Mayor Jim Kalb: A Fool and a Tool
As was evident at the January 14, 2008, Portsmouth City Council meeting, Mayor Kalb continues to blame others for the city’s financial difficulties instead of doing his homework on how to successfully manage a budget; click the 1-14-08 Council Meeting video of Mayor Kalb on the following link http://portsmouthcitizens.info/blog/?page_id=47. It is no secret that I have a low opinion of Kalb’s ability to run the city and sometimes wonder how he ever kept a fulltime stock boy job at Kroger’s. But it may come as a surprise to most people to learn that perhaps the most influential and wealthiest person in Portsmouth, C. Clayton Johnson, doesn’t think much more of Kalb’s abilities than I do.
On Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, my husband Bob and I were eating lunch at Williams Restaurant on Chillicothe Street, and we were seated next to C. Clayton Johnson and his guest from out of town. We recognized Johnson, but based on the content of his conversation with his guest, in a voice loud enough for others in the restaurant to hear, he obviously didn’t recognize us. At least I don’t think he would have dared to express the opinions he did if he knew the woman sitting at the next table next to him was Teresa Mollette, who was responsible for getting his sale of the Marting building to the city invalidated in the courts.
During this lunch I overhead some very critical opinions expressed by Johnson about Portsmouth, about Mayor Kalb, and about others. I am not sure who Johnson’s younger guest was, but he might have been from a development company. What became clear in the course of their conversation was that Johnson and his guest were both graduates of Ohio Wesleyan University, and very proud of it. His guest apparently didn’t know much about Portsmouth, and Johnson was filling him in.
About Mayor Kalb, Johnson said that he was only an uneducated stock boy from Kroger’s. Kalb’s predecessor, Mayor Bauer, was doing an adequate job for us, Johnson said, but he had been recalled as result of voters being stirred up by some agitators. As a matter of fact, Johnson told his guest, one of the individuals involved in getting the City Manager fired in the 1980’s was then-councilman Harald Daub, who was still causing trouble now. Johnson told his guest that he, Johnson, had led a group in the 1980’s that got Daub and two other councilmen recalled, and Johnson said it was probably a good time for that group to be reorganized.
The problem with Portsmouth, Johnson said, is that we have many ignorant residents who do not even know how to set an alarm clock. Both Johnson and his guest chuckled over that characterization. Johnson was willing to admit that there were some successful people in Portsmouth besides himself. He said there were about a half a dozen lawyers in Portsmouth who were very successful. Johnson also noted there are a couple of doctors who are making a million dollars or more a year in Portsmouth, but he failed to point out they are making millions from the citizens of Portsmouth. It is revealing but not surprising that Johnson measures success by money and whether or not a person is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan, as if Ohio Wesleyan was the Harvard of Ohio.
Kalb, of course, is not a graduate of any college. He is not even a regular high school graduate. He attended a vocational school. There are some very smart people who are not college graduates and who are vocational school graduates. But Kalb is not one of them. Kalb is, unfortunately for the citizens of Portsmouth, a fool, but he is also a tool, a useful tool to Johnson and the other unelected officials whose interests he serves so obediently. You would think Johnson would have at least a little respect for Kalb, since he is so useful to them, and that he would have a little more respect for those who aren’t millionaires, instead of ridiculing them to out-of-town guests as people who don’t even know how to set an alarm clock.
Isn’t it time we took back the city of Portsmouth from millionaires like Johnson and tools like Kalb?