The ditch Dictator arrives in Lucas County.
2021: “Ditch Petition” takes over our rivers, disregarding our past.
After everything that Ned Skeldon did 40-50 years ago to set into motion the clean-up our waterways, today we are facing a “watershed” takeover by the Lucas County engineer, Mike Pniewski, who claims the “watershed” needs a “major cleaning” because it has not been maintained for “50 – 70 years.” That’s exactly what he told us at the “View” on July 15, and to Channel 13 on August 19 to justify his two ditch petitions called the Tenmile Creek Watershed Ditch Petition and the Swan Creek Watershed Ditch Petition.
Using the ditch petition process intended for rural and unincorporated county areas, he’s manipulating it to cover cities, too. It takes only two people to bring on a ditch petition, and only the three county commissioners to vote on it (in this case, six, including Fulton County) for it to become a reality. How easy is that, for government to tax and control property in large swaths of a so-called “watershed” area?
Need I mention that our tax money already pays for work done to our rivers? If I seem hard on Mike Pniewski by calling him a ditch dictator, it is because I’m disgusted that these flawed petitions have even seen the light of day. Mike Pniewski wrote them, then had to shop them around to get two people to sign them, and now he is forcing them through the system, all during a pandemic, while Lucas County residents are suffering. It’s a shameful power and money grab. It’s thoughtless and cruel. He doesn’t care.
a river is not a ditch
The premise of the petitions is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Mike Pniewski is attempting to control all work done to the “watershed” by calling the Ottawa River and Swan Creek “ditches.” Really, our rivers are ditches? Because this Lucas County engineer tells us so at the View? That’s not how the dictionary and Wikipedia define rivers and ditches. Somehow, in Pniewski’s mind, calling rivers ditches justifies the sweeping area he’s out to cover with these ill-conceived ditch petitions. Apparently he is too lazy to apply for grants for grant-worthy projects, so his bright idea is to tax us twice. He wants our city money to provide his department with a steady stream of income for his county ditch projects, by tying the rivers into his scheme, taking charge of the “watershed,” no questions asked, with no oversight of the ecologists, in defiance of the way it has worked since Ned Skeldon’s time, as well as being a complete misuse of the petition process.
He plans to tax 117,554 Lucas County property owners and do whatever “improvement” he wants. If you want to work on the river on your own property (even if you are a park system, a city, a university, or the Boy Scouts), you will have to get Lucas County’s permission – a permit! These ditch petitions will give his department and the Lucas County government control of every improvement made on the waterways of these two “watersheds” in Lucas County. They will tax us forever, whatever amount they want. The petitions have no limit of power or scope!
And he’s not kidding!
Channel 13 aired an interview with Mike Pniewski on August 19, 2021 reporting that the river needs a deep cleaning, and since Pniewski’s in charge of drainage, he’s going to tax all the property owners in the 173 square mile 10-mile creek watershed. Since so much of the river is in good condition, thanks to the myriad of independent restoration projects paid for by grants resulting from Ned Skeldon’s initiatives, he was hard-pressed to show an example. But, by flying a drone over private property on the river, Mike Pniewski found something and sent the Channel 13 news team in their van to videotape the private property “buried deep behind Corey Rd. in Sylvania township.” Perhaps he assumed that no one would think to ask the people living close by, a few houses up the river, if they have flooding or draining problems due to the tree that had fallen on the floodplain near the river. But I asked one such neighbor, who answered with an emphatic NO – no flooding or drainage problems at all.
Mike Pniewski couldn’t find a better example than the one he picked out from this very elite neighborhood – just about the only suburban or urban river property for which the river isn’t already cared for by parks, universities, cities, Boy Scouts, agencies, commissions, geologists, grant money and public funds.
Ironic that Mr. Pniewski can take time off from his important job – and we pay him a whole lot more than we pay our three county commissioners — to appear on MSNBC in a story about political gerrymandering. This is what he said: “The radical few have taken over the ability to make policy that impacts all of us.” Doesn’t he know it! Back in the Seventies, we would say, he’s projecting! Better put would be, “A few of us radicals are taking over the ability to make policy that impacts all of you!!”
Very ambitious, this new Lucas County engineer, but does Mike Pniewski ever do any work for the Lucas County Engineering Department, as an official elected by the good people of Lucas County (since he was the only choice on the ballot)? It’s unusual that such a highly paid and important county department head like Mike Pniewski can take time off of his work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to teach 14 classroom hours of freshman-level civil engineering classes at the University of Toledo. Doesn’t he hold a high-office position in Lucas County – one needing his FULL attention, and shouldn’t he have the good sense not be taking on 14 hours of freshmen classes? I guess not! That’s our Mike “hands off the wheel” Pniewski. Very frightening that he’s trying to make all of these changes and grow his department, while not really being there. He must think he’s Superman. But he’s not. His “Rate My Professor” score is terrible. 9 out of 15 gave him the lowest score possible. Check out these comments:
“He is the least helpful professor.” “Terrible” “Awful.” “Extremely vague and unhelpful. He refuses to answer questions and gets upset if you have any.” “Avoid if you can.” “This guy was honestly the worst professor I have ever had. Goes incredibly fast and incredibly boring. You won’t even have another option for a professor, so best of luck, you’ll hate it.” “Probably the laziest professor you could imagine.” “He refuses to actually teach his students and half the time he doesn’t even show up for class.”
Check out this interesting investigation into Mike Pniewski’s teaching schedule reported by Tom Troy in The Blade on September 10, 2021:
County engineer’s teaching schedule cuts into work time
Here is some great investigative journalism on the topic. The reporter interviewed the University, the Ohio state auditor, the former Lucas County engineer Keith Earley, Commissioner Pete Gerken, and Mike Pniewski himself. It came out that Pniewski teaches 74 students in four separate classes over four different days. “Mr. Pniewski said a graduate teaching assistant handles most of the lab instruction as well as grading student work.” Isn’t that comforting? And how about the following quote of Pniewski’s, in light of the comments by his unhappy students on “Rate My Professors,” as if students exist to make him a better engineer, instead of the idea that his expertise would make them better students –
“I do enjoy their questions. The way they see the world, the way they learn, makes me a better engineer,” Pniewski told The Blade.
Here’s the nitty gritty on Pniewski’s head county engineer position –
The Lucas County engineer’s salary is $143,910, second highest of the 11 county-wide elected officials after the coroner’s $219,862, according to the Lucas County auditor’s office. He oversees an agency with a core budget of $18 million and just over 60 employees that manages more than 300 miles of roads, 400 bridges and culverts, and 210 miles of storm drains in the county’s unincorporated areas.
And, it is reported that Commissioner Pete Gerken doesn’t mind that he’s the instructor on record for 14 classroom hours a week. Perhaps that is because Mike Pniewski does what Commissioner Gerken wants him to do, like waltz through the property rights and money grab “watershed” ditch petitions.
Commissioner Gerken claims Pniewski is “extremely responsive to the community.” I don’t see how, when Pniewski tried to fly these ditch petitions under the radar without any public discussion and with no information sent to the press, while hitting an unprecedented 117,554 Lucas County property owners with these surprise ditch petitions, sending out a mere postcard that some mistook for junk mail, not even a proper notice in a letter in an envelope marked “Legal Notice” as specified by the Ohio Code on ditch petitions.
How can Pniewski be the least bit “responsive to the community” when he uses a petition process meant for small rural ditch projects, for what seems to be a great political experiment, or a joke, counting on how gullible he thinks we are, to impose an unlimited tax on us while gaining control of our property rights, by lying to us about how our rivers (he calls ditches) haven’t been taken care of for “50 – 70 years,” so therefore the county must take charge of cleaning our rivers, the same rivers that 50 years ago, Ned Skeldon, the father of Commissioner President Tina Skeldon Wozniak, cleaned up by setting up a tradition of grants funding projects, a tradition which has grown into countless collaborations of agencies, groups, volunteers, and experts, as Dr. Patrick Lawrence, geography professor at University of Toledo, pointed out to The Blade in 2018, see link above.
You’d think that when we elected Pniewski to run the county engineering department, that he would be using his full attention at the job – isn’t that the covenant – not that he’d play political and legal games with us, as if the law says he really only has to show up for work five days out of 30 days – or is it five days out of 90 days? – before illegality sets in to kick him out. Have we really sunk so low? It’s like our elected officials are thumbing their noses at us! Has it really come down to what’s legal – instead of what’s common sense?
Hey Pniewski, Ask not what your county can do for you, but what you can do for your county.
What would Ned Skeldon and Betty Mauk think about the Lucas County government’s opportunistic takeover of the “watershed,” especially with Mike “hands off the wheel” Pniewski in charge?
Mike Pniewski should drop this petition, try working at the job of being head county engineer, and hire someone in his department to apply for real grants. Better yet, Mr. Pniewski and his engineering department should leave such fragile restoration work of our rivers to scientists and ecologists, and stick to fixing the roads.
More about the 10-mile creek watershed ditch petition:
https://artistsoftoledo.com/10-mile-creek-ripoff/
https://artistsoftoledo.com/blank-check/
https://artistsoftoledo.com/who-owns-10-mile-creek/