Claims against Spaetzel don't justify removal

There should be a high bar for removing a public official from office outside an election. It's a bar we don't believe activist lawyer Gerald Phillips has cleared in his complaint, filed Monday in Lorain County Probate Court, seeking the removal of Avon Lake Mayor Mark Spaetzel. Phillips, who is running for an at-large seat on Avon Lake City Council, is relying on a little-used portion of the Ohio Revised Code that allows public officials to be removed, for, among other things, "misfeasance or malfeasance in office." Those terms, used to describe wrongdoing by a public official, can be subjective, but to reach the point where a duly elected mayor is removed there should be more than personal or policy disagreements, which appear to us to be all Phillips has. Phillips devoted a substantial amount of his complaint to allegations that Spaetzel had him ticketed for allegedly urinating in the bushes near the Avon Lake Regional Water building while a meeting was taking place inside on Nov. 19. Spaetzel denied to our reporter Richard Perrins that he was involved in the case, which was dismissed this month after Phillips raised issues with how he was ticketed. The case was therefore resolved in Phillips' favor, even if it was dismissed in such a way that he could be cited again. "He's using that disorderly charge … to target me and discredit me," Phillips said. Except that if there are problems with the ticket, the police and courts should sort them out. Besides, it's not unheard of for people to be cited for urinating in public if police believe there's evidence to back it up. Phillips also accused Spaetzel of various misdeeds for his handling of two implosions, on July 31 and Dec. 19, at the former power plant on Lake Road. Phillips contended that Spaetzel should have stopped the implosions in part over environmental concerns, concerns with which we sympathize. Phillips also argued that the implosions violated the city's noise ordinances because they took place too early in the morning. He wrote that the city should have cited Avon Lake Environmental Redevelopment Group, the company redeveloping the old plant. We, too, had our complaints about the implosions, including the late notice given to residents alerting them to the implosions' timing. City officials have maintained that they had little legal recourse to halt the implosions, and that their requests for delays weren't heeded. (Indeed, we previously urged the city to follow Phillips' advice and impose a brief moratorium on implosions so rules could be put in place on how future demolitions should be handled.) Spaetzel said Monday that had the city taken legal steps to halt the implosions, it would have been liable for any damages that resulted from delaying the detonation of charges that had already been set up and primed. "I can't put the city taxpayers in jeopardy like that," the mayor said, which seems like a reasonable explanation. Phillips is welcome to take issue with how the city handled the implosions, but we don't believe those issues warrant Spaetzel's removal. Phillips also complained that the city had adopted a policy of locking the doors at City Hall and requiring residents with an appointment with a city official to buzz to be let inside. He claimed those policies were implemented because he and one of his allies, William Zimmerman, had requested public records. However, Spaetzel said the city had implemented those procedures during the pandemic. Even if that weren't the case, city officials are within their rights to establish reasonable security protocols. Another of Phillips' complaints centered on allegations that he wasn't given meeting minutes for the city's Brownfield Committee, which was part of the Avon Lake Community Improvement Corp. and allegedly wasn't holding open meetings. Phillips sued Spaetzel, who allegedly attended the meetings, and others over the dispute in the Ohio Supreme Court last year. The city's lawyers responded that the committee ceased to exist because its members resigned after Phillips sued them. They also argued that the committee wasn't required to keep meeting minutes under the city's charter. Even if that were the case, in the interest of transparency, the board should have held open meetings and kept meeting minutes. That said, it's a dispute that the state Supreme Court will resolve, and we don't believe it to be grounds for Spaetzel's removal. Then there was Phillips' complaint that Spaetzel had interfered with the First Amendment rights of himself and Zimmerman when the mayor criticized the pair during a Jan. 20 "Mayor's Minute," a video posted on the city's Facebook page. Spaetzel said that Phillips and Zimmerman had filed more than 100 public records requests in 2024, and that a city clerk had spent 103 hours responding to their requests. He also said the pair had made "false and baseless" allegations reflecting an "open disdain and disrespect" for Council and the administration. Phillips wrote in his complaint that Spaetzel's criticism of him and Zimmerman was an attempt to silence them. We disagree. Phillips and Zimmerman have every right to criticize government officials, but that doesn't make them immune to criticism from those same officials. We can't imagine that if Phillips gets elected, he would sit silently while someone accused him of wrongdoing. As with Phillips' other allegations, we don't believe his complaints about being criticized justify removing the mayor. Whether Phillips gets the opportunity to serve on Council is up to voters. Likewise, voters who don't approve of Spaetzel's job performance will get their chance to remove him if he runs for reelection in two years.