Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Patton's Exit

In the gracious back slapping congratulations given at the last Council meeting of this Administration, Mayor Patton took an unexpected turn, a dig if you will, at the residents to whom he was to have served.



The following is a rough draft of his comments... (11/18/09 230 am)


I have high regard for our council members, they are hard working public officials who try to do what is best for their respective wards and the city as a whole. It is a tedious and time consuming job and they generally receive more criticism than praise. It is not easy trying to represent the public because the public likes to think, they, the public, are always right and that their desires should be followed.  I remember something I had heard from a speaker at a League of City's conference as a young councilman that said something like -- "The job of an elected official is to protect the people from themselves". -- And you know what, I can tell you from experience there is truth in that statement. We do not always agree up here, but there has always been significant respect for each other --- agreement up here. --- But in the end majority vote rules and we move forward. In my 12 years there has been rewarding, challenging, and down right difficult experiences. But today Solon stands stronger than ever through the cooperation of city council, department heads and city employees and many involved citizens. there have been great accomplishments for the betterment of our community. Many of those have been highlighted up here tonight. I would only add that a few that have not been mentioned:

  • Initiation and continuation of Deer Culling

    ... We had more people in these council chambers more often discussing that subject than any other item in my 12 years.  And you know what, it took guts for council to pass it, and then pass it again and then pass it again...
    And the accidents have gone down and ...destroying peoples lawns and gardens and all that sort of thing...
  • Aurora ...
  • Pettibone Rd Improvement ???
  • Bainbridge Rd Improvement Project will hopefully begining soon
  • Exapnded ... water reclamation
  • Added a great driving range at Grantwood that has improved it a lot
  • Returned Solon Home Days as our annual community festival
  • The increase in the year end fund balance has been mentioned

BTW Bill Weber and I went to grade school together at St. Rita's ...

All of these successes would not have been possible without the leadership and cooperation ... their knowledge and experience are directly tied to our success.  My management style has always been to hire the very best people and then cut them loose and let them do their job, check in with them, monitor their progress, if it needs to be tweaked it gets tweaked, but why hire the best people if you won't let them do their jobs.  So at this time I wish to express my genuine thanks to my senior management team ....  [incomp list]  Stanek, Busch, Frankland, Prasser, Matty ...

I also salute my colleagues on the Planning and Zoning Commission ... as well as those that are on the civil service commission ...

Clerk of Council ... Considerable work in scheduling and records management here at City Hall,

It likewise takes a lot of knowledge, experience, and savy to help manage the Mayor and his office. I really have been most blessed to have Sally as my very excellant assistant for 12 years. ...

Special ... equipment mamangement

I thank my wife Linda for her

I thank all the members of the Patton family for their support and ABUNDANT ADVICE [his emphasis] which was usually provided at the Sunday family dinner table.  Whether the advice was good, bad, OR EVEN DESIRED [his emphasis] is another question, but it certainly has ... It helped to keep my skin tough too.  ...

And last but certainly not least, I thank God for staying close to me every day for giving me a strong conscience and for helping me to stay focused during some tough times.

As has been said here tonight the best that any city official can hope for is to leave the community better off  than how he found it.  I feel most comfortable in saying ... 

I believe that I'm the first Mayor that has chosen not to seek re-election in over 70 years, ... I struggled about it greatly and [uhm] I don't know if I made the right decision for me but [uhm] I'm going with it and we'll see where it all goes.

When I speak to the grad ... I always use this annoymous littel reflection -- "It is important to have an end to journey towards, but in the end, it is the journey itself that counts" -- ...
I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays, and may God Bless Solon Ohio, Thank You.  [Applause, Standing Ovation].


Note: Active Draft, quotes above are being reviewed with the goal of being verbatim. Please comment or email any errors found.

Note: Any highlighting is meant as an editorial comment to focus the readers attention...

1 comment:

  1. This is Patton at his most honest moment - really saying what he thinks of Solon residents. He has always shown a blatant disregard for the best interests of his constituents, those taxpaying suckers who paid $120K a year for allowing him to abuse them in so many ways. Good riddance, Patton.

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