Dear Crawford County NOW,

I read your article on Tuesday’s Galion City Council Meeting, where Attorney David Keller came to Council and informed Council that unbelievably the City of Galion had built the City bike trail on Keller Trust private property.

Your article did a good job of capturing the tortuous history of Attorney Keller trying to do business with Mayor O’Leary and Law Director Palmer.  Keller explained to Council Members that Mayor O’Leary and Law Director Thomas Palmer had approached him about this piece of Keller Trust property about two years ago; but then, although the City did not acquire the property, the City went ahead about a year ago and trespassed on the property, removing trees and dirt, and ultimately building the bike trail across the property.  Keller further explained that he tried numerous times to contact the Mayor and Law Director about the City’s ‘taking’ of this property over the last year and did not get any response whatsoever about resolving this issue.  But he noted that the day of the Council Meeting, he did get a call from Law Director Palmer trying to talk Keller out of coming to the Council Meeting.

This Keller Trust property problem is a big issue – a government cannot illegally take private property.  And seeing Mayor O’Leary and Law Director Palmer acting in such an illegal manner is a big deal, too.  But in looking at how the City of Galion has operated under both O’Leary and Palmer, this Keller Trust property problem is just not an isolated incident.  Law Director Palmer has no intentions of upholding the law (too much work) and Mayor O’Leary has no intentions of following the law either (he thinks he is above the law).

And once Attorney Keller brought up this issue (that the City built the bike path on land the City did not own), did O’Leary or Palmer apologize?  Well, you need to watch the 3/14/2023 Council Meeting video (Keller appears at the beginning of the meeting video).

Instead of apologizing or even trying to pretend that this was some sort of accident (i.e. that they ‘accidentally’ built the bike trail of Keller’s property), the Mayor chose to immediately personally attack Keller.  Mayor O’Leary accused Attorney Keller of coming to the wrong venue (City Council) and tried to humiliate Keller by pointing out that Keller was an Ashland County resident, among other demeaning accusations. In the end, the Mayor totally embarrassed himself, in trying to use a personal attack on Keller instead of talking about the facts and the law regarding the City building the bike trail on private property.

Ohio’s Open Meetings laws are there to insure that public business is transacted at Public Meetings.  The ‘open’ discussion informs everyone (including the public) about the subject; and most importantly, the information is ‘tested’ for its truthfulness in this open discussion.  If you want to lie, you want to have your conversation behind closed doors where it is not ‘on the record’ and not subject to public scrutiny.

City business is the public’s business.  Everyone has the right to attend Galion City Council meetings and speak on any topic or any problem.  Mayor O’Leary’s insistence on keeping things behind closed doors is absolutely wrong and allows him to provide misinformation and outright lies that go unchallenged.  Likewise, Law Director Palmer’s recent message (that there is ‘more’ to this Keller property fiasco that is ‘much more complex’, but that he will only divulge it at one-on-one meetings behind closed doors) is yet another unethical attempt to keep the public from what is clearly the public’s business.

Mayor O’Leary and Law Director Thomas Palmer are definite obstacles to good City government here in Galion, and both need to resign.  Very simply, things will not get better for the citizens of Galion, while these two individuals are still in office.

Roberta Wade

Attorney at Law