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The Alan Miller All Press Track Team
See page 18
RESS June 16, 2014
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Serving i Th The E Eastern astern t Maumee M Bay Communities Since 1972
Parrotheads “phlock” to drive-in See Family M
Ex-board Pres. blasts the union By Kelly J. Kaczala Press News Editor kkaczala@presspublications.com
Curtice Kidz Day
Talon Meyer, age 3½, Oregon, tries his aim with a beanbag toss game at the annual Curtice Kidz Day. See more photos on page 3. (Press photo by Ken Grosjean)
Decade old
Utility debts come under fire Adam Snyder is the first to tell you he is a self-made businessman. “I started this from the ground up on my own,” he says in the hallway of Oak Harbor village hall about his rental business during a recent spring evening. “Nobody helped me.” He refers to his climb to buy rental properties, accumulating close to 100 over the years in and around the village. He keeps a watchful eye on expenses and questions those that don’t add up. For more than three months at village council meetings he’s protested a 2005 utility bill connected to a property he bought this year on Ottawa Street. He insists the $469 electric bill is not his responsibility since the village shirked at least three previous chances to collect the cash from the debtors. But the village still says no payment, no electrical meter. One of his former renters, Kyle Hollis, doesn’t see it so clearly. The registered nurse thinks Snyder has to swallow the “cost of doing business” the same way he deals with his renters. Her experience with Snyder years ago went without a hitch. But she maintains her daughter’s recent experience with
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He’s a slumlord. You get what you pay for.
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By Cynthia L. Jacoby Special to The Press
Snyder wasn’t so amicable. She claims her daughter cleaned rugs, left her property in presentable condition and he still kept her deposit for unjustified reasons. In addition, she says his intimidating persona, hot-headed manner, continual conflicts with village utility officials and unreasonable ways have left other tenants and neighbors scratching their heads at his odd behavior. But it comes down to one thing for Hollis: “He’s a slumlord. You get what you pay for. He’s not a fair landlord… He needs to take all that money he has kept from people’s deposits and pay that bill.” Snyder realizes as a landlord he’s going to take flak. He wouldn’t discuss Hollis’ daughter’s case specifically but said he knows there are going to be disputes. Yet, he will not let go of a pending
utility dispute with the village because, he said, he is not only fighting for himself but for other property owners who are getting a bad rap from poorly designed utility regulations. A 1950s ordinance ties payment of uncollected utility bills to the property owner not the user, Mayor Bill Eberle has reminded others repeatedly. Changes made by village council three years ago tightened procedures for collections from users – but not before nearly $80,000 in debt mounted for utility bills racked up dating back to 2001. At council’s late May meeting, Snyder defended the owner of a new business who recently had to pay someone else’s old bill in order to get an electrical meter for service. “Yea, she paid. She didn’t want to,” Snyder insisted. His stubbornness on the issue boils down to principle, he said. He bought a three-unit house this year but can’t get electrical service because of the $469 bill dating back to 2005. The former owner long held the property before foreclosure set in and other tenants actually occupied the building and used village services in the last few years, Village Administrator Randy Genzman acknowledged. Nine years was plenty of time for the village to collect on its old bill before going
P.J. Kapfhammer blasted officials from the teachers’ union a day after he resigned from the Oregon school board last week. Kapfhammer, who was president of the board, announced his resignation at a meeting last Tuesday. On Wednesday, he told The Press that union officials from the Oregon City Federation of Teachers, which is in negotiations with the board to renew its contract, is the reason he stepped down. “The union leadership goes into the classrooms, they tell lies. They tell the kids that the board is firing their teachers, which are lies. There is no truth to this. We have to follow the rules. There’s protocol. I can’t combat the lies because as a school board member, I am restricted in what I can do,” said Kapfhammer. Relations between Kapfhammer and the union have soured in the last several months. Last year, he alleged that a union official circulated false comments about him throughout the district. “The union copied some stuff off my Facebook page and made some comments about me and then circulated it throughout the schools. It was sent to a classroom that my daughter was in,” he said. At a meeting last month, the board ordered Dave Shafer, president of the union, to vacate his office at the Wynn Center, which is owned by the school district. Kapfhammer said at the time he didn’t think the union should be “serving us with legal papers from our own address.” He was referring to a lawsuit the union had filed against the board in April. It alleges a breach of the collective bargaining agreement to arbitrate a grievance by the union’s committee chairperson, who was reprimanded by the board for allegedly misusing the district’s inner-school email system for union business. Kapfhammer alleges his truck was keyed by someone after the meeting. Relations were further strained after the board entered negotiations to renew the teachers’ contract last month. Kapfhammer said he would aggressively oppose raises, Continued on page 4
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May one of them light your fire. John Szozda See page 11
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