As the City Council President continues his assault on ambiguous “agitators”, an interesting pattern is developing.
City Council President Kurt Fankhauser rails against the “agitators” in his new video
City Council President Kurt Fankhauser doubled (tripled? quadrupled?) down on early Saturday morning, once again railing against the “Council agitators.” While his colleague Carolyn Shireman has quietly tried to walk back her misguided boycott of Randy’s Tire and Auto Repair due to the owner’s wife and daughter’s public participation at Council meetings, Fankhauser has gone full steam ahead, naming the women part of the “Council agitators.” But critics of Fankhauser have pointed to a distrubing trend that’s developing. All of Fankhauser’s stated enemies, or “agitators” as he continues to call them, do have something in common, and it’s not their political leanings. It’s the fact that they’re all women.
In his latest video, Fankhauser singles out 3 women in particular: Clarissa Slater, Laura Scheffler, and Adrienne Kemery, for recording with their phones during the meeting. The great irony is, of course, that the picture Fankhauser uses in his video, he recorded— with his phone.
Recording video in a public building is, of course, unequivocally legal. The Council meetings are recorded and broadcast to everyone, so Fankhauser’s gripe with people recording on their phones is rich, to say the least. Let us not forget that this is the same man who secretly recorded Council member Aaron Sharrock in City Hall and then used that recording to try to censure her a few weeks ago due to her language in the recording. Before that, Fankhauser used his title to attempt to bring disciplinary actions on Sharrock from her job at Bucyrus City Schools with that recording.
On that same note, Fankhauser also recorded a conversation with Council member Vicki Dishon 6 years ago, which he has since uploaded in one of his Youtube videos, describing how she fraudulently sued the city of Bucyrus — in his opinion.
Fankhauser claims it’s unfair that these agitators are recording him because the Board of Crawford County does not allow recordings at all. Fankhauser even jealously ponders emulating the Board by allowing less public participation and prohibiting speakers from addressing Council members individually. Prohibiting the public from addressing invidual members is going backwards and unfair to members of Council who don’t regularly suggest such asinine things like asking for Marion’s tax money if a Crawford County resident purchases something in their city, as Ms. Shireman did a few weeks ago. Critics of Fankhauser would also counter that if the commissioners had anywhere near the issues that City Council did, their prohibitions would be worth noting, but it doesn’t, and so it appears Fankhauser is once again deflecting.
In fact, a theme in his new video is that the city of Bucyrus is more transparent than Crawford County as a whole. This “fact” is based solely on a government website that tracks how different cities and counties in Ohio adhere to Sunshine laws. It is an arbitrary determination at best; even if we grant him that Bucyrus is more transparent, his analysis is based on the fact that the city has passed 3 of the previous 5 years while the county has passed in only 2 of the previous 5. Both are failing grades and nothing to brag about. To say one is better than the other is to also admit both have a lot of room to improve; suggesting we go backwards because the county sets unconstitutional rules is missing the point entirely. Fankhauser would be better served taking his concerns to the county and encourage them to be more transparent, not opine about making the city less.
Transparency, of course, has to do with more than Sunshine laws. Critics point to Fankhauser’s mixing of his governmental duties with his business as proof that the city has a ways to go before it can call itself fully compliant. Fankhauser installed Wavelinc, his private internet service provider (ISP) business, replacing Spectrum without the knowledge of the city council. Council members were unaware changes were made until Wavelinc was already installed — not even the Law Director at the time was consulted.
The ultimate irony is that all of this complaining about transparency is coming from the man who ran solely on a platform of transparency himself. He spoke incessantly about the lack of transparency in the local government, and promised his supporters he would put a stop to it, that his administration would put transparency first and foremost. Hilariously, he is the founder of the Facebook group Citizen For a More Transparent Bucyrus, a page “dedicated to making your Bucyrus Ohio elected officials more honest and transparent in their dealings with city matters.” So why the sudden change of heart?
It is noteworthy that the person who speaks more than anyone during public participation is Greg White, but you will never see Fankhauser disparage Mr. White, mostly due to the fact that White very often coincidentally says exactly what is on Fankhauser’s mind.
A few men do come to the podium and poke holes in Fankhauser and Shireman’s antics, mainly Gary Miller and his son, Max. However, you’ll be hardpressed to find either of them in one of these “truth to power” masturbatory videos.
So then, what is the common denominator of Fankhauser’s stated enemies? Are they all Democrats? Sharrock is, but the rest are all registered Republicans like Fankhauser. Are they his political rivals? Dishon and Sharrock sit on Council, but none of the them have announced they are running for Council President. No, the only thing that these “agitators” have in common is that they are all women.
Now, we don’t throw around words like “misogyny” around lightly. In fact, it’s the repeated use of terms like “racist”, “mysogynistic”, and “bigot” that has caused the words to lose their meaning, but with that being said, the facts speak for themselves. Fankhauser has a clear problem with women who have the audacity to stand up to him. Why that may be is a problem best left to the pschoanalysts, not us. We care about facts, and the facts here are clear for those who have seen Fankhauser’s nonstop attacks on these women. In fact, if it weren’t for his evident hatred of Council member Kevin Myers, it would be exclusively women who’ve made appearances in the Council president’s series of Youtube videos.
Before Fankhauser became City Council president as well as during his absence, he was a regular fixture at Council meetings. He regularly spoke during public participation, railing against the administration, whether it be Council or the mayor, for shady dealings and hidden agendas. We wonder what the sitting Council president Kurt Fankhauser would have to say about the citizen Kurt Fankhauser? He would certainly be labeled an agitator, if only he had another X chomosome.
Fankhauser and his supporters love to act like they are beacons of free speech, honesty, and transparency, but the moment someone else uses their free speech to be honest about his lack of transparency, he suddenly changes course and denounces the very same virtues he claims to espouse.
Fankhauser says to stay tuned, that more is coming as far as his truth is concerned, and of that, we have no doubt. It remains to be seen, however, whether his truth will ever line up with reality. The only truth as far as we are concerned is that if mental gymnastics were in the Olympics, the Council president would be Simone Biles.
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