July 7, 2011
Upper Arlington Schools
Levy will be postponed one more year By KATE HETRICK ThisWeek Community Newspapers
Upper Arlington school district administrators announced at a special meeting June 29 that they will put off asking voters to approve an operating levy in 2011, a decision that will stretch the November 2007 levy for a fifth year. “Since the early 1990s, we’ve been doing a levy every three years. We’re delaying a levy, but we’re still going to have to do a levy,” said district treasurer Andy Geistfeld. “We’ve done a lot of things to protect our fund balance and now we
can actually use that to protect the district and community for an additional year.” He said the district will finish fiscal year 2011 with revenue exceeding expenditures, due to a “group effort” to decrease spending. Cost-saving measures have included changing health care providers to better manage premiums; negotiating contracts with both teachers and classified employees; and maximizing purchasing power by participating in various consortia. UA is also one of only three districts in Ohio with an AAA bond rating from Standard & Poor’s, which can offer millions of dollars in savings over
the life of a bond, he said. “The district has really worked together with all the staff, all the schools, all the programs, with all the departments, to put us in the spot we are in today,” Geistfeld said. “This isn’t something that just happened overnight.” School board president Margie Pizzuti said she is confident that the district is making a financially prudent decision. “We deliberated over how much this would impact us in terms of a future millage amount,” she said. “While we don’t know what the millage amount will be next time we go on the ballot, we
believe it will be a reasonable, prudent amount.” Pizzuti said it feels very counterintuitive to stretch a three-year levy to a five-year levy during challenging economic times, but “it speaks to the uniqueness of our district and this culture of collaboration.” Geistfeld said he has forecast a $2.2-million reduction in state revenue in fiscal year 2012, which will begin to decrease the district’s fund balance. By 2015, he expects the district will face a $4.3-million deficit. See LEVY, page A3
Staton picked as final candidate for city manager By LIN RICE ThisWeek Community Newspapers
Spectators watch the Upper Arlington Fourth of July parade as it makes its way down Northwest Boulevard.
FOURTH OF J ULY Photos by Paul Vernon/ThisWeek
(Above) Ava Schellhammer, 1, of Grove City, watches the Upper Arlington Fourth of July parade. (At right) Jim and Jodie Davis ride in a 1909 Hupmobile during the Fourth of July parade.
Upper Arlington officials have settled on a “final candidate” to take over for retiring city manager Virginia Barney. Following a two-hour executive session of city council on June 29, council members announced that Theodore Staton has been singled out as the final candidate for the position. Staton is the current city manager of East Lansing, Mich., a position he has held since 1995. Staton also served as the assistant city manager of Dayton from 19891995, and before that, served as Dayton’s management and budget director. “There is a consensus of council for a lead candidate, and that would be Ted Staton,” council president Frank Ciotola said following the executive session. “We are going to have various council members follow up with details further along that avenue, and see if we can take that to fruition or not.” Forty-six candidates submitted their resumes for the city’s top administrative position since March, when the Upper Arlington city council voted to hire consultant Heather Renschler of Rocklin, Calif.-based Ralph Anderson and Associates to conduct the search. Included among the applicants were two internal candidates, assistant city manager Joe Valentino and Matthew Shad, deputy city manager for economic development. Ralph Anderson and Associates’ was retained at a cost of $19,000. Renschler advertised the position through the International City/County Managers Associ-
A closer look Theodore Staton is the current city manager of East Lansing, Mich., a position he has held since 1995. Staton also served as the assistant city manager of Dayton from 19891995, and before that, served as Dayton’s management and budget director.
ation and other municipal organizations. Council members interviewed six of seven semi-finalists in executive session at a June 9 special meeting. At that time, Staton had not yet applied for the position. Council member Ed Seidel said Staton’s decades of experience caught council members’ attention. “Ted has 32 years worth of experience in the public arena, and worked initially for 16 years in Dayton,” Seidel said. “He started right out of college, and worked his way up from there, so he has a good fundamental knowledge of Ohio municipal law. “He’s spent the last 16 years in East Lansing, which is a community relatively like Upper Arlington, except a little bit larger. He’s very well experienced, and has a good background.” Council members said that since Staton submitted his resume late in the city manager search, they will now begin the due diligence of checking into his background, along with deciding on the details of the contract Upper Arlington will offer him pending that check. See STATON, page A3
Mathematician, not a soldier, served country in WWII By ANDREW MILLER ThisWeek Community Newspapers
Upper Arlington resident John Bergmann may have been “just a mathematician” during World War II, but his contributions were as great as any soldier’s on the front line. “I was in college in Pennsylvania studying to be a CPA, and just two weeks before I graduated, in May of 1941, six months before the Pearl Harbor attack, I was approached by the U.S. Army,” said Bergmann, who is 89. “They told me that they had an opportunity for me but couldn’t tell me what it was. It was secret, and
John Bergmann
they didn’t have time to wait. They needed an answer immediately. “I was hesitant about it,” Bergmann recalled. “I was about to graduate and wanted to go and make a living after all of that school, but ultimately,
I agreed to go.” The army wanted him to become a code breaker, according to Bergmann. They scouted him based on his skills with Morse code from his 10 years in the Boy
Scouts and the mathematical skills that he’d honed in school. “One week after graduation, I was given a second lieutenant rank and shipped off to Fort Meade, Fla., along with 24 other guys who had similar backgrounds as me,” Bergmann said. “We were told that Churchill said to Roosevelt that (the U.S.) will be in this war soon and better have some good intelligence. But we didn’t, at that point.”
The men were housed in an old stone farmhouse at the far end of the reservation at Fort Meade, Bergmann said, with only a cook, driver and housekeeper, along with a guard. “There was rarely ever a visitor,” Bergmann said. “I was told to tell people I was an accountant for Washington. My commanding officer told us that if (we) ever say anything of value, (we’d) be shot or sent to Leavenworth. I know he wasn’t kidding.” According to Bergmann, the 25 members of the unit, code-named “Ultra,” traveled around the globe training radio operators to pick up enemy transmissions,
which then would be decoded. After only six weeks in service, Bergmann was sent to Burma to attempt to steal the everchanging code scrolls from a Japanese outpost. “There were 12 U.S. Army Rangers, three (local) guides and me,” Bergmann said. “We were supposed to take over this station of six to 10 Japanese soldiers that was being used as a transfer point in the mountains, to move Japanese soldiers through to take over Rangoon. I was only in six weeks at this point, and I said, ‘I’m no soldier, I’m a mathematician.’” See BERGMANN, page A2
Does your retire income plan really have a plan? Implementing a policy that determines a retiree’s annual spending amount is difficult, especially during periods of low returns and high volatility. Adopting an Endowment Spending Policy may be attractive alternative for retirees. For a comprehensive discussion of your alternatives call or e-mail us today.
614-888-5235 • Website: Gibsonretirementgroup.com Email: Gibsonretirementgroup@RaymondJames.com Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Member of NYSE/SIPC