Hooah, and other thoughts on yesterday's ballot returns.
Yesterday's election results were mostly satisfactory and overall I'm rather pleased. Readers from outside my little corner of Ohio who've followed my postings on the Lathrop House vs City Council struggles here will no doubt share my satisfaction that Issue 16 passed by a comfortable margin of some 700 votes, obliging the City to immediately drop its eminent domain proceedings against St Joseph's Church, and preventing them from refiling any similar motions in the next two years.

The issue was clearly the major determining factor in the Council races as well. I am pleased to report that councilman John Billis, by all accounts the ringleader of the Gang of Four, was unelected yesterday with extreme prejudice: he received the fewest votes of any candidate, despite his incumbency. In an open seven-candidate pool, with the top four vote-getters winning Council seats, the winners were Messrs Luetke, Haddad, Haynam, and Borell. In a very close battle for the fourth seat, Mr Borell defeated incumbent (and Gang of Four member) Bonita Scheidel by just 14 votes, 2661-2647. Whoever said that one vote (well, ok, fourteen) hardly matters?

I was delighted to see that Messrs Luetke, Haynam, and Borell were successful in their bids, and that Billis and Scheidel were unelected. I was disappointed that Haddad was retained instead of Flynn securing a seat, but the outcome was still very positive for those who prefer limited government, and I wish Mr Flynn success should he choose to make another bid at the next election.

I wrote previously that approving Issue 16 would not alone be enough to force the issue to conclusion for the Church, in consideration of other delaying tactics Council could introduce. But Council has now gone from a 4-3 majority supporting obstruction of the church building, to a 5-2 majority which prefers a compromise solution. I would now expect that Council would not gratuitously block the conditional use zoning approval, and that both sides in this debacle should come to a fairly amicable solution forthwith.

And, as I've written before, a compromise seems readily available: all it requires is for all parties who are so adamant in the need to preserve the house, to chip in financially to raise the (depending who one asks) $150,000 or so required to move it to a new site. Toledo Metroparks have agreed to operate and maintain it in its new location. There's really only one big question which remains unanswered: who pays for the relocation. I would scarcely consider it a compromise for the Church to have to move, at its own expense, a structure it considers valueless and which it would probably just as soon demolish. If there are others who value the structure so much, I would propose that those parties--who could, after all, have bought the house and land to begin with if they found them so valuable--pay the moving costs.

But that's a lesser detail compared to the joy of victory in the bigger scheme: our City has had a marauding couple of government hooligans, and the issue they embraced, kicked from office. Here's appreciating that the damage they can do in private life will be far less onerous than had they continued in power.

Further, the horrible Ohio Issue 1 initiative was rejected also (though in a rather close 51%-49% vote), making for a one-two-three electoral counterpunch in favor of limited government. Good for us. But for some reason, countywide voters also improved two property tax issues (one of them a new tax) which saddles me with still more government burden. Blech.

Still, all matters considered, a most satisfactory outcome. Congratulations to Sylvania's new councilmen-elect, and to St Joseph's Church, which can finally get down to business in its expansion.

JKS.