Dance of the Trustees: On the Astonishing Concerns of a Small Ohio Township
Autor Dylan Taylor-Lehmanen Limba Engleză Paperback – 29 iul 2018
On September 9, 2015, in the quirky village of Yellow Springs, Ohio, the Miami Township Board of Trustees arbitrated a dispute concerning an area bed and breakfast that was apparently causing problems in the neighborhood where it was located. People were irate: the B&B was considered too loud by some but unfairly under attack by others, while township officials were called incompetent by both sides for not ruling in their favor. The trustees were amused, concerned, and baffled at the situation before them.
This quaint debate represents just one of many fascinating problems the trustees deal with on a daily basis. While Miami Township is small, the concerns are myriad—from cemeteries filled with unknown remains to a fire department to oversee to legal action required against properties clogged with junk. The responsibilities are doubly impressive considering no trustees have backgrounds in public office.
This book combines entertaining nonfiction vignettes with well-researched township history—including a history of religious cults and the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was once in town—and elucidates the processes behind an entire civic division. Dance of the Trustees documents twenty-first-century small-town life with humor, warmth, and erudition.
This quaint debate represents just one of many fascinating problems the trustees deal with on a daily basis. While Miami Township is small, the concerns are myriad—from cemeteries filled with unknown remains to a fire department to oversee to legal action required against properties clogged with junk. The responsibilities are doubly impressive considering no trustees have backgrounds in public office.
This book combines entertaining nonfiction vignettes with well-researched township history—including a history of religious cults and the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was once in town—and elucidates the processes behind an entire civic division. Dance of the Trustees documents twenty-first-century small-town life with humor, warmth, and erudition.
Preț: 163.53 lei
Nou
Puncte Express: 245
Preț estimativ în valută:
31.30€ • 32.53$ • 25.93£
31.30€ • 32.53$ • 25.93£
Carte tipărită la comandă
Livrare economică 31 ianuarie-06 februarie 25
Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76
Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814254837
ISBN-10: 0814254837
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 30 b&w illus
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.32 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Trillium
ISBN-10: 0814254837
Pagini: 224
Ilustrații: 30 b&w illus
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 20 mm
Greutate: 0.32 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Trillium
Recenzii
“Dylan Taylor-Lehman has a curiosity that knows no bounds, and he has trained it on the quirky concerns of a village and township in southwest Ohio where he lived for two years. Lucky for us, the readers, his narrative voice is as charming and distinctive as his curiosity is strong. This book is a funny, informative, and delightful look at small town shenanigans and goings-on.” —Diane Chiddister, Editor, Yellow Springs News
Notă biografică
Dylan Taylor-Lehman is a nonfiction writer from southeastern Ohio. Previously a reporter for the Yellow Springs News, he also writes about Bigfoot, micronations, and landfills. He currently lives in El Paso, Texas, and looks forward to checking out the minor civil jurisdictions in other states and countries.
Extras
The Miami Township Trustee meeting of September 9, 2015, took place in a squat, cinderblock room attached to the Miami Township Fire and Rescue firehouse. The meeting room had parquet floors and a drop ceiling and was decorated with serviceably framed firefighter ephemera. A small corridor on the east side of the room led to the trustees’ offices, and it was in this doorway that Chris Mucher and Mark Crockett, two of the three Miami Township trustees, were milling around, chatting until it was time to take their seats at a table at the head of the room. The township’s third trustee, Lamar Spracklen, was sitting the meeting out for personal reasons. Crockett looked out at the room and slowly scratched his chin.
A township is a municipal subdivision, jointly overseen by trustees who meet twice a month to keep the township running. Miami Township is a township of twenty-four square miles in northern Greene County, a county in southwestern Ohio not far from Dayton. Miami Township trustees oversee every aspect of the township’s needs, from maintaining its cemeteries to winterizing its roads. They oversee the fire department, run an inn, and balance the needs of farmers and developers. Historically, each meeting’s agenda reflects the scope of the trustees’ concerns, and the agenda of Wednesday, September 9, 2015, as discussed in this book, ran a page and a half, with twelve enumerated sections. It was a lot of ground to cover, but the trustees had over thirty years of experience between them and could ordinarily get through the meeting in under an hour. It wasn’t that they cut corners but that they could trust each other to get township business done, whatever it was, without surfeit discussion. Except, on that particular September evening, it wasn’t business as usual. By 6:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, a small crowd had assembled outside the building. People talked in clusters, and a new person walked down the sidewalk every few minutes to join them. The air was charged with excitement, the buzz of people gathering for a common cause. A years-long controversy had come to a head, and people were there to take sides.
...
It wasn’t the discussion of fire department business that drew the crowd, nor was it the public-service announcement to be given by someone from a U.S. representative’s office. In fact, none of the attendees seemed to know that such topics were going to be discussed. They were there for one reason: a rogue bed-and-breakfast was said to be disturbing the peace of an otherwise quiet neighborhood, and they wanted it shut down.
The B&B issue was a complex one for the trustees. They appreciated the business the B&B brought to the township but had to respect the needs of the residents who lived around it. Those residents were in turn certain to find the trustees either tyrannical or ineffective, depending on the evening’s decision.
The B&B issue wasn’t even taking into consideration the other items on the evening’s agenda: the remains of thirty-five bodies from the nineteenth century had recently been discovered in an area of the township cemetery earmarked for new graves. The fire department had answered fifty-eight EMT calls and twenty-four fire incidents over the past two weeks, and the chief wanted to buy a new $190,000 ambulance. There was a snow and ice removal conference to attend. Trustees Mucher and Spracklen were up for reelection, and two people in attendance that evening were throwing their names into the race. They attended the meeting proudly, a mild challenge to the incumbent trustees. But such was township business, and so went the trustees’ charge.
As 7:00 p.m. approached on September 9, 2015, the crowd filed in and took their seats. Everyone sat rigid and upright, poised to do battle. It would make for an interesting night. The evening was just part of the job of taking care of a small township in southwestern Ohio. It was a township trustee meeting, and one Mucher would shortly call to order.
A township is a municipal subdivision, jointly overseen by trustees who meet twice a month to keep the township running. Miami Township is a township of twenty-four square miles in northern Greene County, a county in southwestern Ohio not far from Dayton. Miami Township trustees oversee every aspect of the township’s needs, from maintaining its cemeteries to winterizing its roads. They oversee the fire department, run an inn, and balance the needs of farmers and developers. Historically, each meeting’s agenda reflects the scope of the trustees’ concerns, and the agenda of Wednesday, September 9, 2015, as discussed in this book, ran a page and a half, with twelve enumerated sections. It was a lot of ground to cover, but the trustees had over thirty years of experience between them and could ordinarily get through the meeting in under an hour. It wasn’t that they cut corners but that they could trust each other to get township business done, whatever it was, without surfeit discussion. Except, on that particular September evening, it wasn’t business as usual. By 6:45 p.m., fifteen minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, a small crowd had assembled outside the building. People talked in clusters, and a new person walked down the sidewalk every few minutes to join them. The air was charged with excitement, the buzz of people gathering for a common cause. A years-long controversy had come to a head, and people were there to take sides.
...
It wasn’t the discussion of fire department business that drew the crowd, nor was it the public-service announcement to be given by someone from a U.S. representative’s office. In fact, none of the attendees seemed to know that such topics were going to be discussed. They were there for one reason: a rogue bed-and-breakfast was said to be disturbing the peace of an otherwise quiet neighborhood, and they wanted it shut down.
The B&B issue was a complex one for the trustees. They appreciated the business the B&B brought to the township but had to respect the needs of the residents who lived around it. Those residents were in turn certain to find the trustees either tyrannical or ineffective, depending on the evening’s decision.
The B&B issue wasn’t even taking into consideration the other items on the evening’s agenda: the remains of thirty-five bodies from the nineteenth century had recently been discovered in an area of the township cemetery earmarked for new graves. The fire department had answered fifty-eight EMT calls and twenty-four fire incidents over the past two weeks, and the chief wanted to buy a new $190,000 ambulance. There was a snow and ice removal conference to attend. Trustees Mucher and Spracklen were up for reelection, and two people in attendance that evening were throwing their names into the race. They attended the meeting proudly, a mild challenge to the incumbent trustees. But such was township business, and so went the trustees’ charge.
As 7:00 p.m. approached on September 9, 2015, the crowd filed in and took their seats. Everyone sat rigid and upright, poised to do battle. It would make for an interesting night. The evening was just part of the job of taking care of a small township in southwestern Ohio. It was a township trustee meeting, and one Mucher would shortly call to order.
Cuprins
In order to view this proof accurately, the Overprint Preview Option must be
set to Always in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your
Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding this option.
Job Name: -- /410070t
x · CONTENT S
CHAPTER 6
Cemetery Business, Part 1 – New Tech Finds Old Graves –
A Few Days in Miami Township’s “Most Visible Cemetery” 87
CHAPTER 7
Cemetery Business, Part 2 – An Account of the Township’s Murders 94
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE 3
An Overview of the Township’s Celebrity Density, and the
Rumor That Lee Harvey Oswald Was in the Area 112
CHAPTER 8
The Fiscal Officer’s Report 124
CHAPTER 9
The Zoning Inspector’s Report 134
CHAPTER 10
The Meeting Is Over 142
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE 4
“No other Township . . . can claim as many acres of Township land
protected from development” 144
CODA
Township Trustee Elections 150
Appendix A
Unintended Consequences: An Essay about Community 163
BY DEANN WARD
Appendix B
Interviews with Miami Township Fire and Rescue Fire Chief
Colin Altman and Lieutenant Nate Ayers 171
Appendix C
Old News from Miami Township and Selections from the
Yellow Springs News Police Blotter, August 2015–December 2016 180
Sources 193
About the Author 196
set to Always in Acrobat Professional or Adobe Reader. Please contact your
Customer Service Representative if you have questions about finding this option.
Job Name: -- /410070t
x · CONTENT S
CHAPTER 6
Cemetery Business, Part 1 – New Tech Finds Old Graves –
A Few Days in Miami Township’s “Most Visible Cemetery” 87
CHAPTER 7
Cemetery Business, Part 2 – An Account of the Township’s Murders 94
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE 3
An Overview of the Township’s Celebrity Density, and the
Rumor That Lee Harvey Oswald Was in the Area 112
CHAPTER 8
The Fiscal Officer’s Report 124
CHAPTER 9
The Zoning Inspector’s Report 134
CHAPTER 10
The Meeting Is Over 142
HISTORICAL INTERLUDE 4
“No other Township . . . can claim as many acres of Township land
protected from development” 144
CODA
Township Trustee Elections 150
Appendix A
Unintended Consequences: An Essay about Community 163
BY DEANN WARD
Appendix B
Interviews with Miami Township Fire and Rescue Fire Chief
Colin Altman and Lieutenant Nate Ayers 171
Appendix C
Old News from Miami Township and Selections from the
Yellow Springs News Police Blotter, August 2015–December 2016 180
Sources 193
About the Author 196
Descriere
A delightful account of small-town Ohio as told through the interactions of its citizens and civil servants.