Fulton County Ohio Media

From the perspective of an outsider looking in, the Fulton County village of Delta, Ohio has a lot going for it.  There is ample opportunity for employment in the manufacturing sector with four steel-related production facilities and a very large vegetable producing greenhouse.  There is an Ohio Turnpike exchange on the western edge of town which helps draw companies to locate in Delta and provide economic input to support many other local businesses.  They have good restaurants, a great community park and who doesn’t like the Annual Chicken Festival. Pike-Delta-York Local School District has long provided a very good education for the area’s students as well as a long list of extra-curricular activities to develop other interests. But not all is well in this small town of 3300 people.

Delta’s Village government, like all small-town government leadership, has had its share of challenges.  However, in the past few years, this leadership has descended into today’s borderline crisis situation.  They have fired or pressured the resignation of a mayor, a fiscal officer, a police chief, an administrator and have seen several council members abruptly resign.  Water and sewer rates have significantly increased while an alleged misappropriation of $1M of tax money designated to cover those costs has resulted in an investigation by the State of Ohio.  The relationship between the Village administration and the Delta School Board and school officials has been very contentious for a very long time, mainly regarding the applied rates and distribution of local taxes.

I gained quite a bit of insight into how the Village was run by its Administrator, Council Members and Mayor when I began covering Village Council meetings in 2016 for the Village Reporter and later when I started my website, fultoncountymedia.com in 2021.  At the same time, I also covered the Council meeting for the Village of Swanton.  By covering both communities, I was able to compare the way they conducted business and it gave me a larger frame of reference.

Two important similarities I noticed between the Delta and Swanton council meetings were the very low attendance numbers by the public and the lack of transparency on the part of the administrations.  The attendance issue at Delta meetings was recently addressed on a Facebook post by former Delta Atlas journalist Shelby Gerken, who covered the meetings for many years, in response to the current leadership turmoil.  She said, and I can firmly attest, that most meetings had very few, if any residents.  Her articles in the Atlas were thorough and accurate, and easy to read, but the Atlas was a weekly paper, not read by everyone in town.  Ms. Gerken recommended that the citizens of Delta get more involved become more aware of what their leaders are doing if they wanted to see change and not be caught off guard by certain council decisions.

Several years ago, the Swanton Village Council was fully seated by members who had gained their seat by running unopposed or by being appointed to fill an unexpected vacancy.  In effect, the voters of Swanton were given no choice as to who would make decisions on how to run their town.  When the council-favored incumbent mayor was later defeated in an election, the Council used their authority to undermine all economic development and increased transparency initiatives, to the detriment of the Village’s residents.  Any person wishing to address Council had to notify the Village four days in advance.  When the community was eventually made aware of their antics, a grassroots organization was formed by concerned citizens to find community-minded individuals to run against the four incumbent council members and push for the derailed initiatives.  Seeing the writing on the wall, all four incumbents declined to run for reelection.

When the new Council was seated, the changes were quickly implemented.  Today all Village of Swanton public meetings are livestreamed on their Facebook page and can be reviewed any time of the day or night on a computer of even a cell phone for the next 12 months.  An Economic Development Commission was formed.  An opportunity for public comments is a standard part of every Council meeting agenda.  It has been an enormous and positive transformation.

The Delta Village Council audio records their meetings and, at some later date, places the recording on the Village’s website.  Unfortunately, its sounds as only the Administrator’s microphone is turned on, making it difficult to hear when others are talking.  To their credit, public comments have been allowed for a long time.

I have a lot of hope that the current turmoil will eventually be resolved.  It will definitely take a long time, but it will not happen without residents stepping up and becoming more involved, more knowledgeable and more willing to speak out.  And speak out not with just complaints but with possible solutions.  Demand to be more informed but also make the effort to be more informed.  You cannot be a part of the Silent Majority and expect everything, if anything, will work out for you. Livestreaming is a great and inexpensive technology and far surpasses the sanitized meeting minutes that are posted once approved weeks after.  You can hear what is said, how it is said, who said it and hear and see the initial reaction.  Delta Council meetings are not very long, relatively speaking.  Having to live with the consequences of decisions where you had no input can be excruciatingly long.  I do not have the answers to Delta’s present leadership problems, but I know how to begin to find them.