Loveland, Ohio – When Councilwoman Angie Settell told the audience at the council meeting on April 11 that she was going to give a history lesson of the Loveland Farmers’ Market, the crowd shuffled in their chairs and groaned. She responded, “Well, you’ll have to listen. I listened to you all night, you’ll just have to listen.”
When the crowd became increasingly impatient, she said, “I’ll get to the crux of it here. Let me get to the crux.There’s a whole lot of back and forth about apple pies and interest, so here’s the crux bear with me.”
Settell said that the Market had received preferential treatment from the City since its inception and read several past emails highlighting a loan the Market founder received from taxpayers to file their incorporation papers.
At the next council meeting on May 9, Loveland Farmers’ Market spokesperson Peggy Goodwin, a former council member, took to the podium to respond to Settell’s accusations. She said, among other things, “I was stunned and angered by Mrs. Settell’s dissertation on the Loveland Farmers’ Market and Mrs. Donna Bednar.” Goodwin said that several people approached her afterward and expressed that they felt Settell was “Mudslinging.” Goodwin concluded by saying, “It doesn’t matter if those comments were outright criticism, insinuations, or innuendo, it comes across as a cheap shot. And, quite frankly, that behavior is beneath the dignity of the office.
When Goodwin returned to her chair in the audience, Mayor Mark Fitzgerald took his turn and suggested that when the loan was given, the City should have asked the Ohio Ethics Commission if the loan was proper, given that Bednar’s husband was on Council at the time. Goodwin had just reminded everyone that during that period, then-councilman David Bednar had recused himself from discussing or voting on matters related to the Farmers’ Market.
Since Mark Fitzgerald is on the topic of city loans and their ethical nature, did he mention the loan he himself received from Loveland over seventeen years ago? If I remember correctly, he did not pay the entire amount back to the city.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…..” John Dalberg-Acton
“Politics makes strange bedfellows” – Charles Dudley Warren
Correction: Charles Dudley Warner