Sheffield Lake Council member was out of line

Sheffield Lake City Councilman Jon Morrow should have left the kids out of his beef with Mayor Rocky Radeff. Instead, he posted to his personal Facebook page the names and graduating classes of around 80 students who completed a community survey back in 2024. The point of doing so, Morrow told our reporter Garrett Looker on Wednesday, was to expose what he called "unethical fraud." The alleged "fraud" was allowing the then-middle-school students to complete the survey, which asked questions about parks and recreation, emergency services, infrastructure and economic development. Some of the kids who took part got extra credit in a class for completing the survey. The city received more than 460 responses to the survey, which was used for city planning and other purposes. Aside from the students, the other respondents presumably were adults or otherwise met Morrow's standards for who should be allowed to participate in discussions about the future of Sheffield Lake. (Morrow, who was elected to represent the 1st Ward last year, only posted the names of the students.) Although Morrow sure seemed like he would prefer kids to keep their opinions to themselves, in his conversation with Looker he did allow that he would have found acceptable a separate survey for kids. "Not to a community survey that is, for, primarily for working adults because we're the taxpayers," Morrow said. "And it is the taxpayers that should make those decisions." Given Morrow's reaction to kids participating in the larger community survey, we do question whether he would have paid much mind to a survey for youngsters. We see no problem with allowing kids to weigh in on important issues facing their community through a survey. It's not like they're voting on raising taxes or for political candidates. Besides, even if the students who participated didn't have jobs at the time of the survey, sooner or later, they will get jobs and become taxpayers. There's also something to be said for encouraging kids to become civically engaged. Morrow's decision to post the names understandably drew backlash from the parents of the kids named by him. Those parents turned out in force at Tuesday's Council meeting to express their anger at Morrow, with some pointing out that he had shared information that criminals could use to target their kids. At least one parent has promised to try to get Morrow removed from Council. The parents also were upset with the city releasing the names of their kids to Morrow, even though the information was public record. Morrow was anything but contrite, insisting that he was within his rights. "I did nothing against the law," Morrow told Looker in an interview Wednesday. "I did nothing unethical. I really had a hard time doing this because it was children, but I felt that if I did not make this — did not cause a stir or commotion — that this would just be wiped under the rug like everything else that the mayor has done, which has been very unethical." Even if posting the names didn't violate the law or state ethics rules, it certainly violated common decency. It also was reckless. Yes, as Morrow pointed out Tuesday, anyone, including criminals, could have requested the information he posted. They didn't. He did. Beyond that, Morrow could have raised his concerns about the survey by simply stating the number of kids who responded. It also appeared that some of the kids who responded lived in Sheffield. The Sheffield-Sheffield Lake Schools serves both communities. Perhaps the city should have done a better job of keeping track of who was responding to the survey, but that still doesn't justify Morrow posting the names of a bunch of kids. Morrow has since taken the post down, although he insisted that it wasn't because he did anything wrong. "I had a parent that had called me, talked to me rationally," Morrow said. "And I told her, I said 'OK, I will take it down.'" Uh-huh. Anyway, this whole dust-up appears to be part of a larger pattern of clashes between Morrow and Radeff. At one point Tuesday, a parent accused Morrow of posting the kids' names for political purposes. "This was political," the parent said, gesturing at Radeff. "You were using it to target him." "No, I wasn't," Morrow replied. We find that hard to believe.