[LFC Comments: Here is an article that has been submitted to the Lake County News-Herald and the Gazette newspapers. We find it to be extreme hypocritical of the Concord officials when they state that “civility” should return to the community.]

Reminds us of the saying: “It sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle black”!

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Intimidation by Concord Township Officials

The very contentious fire levy on the November ballot has, unfortunately, caused Township officials to show their dark side, and they have intimidated and divided the residents of this fine community.

The Fire Chief has blatantly defamed a citizen on a social app by calling him “unamerican” and “classless”.   The citizen happens to be a veteran, and school board member, that served honorably in the Iraq war, and is a tireless worker on behalf of the community.   The Chief continues his intimidation tactics by supporting the cancel culture for anyone that does not agree with him.  In addition to trying to bully the school board member, he then challenges his followers to cancel out all non-supporters of the fire levy with his sarcastic statement: “Let’s make them famous”.

The Township Administrator egregiously accused a citizen of being “guilty by association” simply because he was in a group picture with taxpayers not supporting the levy.   The Administrator then continued to fan the flames of division as he circumvented the rules by creating a fake account on the NextDoor social app and making comments that only further divided the community by bullying the seniors.

The cruelest blow of all is how the Township officials have intimidated the seniors in the community.  The seniors have said that they will not vote for the levy.  However, they will not put a sign in their yard because they are afraid that the fire department will not offer them the same level of service as those that support the levy!

The Fire Chief and the Administrator should focus their frustrations on the prior Trustees.  They squandered millions of dollars on their vision of the future, not supported by the residents, rather than giving the residents, and firefighters updated fire stations.  A few years ago, the residents supported a continuous safety levy that was supposed to solve all the basic safety service issues, including replacing the fire stations. 

We are simply asking the current Trustees to be fiscally responsible, and to be healers in the community rather than adding to the division that will do irreparable harm.   The Trustees need to manage their employees, and not chalk up the employees’ indiscretions as simply their free speech rights.

By requesting that Concord voters pass a $8 million levy, when only $6 million is required, strikes us as a “just in case we need it” levy.

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Categories: Concord, Free Speech Zone, Lake County Cities & Townships, Uncategorized

Tags: Concord Fire Levy, FT