Welcome to Democracy Day.

This is a public hearing that will examine the impact of political contributions of corporations, unions, PACs, and super PACs on the city, as well as other issues that arise from the Supreme Court's decisions to give corporations the rights of real persons.

I'll ask Mr.

Tony Salagi to come up and get us started.

Um everyone will have three to five minutes to speak, and we're excited to have everyone here today.

Appreciate members of City Council.

The first was the Powell memo, which was written in nineteen seventy-one by Lewis Powell.

The memo's title was Attack on the Free Enterprise System.

The memo was a rallying cry towards businesses and corporations to defend itself against social and progressive movements.

So where is this lettuce?

Our voting rights fear free and fair elections are threatened.

Political power and influence is now for sale to the highest bidder from anywhere anywhere on the earth.

Crony capitalism is peddled from the White House, where a walking corporation sits as commander in chief.

He's bombing Iran without a declaration of war.

There's no debate in Congress.

There's no public debate.

Other recent presidents have unofficially declared war as well, killed people without permission of Congress or the people.

Cynicism, rules in the corporate media.

We can no longer count on the media to deliver the news truthfully about events.

This is all about money and class warfare.

It's all about denying people the right to health care so that profit continues to go up the funnel to the oligarchs.

And of course, we get to trickle down.

It's all about not having an equated public because an educated public is a threat to the oligarchs and politicians.

It's about not having health care for all because that diminishes profits.

We had it, we had and have a civil rights movement and legislation that was passed, but yet minorities are well aware that the promises of the legislation and other initiatives have not come to fruition.

I began talking about the Powell memo and the fear of socialism.

Martin Luther King knew that we cannot have a civil rights, we cannot have civil rights and social justice unless we have economic justice, which means as a start, health care for all, free college education, along with a strong social safety internet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

And our clerk Julie Gibbons, she's gonna go get the sign is she.

Anyone who wants to speak and sign in?

I think I was second.

You were second.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh to the City Council and to those who sponsor Democracy Day.

Thank you, Tony, and all your supporters.

So each year, I usually at the end of my presentation, I mentioned that it's going to be Edward Drummond Libby Day celebration of his birth, April 17th.

This year it's April 18th at the Libby House.

It's a free open house from 11 to 3.

Um this is the tenth year we've celebrated it.

But the reason I mentioned this, it was begun to honor Mr.

Libby when the school was destroyed.

And that was the purpose.

And so when it was open in 2019 23, there were 25,000 people at the open house to honor Mr.

Libby.

Its absence has been made a dip deep cut in the South Side areas of low-income families, and the community still is recovering from that lot those losses.

My particular part, Southside uh lost Libby, Jones, and Newberry.

And this is they have been working all those areas to rebuild for the last 14 years.

I was very involved with the schools for success program back in the day when they were uh make making the changes with the budget and the aftermath when citizens questioned how the budget was being spent.

I spent four years attending their the Toledo Public School Performance Audit Panel as the only city who uh citizen who voluntarily uh went to that meeting.

So now the Toledo Public Schools have a sixty-eight million dollar deficit.

And the reason I'm speaking early versus usually the last person is I intend to go to Scott High School for the final uh community meeting from 5 to 6.30.

I think it's that important considering uh my experience of what happened before to see how this all plays out.

And those changes need to be decided by April 5 April 15th.

So it's just in a matter of weeks.

Unfortunately, no major effect has been made in those last two years when I mentioned the issue at TPS regarding the uh edge choice issue.

So I'm looking for at when we talk up here or when people have ideas, we need actionable steps of what to do next.

So I guess one of the messages that I'm trying to present is we need actionable steps from the things that we're saying.

So here, just in a short time on Friday, I was looking through the planning commission agenda on a certain issue that I was interested in, landmark properties, and there I saw 672 Lotus, a property in my homestead, just a few feet from my brother's house where we have lived.

The family has lived for over 70 years.

I was very disappointed that I had no idea of this meeting, which the planning commission is going to be holding this Thursday at 2 o'clock.

Now the sign was there at the uh end of my brother's street, but when I tried to find where the property went to the other sign, I had to finally go all the way under the bridge.

Uh you know, I won't go into details because I don't want to take up the time, but it was totally no other signs were in sight of the community to even know what was going on.

And of course, when you see one of those little signs, who knows what's going on?

And in the community wasn't in uh, you know, they didn't know what was going on because I went door to door and passed out petition, uh not petitions, but um flyers.

So my thing today is responsibility, especially to low-income um unheard neighbors.

Because in this situation, uh when I asked the planning commission, uh, was there a meeting with the um uh the person for the property, a historic South, they said it wasn't required.

There was it was not required.

So, in other words, there's just going to be a meeting uh Thursday at 2 o'clock, and hopefully people will show up and be able to uh express their opinions.

So I do support the 28th amendment.

It supports um disproportional influence from the wealthy, and I think we have to really look at these areas where people and I actually should use Tony's term uneducated, low-income areas who really don't know what's happening around their environment.

Okay, and as always, I ask that the elected leaders meet with our citizens on a regular basis monthly to meet in person so you can answer their questions or give information, and maybe in addition have a newsletter.

So I'm asking for actionable steps and doing the best that I can, so I'm off to Scott.

Oh, by the way, I'm leaving three copies of my statement handwritten since I didn't have time, but I also included a sheet that um I'm not familiar with statewide organizations that promote um public education, but I I included that list on the back.

And I'm not sure where to proceed with that, but that's where I'm going.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Joy?

I'm sorry to make you walk again.

Hi, I'm Peggy Daily Masternack at 3455 Drummond Road.

I'm in 43606.

My home is 475 feet from I-475 or my property line is.

Um, and I've never had the pleasure of speaking in front of City Council two days in a row, so this is really quite unique.

Um, don't plan anything for tomorrow, please.

Okay.

Um what's attached, I really want to call attention to, and that is we are having our largest meeting, our largest public forum that we've ever held next Wednesday, a week from tonight, starting at five, we will serve refreshments, and then our speaker is Dr.

Patrick Ryan, who is 25 years of studying pediatric health harms from pollutants.

Specific emphasis is on highway pollutants, and attached to the back of my remarks here are just a sampling of the studies that they have conducted on what the harms are from highways to children's health.

I also want to point out that ODOT themselves in their MSAT analysis, mobile source air toxics analysis specific to this project, says that highways have pollutants, um, nine different carcinogenic pollutants as identified by the EPA.

So the close proximity of thousands of residents, there's 15,000 people just in their project area, as well as school children, daily workers, etc.

Ryan will inform us on.

Makes it very important.

I hope to see every city council person there.

So my remarks today are these.

For six years, the I-475 Neighborhoods Coalition has consistently given you facts and data on why expanding I-475 is ossified 1950s thinking, has no justification in ODOT's own data, and is harmful to residents, school children, and daily workers nearby.

It is harmful to our health and harmful to our wealth.

Despite what corporate cheerleaders tell you, highways don't build community wealth either.

Most are bypasses for the corporate trucking industry, particularly shippers avoiding escalating turnpike tolls.

Highways drive populations deeper into the suburbs, and that's exactly what the highway construction.

I have the whole history.

When we put in the interstates, that's how all of people started moving out of Toledo.

So it drives population deeper into the suburbs, diminishing economic survival of core cities, and particularly when cities give corporate welfare incentives and provide golden shipping routes, leave residents with the burdens.

Highway expansion and usage are always at great taxpayer expense, with no property taxes collected on a highway.

Some argues that highways are self-sustaining, though through the Fed, I'm sorry, through the highway trust fund, and that corporations pay the majority in fuel taxes collected into that fund.

Except this is false.

Beginning in 2008, on the backs of taxpayers, Congress has bailed out the insolvent highway trust fund nine times.

Projections by 2035 show the funds balance in a whole triple the size is a whole triple the size of 20 uh 2008 shortfall, absent the nine bailouts already, trust fund projections in 2035 would be a negative $605 billion if they did hadn't bailed them out.

Of 50 states, Ohio ranks 34th in land area, but we are third in urban interstate lane miles.

Think about that.

We can't expand land area in Ohio, but we are third in interstate lane miles.

Texas is six times larger with 2.5 times the population, yet Texas exceeds Ohio by only 55% in urban lane miles.

This is all from the Federal Highway Administration.

When is enough highway enough?

Is this really the highest and best use of our land?

I-475's widening cost is now projected at over a quarter of a billion dollars, 66% of which is completely unnecessary.

In ODOT's last itemized tally for widening, there's a combination of at least 94 million for stupidly demolishing and rebuilding 11 bridges, and 37.5 million dollars for retaining walls as ODOT pushes deeper into the residential neighborhoods.

If ODOT merely resurfaced and upgraded on the current footprint, it is one-third the cost.

In ODOT's widening plan, Norfolk Southern Railroad, a private corporation that doesn't have a great reputation in Ohio, receives a replacement rail bridge funded by the taxpayers.

It is by far the costliest bridge now estimated at over $26 million, exceeding the SeaCorps Road Diamond Interchange by double, a needless taxpayer gift to a private corporation.

Please pass a city council resolution to oppose I-475 expansion boondoggle.

Stand with constituents who have been asking you to do this for at least three years now.

We are tired of carrying the corporate burden.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr.

Nestor.

Hello, thank you.

An old Ralph Nader quote says that half of democracy is just showing up, and I want to take time to thank all the council members who showed up tonight, Council members Driscoll, Kramer, Sarantu, McPherson, and President Williams.

I also want to thank all of the people who came to testify and speak today.

We support things like increasing wages, protecting jobs, protecting our immigrant community, supporting access and expanding into universal health care.

We support education and we support uh housing issues as well, because all of these are critical for what working people need to survive.

And the challenge we have is that at every step of the way when we attempt to engage with the political process, we're constantly blocked and stymied by the undue influence of corporate actors within our political system.

That goes directly back to the existence of corporate personhood, which has a long history dating back to uh Morrison R.

Waite, our own uh weight high school uh fame uh as a who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, cracked open the door, which was then expanded further, as many know in 2010 with the Citizens United decision.

And that makes it really difficult uh to keep people engaged in this process.

When you wonder why there's not more people in this room or why there's not more people in any room where government is, you have to wonder about the question of legitimacy.

I think many people, if we're honest, question the legitimacy of government entirely.

I hear it over and over again.

Why should I bother to vote?

Why should I show up when they don't show up for me?

Why do why should I participate in this process at all when every time the majority of us want universal health care, we can't get it?

When the majority of us want good paying jobs, we can't get it.

When we want a clean environment and safe, healthy conditions, we can't get it.

And every time we go to our elected officials at the last minute, like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football, it gets pulled away because some big insurance company, some big corporation came in and dropped a big load of money, and I'm sorry, that's just how it works.

Well, beyond the personal hurt and the direct impact that not getting those policies enacted has, we have to take into account something that's harder to demonstrate, which is the question of legitimacy.

I was one of the people that circulated petitions to create Democracy Day.

We collected over 10,000 signatures, we put it to a vote, as Tony mentioned earlier.

It was enacted actually on March 15, 2016, almost 10 years ago.

It's been 10 years.

I've been to every single Democracy Day since.

And um I just have a question for everybody here, which is do you feel like our country has gotten more democratic or less democratic in that time?

And I don't mean democratic like the party.

I mean democratic, like are the elected officials actually representing the will of the people, or are they representing the interests of their careers?

And I know a lot of times as local officials, you guys go, what does this have to do with me?

You know, we're trying to make sure that our roads are paved and that we got a balanced budget.

But the reality is you guys are the front line.

You're the ones that we work with day-to-day.

You're the ones that are the least impacted by this broad issue.

Because when you go on the state and federal level, the money is that much higher.

You guys actually can respond to us, and many times you do, and we thank you for those opportunities when you do it.

But uh you have to ask the question: are we getting better or worse?

And how is that impacting your ability to run the city, to get those streets paved, and to balance a budget when the federal government is chaos and constantly taking away money from your ability to do your job so that they can do insane unconstitutional things on the federal level.

I won't go too much longer.

I'll close on this quote from uh Howard Zinn, which says that the cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you can never know what justice is.

So please, thank you for all of your work.

Continue to serve the people of this community.

Please continue to support them and make difficult decisions in support of what they want, not necessarily what may be in the short-term interest of your careers.

Thank you very much.

And if we still have a democracy, I'll see you next year.

Thank you.

Ms.

Nancy.

Hi.

I'm Nancy Larson.

Um thank you to those who did come today.

I appreciate it.

I live in Sylvania 43560.

I was going to ask the same question that Sean asked.

It this is the 10th year anniversary, and I'm guessing that nobody in this room thinks that our state of democracy is better off now than it was 10 years ago.

Not going to go into the reasons for that, but I did want to share a little thing about my experience in a recent protest that happened that led to the arrest of six of us for blocking the um doorway into Senator where the building that Senator Eusted's office is.

Um most of you may or may not know about that, but we went to a jury trial that was um Wednesday last week.

And we fully expected that the law would be applied and we would be found guilty of disorderly conduct because we had not moved when the police told us to move and we were arrested.

It was a hung jury.

They deliberated for two hours.

And despite clear evidence in the police's body cam footage that we were blocking the doorway, and the police had asked us to move repeatedly, and we repeatedly politely refused.

Our point, my point in doing that, was to highlight the idea that in our democracy right now, the people that pay the cost for breaking the law are the people that do not have money.

We thought we would be having to pay court costs, court fines, and the worst punishment would have been 30 days in jail.

All of us went into the action convinced that that that was a likely thing we were going to have to pay for what we did, but we were trying to bring home the point that Senator Eusted, Marcy Captor, Senator Brown when he was there, all of these folks have broken five or six different laws in sending money repeatedly to Israel.

Clear federal and international laws that they broke with impunity with not two hours sitting in a courtroom waiting for a judgment to come back like we were.

So you could take a look at that verdict and say the rule of law has disappeared even for people at our level.

Cynically, I'm not looking at it that way.

I'm thinking that those nine people on that jury decided that they were not going to hold us accountable for our little harmless crime where nobody was hurt, and that they understood our point was to say when our elected leaders are literally killing hundreds of thousands of people with impunity and they are not being held accountable, we are not going to punish you.

I want a system where anybody who breaks the law is punished.

I'm okay with me having to have a consequence.

I'm not okay with anybody being able to use money, status, power to get out from underneath the consequences of their illegal behavior I have an ask for all of you because as we've seen democracy on a federal level disappear.

People are suggesting that local governments, state governments can still be the first line of defense, can be a line of defense where attorney generals in states in Ohio could bring people, ICE officers, for instance, who might come into our community and assault people, that our attorney general could charge them with the crimes of which they are guilty.

And I don't know exactly what that would look like for all of you.

I know there is the resolution about using resources in Sylvania, not using resources in Sylvania for ICE reinforcement.

That will be on the ballot in November for Sylvania people to vote on because Sylvania City Council didn't have the stomach to stand up as a group and say that was a good idea.

So we are going to exercise democracy, get 300 signatures on a petition and put that on the ballot for Sylvania people in November, and we will see whether the bulk of people in Sylvania want that or not.

But as we have seen time and time again, it doesn't matter what the citizens say.

Our elected officials turn a blind eye.

And I don't want any of you to be guilty of finding yourselves in the camp that does not listen to what is best for your citizens, what is morally right, and what is legally.

Thank you, Ms.

Larson.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

Mr.

Dennis.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, all council members who are here, and thank you for taking the time for Democracy Day.

My name is Dennis Slotnik, and have an address in Genoa, Ohio, 43430.

I've been active with Democracy Day for this past decade.

We are now celebrating our 10 years in which we declare that here in the City of Toledo, we recognize democracy.

We speak out our mind to council on this day, and we appreciate your ear and your attention.

It has become deeply sobering and very clear to Americans that our presidency has been bought by 229 million dollars by one person who paid to make sure that Pennsylvania went to the present administration.

There's an active organization called Public Citizen who's come to a very serious attention of the research and found that there are 279 cases of conflict of interest between government officials and their previous employment.

In other words, their previous employment would have been in the oil industry and chemical industry and in defense, and they are now in position of administration writing laws in favor of those it's called the revolving door.

This is because special money has worked its way insidiously throughout this present administration, and here's an example.

This comes right out of public citizens' website.

2,000 200 corporations, like I can name maybe 15 or 20, but that are 2,200 corporations, each on the average have spent $3 million in super PACs.

I'll say it again because this is a powerful, powerful statement.

2,200 corporations, each one has a super PAC of $313 million.

They're buying elections across this country.

They're buying elections at the state level, local level, federal.

There are 226 trade groups who are involved in these super PACs.

And for me to tell you that things are better than they were 10 years ago.

They're better for the 1%.

They're better for the top.

Here's an example.

Twenty-five individuals spent 1.4 billion dollars.

Twenty-five people.

There's not 25 people here.

Well, there's about 25 all of us.

Imagine the group of us in 10 years spending 1.4 billion dollars on political campaigns, just 25 of the top most wealthy influential people.

This is what we have in the United States of America today.

Right now, public citizen is taking 33 court cases against this administration for abuse of power, including the abuse of public funding.

And can at the rate of 75 million dollars in this past presidential campaign.

The profits in 2025 for fossil fuel industry are now at 68% increase over the previous year.

This is profits in oil and gas companies.

They are directly benefiting from this administration's policies of opening up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for gas and oil, bypassing environmental protections, and a rapid rate of the increase of drilling permits.

So the money that is spent in campaigns is directly affecting their pocketbooks as measurable by a 68% increase in their profits.

I'm not going to do uh the sadness anymore.

There's something very positive that is happening.

Despite our uptick in the United States of fossil fuel use, the use of solar and wind globally.

We're talking about worldwide now, is exceeding the demand for electricity.

And it is far steeper, a curve upward in solar and wind than fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels worldwide is essentially stabilized and a little less.

Different picture in the United States.

But what is encouraging is that the Mr.

Dennis, you have five minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I have Mr.

Eric.

Good evening.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk to you.

And also thank you for the committee of the whole hearing you held last night.

I really appreciated that.

I really appreciated your openness and your willingness to listen to people.

I want to talk about a different issue, and it's one that is not hit Toledo as hard as some of our surrounding communities.

Can you lift the mic up just a little bit?

It can move.

There you go.

Is that better?

Oh, yeah.

And that issue is the process for approving large data center projects.

Substantively, whether or not you agree with the need for the large data centers, the process, at least in Ohio, Michigan, and Colorado, the three states where I've worked with people on, is broken.

It's broken by specific issues, and I'd like you to consider those, have your staff consider it, maybe adopt ordinances of their staff, if your law department can figure out a way to address three specific problems.

The first is the anonymous acquisition of land for large projects that will have a large impact on the community.

So the community members don't see that it's Google or Meta or Alphabet buying the land to create a large data center.

Second issue is the anonymous is the anonymity of those applications.

A lot of the applications I've seen people fighting are submitted in the names of limited liability companies that don't have anything in their name to do with the company that will ultimately sponsor or is funding the project.

Lawyers can get around that fairly easily, but we need to have a process where those petitions don't get approved unless the public has adequate notice of who is developing the center, who will be operating it.

The third issue, and this is one that is a problem in Ohio law, but it's one that cities should be looking at, is that a lot of these data centers have dedicated natural gas plants attached to them that don't go through the normal permitting process for a national for a natural gas process.

I would love to say there's an easy answer.

I suspect the answer for that is in Columbus.

But have your staff think about it and have Planning Commission, City Council to the extent you get involved with approving any data center in Toledo city boundaries.

Let's see what we can do to make sure there aren't power plants being put into the site that would not be approved if they weren't connected with a private data center development.

That's all I have to say.

I glad you take the opportunity to listen.

Hope you'll have your staff consider what I'm saying and look at it.

It's not as serious an issue as what we've gotten from a couple of these people, but it's going to be a serious issue.

Thank you.

Mr.

Robert, I think it's Worthington.

Hello, uh, had the opportunity to meet some of you.

Uh just got over a cold.

Good now, but uh, if you hear it, that's why.

Uh first I want to thank you all for being here.

Mayor just showed up.

Good.

Um citizens pass this effort to have Democracy Day in Toledo.

The mayor and council are supposed to hold a public hearing.

I would say that this is Toledo's Citizens' Day, and I wish it were held to be that important as Toledo's Citizens' Day.

Um the rain didn't help today.

We'll we'll chalk it up to the rain.

Um, not just here either, but in every community, and Toledo is not the only community that has started Democracy Day with this move to amend effort.

I would say that money is the root reason of the fighting in this country.

We have the haves and we have the have nots, but it's way worse than that because so many of us probably in this room are the have nots, and we're still fighting with each other.

I've felt the effects of different levels of wealth.

It's real, it's real on the neighborhood level, it's real on the city level, and it affects jobs, food, education, health care, mental health, and different levels of wealth affects crime in so many ways.

But people with money know this.

They know that it affects people's lives.

They use it to influence politics, they use it to influence everyday lives.

They use it to exploit fear and anger in people who work their lives away for very little, and they use their money to create commercials and uh walking commercials like some in office, and they create politicians into commercials personified.

They say what the rich want them to say, because if not, they are threatened that they'll get primaried with money and they'll lose their seat, their power, their job, their family, who knows.

And people hear the things that these people funded by money say, and they sound real on the surface, and the word is always it's just common sense.

But it's easy to tell a lie that falls apart when you apply critical thought and free thinking.

But people are too tired from working their lives away.

Some are too lazy.

Again, why should I vote?

That's always what we hear.

We know why you should vote.

Today's the reason.

But whatever the reason, they're being lied to and they're falling for it.

People on both sides, I feel used to have values.

I respected people on both sides of the aisle growing up.

Many of those people have sold those values, some on both sides.

Uh one day some say my morals would never support this.

But when that proves to be a winner, well, we're gonna support that now.

I would just ask that you all help Toledo to be a leader in this country.

Let Toledo be the example that you can still have hope in people, that you can choose to help educate people rather than do the lazy thing, which is just condemn them for being ignorant or undereducated.

More anger and yelling is not the answer.

Talking it out to get to common ground is the answer because our country is not split 50-50.

There's more common ground on so many issues, but we're trained, trained to focus on only a handful of issues and just be mad at each other about those.

I use the word ignorant, not with a charge behind it, but literally that they don't know it yet.

And I use undereducated because there's always a chance to educate others if you give them a minute of your time.

Money, as we've heard from everyone, both specific problems and nationwide problems, is a problem.

We can't solve it nationwide by ourselves as Toledo, but we can each play a part in solving the interpersonal problem that money has created in everybody's minds and everyday lives.

Just end with don't give up, don't give up on people, even if you disagree sometimes.

Don't give up on democracy because disagreement is just a small part of it.

And eventually you get to the truth by talking to each other, and we get to a brighter future.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

That is the end of the list here, but I know that there's a few people that haven't had yet a chance to speak, and I would love if you want to to open it up to those who haven't spoken.

All right.

All right.

I think that's it, and we definitely appreciate you guys coming for Democracy Day.

This was amazing to hear the voices from the community.

Uh this is the second day we had uh a committee hearing or a com forum to let the public speak, and I hope that you know that this Toledo City Council has been listening to the community.

We appreciate you, and with that being it, this meeting is adjourned.