH project, it is stunning — stunning! — that, in your words, “six use and area variances the hospital should have applied for before construction began” UH now expects our township to grant them after the fact.
Laws were broken. This project may be an attempt to strongarm a small township into granting quasi-judicial approvals after the parking lot has been put in. It may also be an attempt to strongarm UH’s residential neighbors into agreeing to substandard aesthetic screening from a commercial-scale parking lot and commercial-grade lighting; screening in name only, which will be overwhelmed by off-site light, noise and possibly storm water runoff.
Please also note that UH currently owns 50 vacant acres on two adjacent parcels to their eastern parking lot that could be developed for more unobtrusive parking than the lot that’s been illegally built.
We were also surprised UH admitted a lack of maintenance on its existing stormwater system that is apparently causing flooding in its ER and has caused flooding on the parcels they put the parking lot on and subsequent other resident-owned properties to their north, one of which was ours. That admission concerns us regarding the future of UH’s new parking lot.
We’re also concerned that UH’s professionals’ errors and omissions will result in an inadequate remedial — and an inadequate new — stormwater system. Who will help the township verify UH’s storm water calculations and engineering?
To top off our concerns about this project, and contrary to the quote attributed to me, we are definitely not happy with the inadequate screening offered by UH. It will be many years before the evergreen trees are at a good height to afford a decent amount of screening. They will never have an effect on the amount of glow the industrial lighting will have on our property, even with the lights directed. It does nothing to buffer the sounds coming from the ER.
This seemingly small project has big implications for Munson and other township and village residents and businesses. UH and its consultants seem to be on a deliberate path of overwhelming our township officials, building an intrusive parking lot and supporting infrastructure without prior approval, then begging for forgiveness along with six (6!) variances.
This case is an astounding abuse of our local government planning and zoning systems, of the volunteer and paid local officials that try their best to implement them, and of the residents that must scramble to educate themselves about procedures that the hired-guns know inside and out and apply on a daily basis.
These lots were zoned residential from the time zoning began in Munson Township and, through two subsequent zoning resolutions, they were still zoned residential. They should have put their new lot elsewhere on some of the other parcels they own. They have put our township in a tuff spot and have decimated my property value. This has greatly affected us financially.
Also, they not only forgot to apply for the permit for the project, but also the six variances which I’m sure they knew they would need for a residential property.
Dorothy Bauer
Munson Township
Setting the Record Straight on School Merger
A recent article that appeared in the Chagrin Valley Times, “County BOE to Revote on Newbury Transfer,” (Aug. 22), reports rants from a particular member of the community which are replete with inaccuracies and prompts the need to set the record straight regarding the overtly public process and rationale that has led to the current territory transfer and merger actions of the Newbury Local and West Geauga Schools.
Open and transparent decisions were made after open and transparent discussions to pursue the territory transfer at publicly posted and publicly held meetings of three public bodies, those being the Newbury Board of Education (Jan. 14,2019), the West Geauga Board of Education (July 23, 2019) and the Educational Service Center of Geauga County (Aug. 20, 2019).
Decisions aren’t deceitful simply when disagreed with, but rather reflect the will of the people who duly elected these public boards to be their voice and representatives in the civic arena.
These public decisions, atop the thousands of pages of public records requested by those quoted in the article, and punctually provided by the Newbury District, shatter any baseless claim of ambiguity.
Even more, the 280 current children who are served by the Newbury Local Schools, out of the 1,000 school-aged students presently living in the District, neither result from any one, recent board decision, nor from purported scare tactics, but rather from a decade-long student exodus that has seen a Newbury enrollment total of 681 in 2009, decline by a whopping 140 percent in the last 10 years.
This, in addition to an aging building where the District has worked exhaustively to provide good technology but is rapidly becoming cost prohibitive to maintain and repair, and any rational person can see that the current Boards of Educations are simply, and publicly, analyzing the information before them, enacting the will of the people whom they serve, and making sound decisions for the best interests of Newbury students today and tomorrow.
If 10 years of sizeable enrollment decline, among other factors, amounts to “rushing” to the solution of this discussion, the roots of which trace itself back to 1951, there is no length of time that will satisfy those opposed to a Newbury merger. Our Newbury students deserve better.
Maggie Zock, President
Newbury Schools Board of Education
Let the People Vote
The people of Newbury deserve the opportunity to vote on the future of their community. The Newbury School Board majority campaigned on a promise to do thorough studies and then “let the community decide.” Then, in one vote, three people decidedto give the entire district – our students, buildings, and property at the geographic and symbolic heart of the Newbury community — to the West Geauga School Board.
The Board then insisted that they could not themselves, by law, put this particular move on the ballot for the community to decide. Yet, the citizens can petition to have the measure placed on the ballot, giving the people back the voice that the Board has sought to deny them.
If those who so strongly favor the proposed territory transfer truly believed that this is what the majority of the community wants, one would expect that the very morning after the Board’s decision they would have been on our doorsteps with a petition in hand for a referendum so that all of Newbury would have the chance to show their approval of the Board’s action. But they have instead been working feverishly to oppose any effort to let Newbury’s citizens decide what happens to their own school.
Why are they so afraid? If they truly believe that this is what the people of Newbury want, they should beleading the charge to let the people vote. A vote will allow all of the citizens of our community to decide the future of Newbury.
If the majority supports the proposed territory transfer with West Geauga, then it will be genuinely clear that this is what the community wants, and hopefully the people can again work together to seek the common good.
If the people reject the pact with West Geauga, it will be a clear statement that the community does not want this transfer. Either way, it will have been put to the citizens of Newbury themselves to decide.
Some have been actively discouraging the citizens of Newbury from signing the petition to put the referendum on the ballot, claiming that this would disrupt the timetable of the proposed transfer (a timetable established by the West Geauga Board). There are two problems with this argument. First, putting the referendum on the ballot will not affect the proposed transfer timetable.Second, if the referendum passes, it will mean that the citizens of Newbury do not approve of the Board’s actions, and never gave permission for the transfer in the first place, making their timetable invalid.
This issue is not about sentimentality, as some have derisively charged. It is about the right of the people of Newbury to decide the future their school and their community.
The school belongs to the people of Newbury – not to three individuals on the school board, their political action group, or to the West Geauga Board.
So, whether you favor Newbury remaining independent, or if you support the proposed territory transfer to West Geauga, or if you have not yet decided, we should all agree that such a momentous decision should rest squarely in the hands of the people of the community. Let the people vote. Sign the referendum.
David Ray
Newbury Township
