Local folk exercising freedoms today, some taking it temporarily away

by Loveland Magazine Publisher David Miller,

Without a doubt, this will ring true as a liberty bell to many Loveland voters.

While Mark Fitzgerald, Pam Gross, and Angie Settell personally asked for your vote to represent your interest on the Loveland Council, you heard them figuratively “swear on their stack of bibles” that they would be the very best elected officials ever elected to any public office in the history of the entire universe in the task of listening to your concerns. Enough of you believed their promise that they were elected. Council member Stephen Zamagias has not yet run for office, having been appointed by the Mayor.

Next, we watched all of the four as they took their oath of office, swearing to always do the same, under the US Constitution, the Constitution of the State of Ohio, and the Charter of the City of Loveland.

When Ohio and Loveland established their founding documents, occasionally changing them, they have always been bound by the freedoms guaranteed to you by that Declaration of Independence we celebrate today – and by the Bill of Rights.

On June 27 of this year, four members of our Council broke the personal oath they made to you. They voted to shut down our Council meeting before they allowed your neighbors to speak, but not before Mayor Mark Fitzgerald had put his two cents worth of constitutionally protected free speech on the record. (Mayor’s Kumbaya Moment pivots to Bye Y’all as Council meeting abruptly ends)

These four Council members are bound by law to have a regularly scheduled meeting two times a month. They are bound by law to allow the public the right to speak at those Council meetings. These rights are not only guaranteed to men and women like you but by inference, inalienable rights inferred by our maker.

They not only broke the trust of the public, they took away God given rights. They as well, broke the law by shutting down the meeting before your neighbors were allowed to speak.

There are others out and about in the Loveland community today exercising other guaranteed rights — the right of assembly and the right to petition the government for change. When you see them today, please acknowledge to them your admiration for fully exercising their responsibilities as American citizens on this day – July 4th, 2017.

Four Loveland members of City Council have abdicated their responsibility – Loveland Magazine is grateful for a Constitution that allows this balancing act that can bring what is off kilter back to center when current circumstances demand that it be so.