REPORT CARD: Sindi Harrison - Ward 2
Making it Harder for Residents to Address Council Limits Other Points of View and Hurts Transparency
If you want to know what Sindi Harrison has been up to, you can read Jeremy McIntire’s report card, because the two work almost entirely in sync. You won’t see much daylight between them in their comments on legislation or votes, and that’s not good for the people of Stow.
During the two years that Harrison was Stow City Council president, McIntire was vice president. Now that McIntire is president of council, Harrison is vice president.
In addition to supporting the obstruction and micromanaging of the administration’s projects and agenda during the last two years, Harrison made a name for herself while president of council by rewriting city council rules. Those included efforts to make it harder for Stow residents to publicly address council, including:
Requiring anyone who wanted to make a public comment during City Council’s meetings had to notify the council clerk by email by noon the day of the meeting;
Cutting the public comment period at City Council meetings for residents to address council from 3 minutes to 2 minutes;
As council president, Harrison facilitated an effort to push out a long-time clerk of council. On June 10, 2021, Harrison introduced legislation to hire a new part-time Deputy Clerk of Council, in a process that was criticized by then City Councilwoman Christina Shaw as not being transparent because the hiring process did not include all council members. Shaw asked the then long-time, full-time Clerk of Council Lorree Villers if she had been asked by anyone on council if she needed additional help before the new position was posted.
See this exchange:
In what could only be described as an utter failure in resource management and planning, in December 2022, just 18 months after adding the 2nd, part-time position, council voted to cut Villers’ full-time position to a part-time position, citing that new technology had made the full-time position unnecessary. A contractor could have been hired to help with the transition to new technology, rather than adding a part-time position in 2021, which would have saved Villers' full-time job.
Ultimately, Mayor John Pribonic stepped in to preserve Villers' full-time status; offering her a part-time position within the administration to enable her to continue receiving full-time pay and benefits.
Harrison was a key figure in rejecting Mayor Pribonic’s board and commission appointments. She falsely claimed that a Stow resident’s voter registration disqualified him from serving on the Planning Commission – a point of view that was disputed by the Stow Law Dept. and ignored when the council voted on the mayor’s appointment. See story.
After the city and council hired a consultant to review and update the compensation of non-union employees based on what other nearby cities pay, Harrison decided to throw out the expert's recommendations and negotiate what she thought would be fair compensation. Read more about this debacle.
City council performs the business of the city just two days per month and it’s during that time that residents have an opportunity to address the council publicly. Harrison rewrote council rules to make it harder for residents to address council, meaning council’s efforts to “increase government transparency” applies to everyone except them.
Other activities to sideline long-time employees, conspire in the rejection of the mayor’s commission picks, and usurp the authority and expertise of those in the administration to negotiate contracts serve no one other than her own agenda to have an inappropriate and out-sized role in every aspect of the city's operations.
