Board again rejects Bethel rezoning referendum

Bethel Twp. residents who asked the Miami County Board of Elections to reconsider its Feb. 8 decision to reject a proposed referendum of a township rezoning decision said Wednesday they will review their options after the board voted 4-0 to deny the protests.

Petitions protesting the decision involving property at Dayton Brandt and Agenbroad roads rezoned from A-2 agriculture to R-1AAA were submitted by nine residents, including all three township trustees.

The elections board said Feb. 8 the township did not file the referendum paperwork to the elections office by the deadline set in the Ohio Revised Code. The board vote followed review of a legal opinion from county prosecutors.

The board said the petitioners submitted the petitions within 30 days of the trustees vote on the rezoning, but the petitions then were not filed within a twoweek time frame in the ORC. The petitions were filed two days later following an emergency trustees meeting and filing with the elections board the same day.

The trustees said they messed up by not filing the petitions by the deadline. Trustees Don Black, Julie

Reese and Beth van Haaren all spoke to the elections board during a more than two-hour formal protest hearing.

The board met in a closed executive session for nearly an hour before Chairman Dave Fisher announced the unanimous decision without further comment.

“We had a lot of discussions about it,” he said, adding that the decision was “hard” for him as a Bethel Twp. resident.

The bottom line was “deadlines are deadlines,” Fisher said.

The trustees all said they were disappointed by the board’s decision.

“I came in tonight thinking it was going to be a slam dunk in our favor. About halfway through I realized it was going to be opposite,” said Black, who made an extensive plea for the board to overturn its decision.

“I am very disappointed in tonight’s findings,” township resident and protester Michele Pfrogner said. “I will be pursuing other avenues.” Other resident indicated similar sentiments.

During the hearing, the board heard more than two hours of comments both by those who filed written protests and township residents who attended the hearing.

One township resident said he didn’t file a protest but agreed with others who did. “Whoever is to blame for this comedy of errors are depriving residents of their rights,” he said.

Black in his remarks said trustees were not told of the deadline by county prosecutors who he said were asked a question about another aspect of the petitions before the deadline. “We got the impression … that this was not a deal breaker,” he said.

Corey Columbo, an elections lawyer representing township resident Natalie Donahue, said the referendum petitions were valid in every other way and said the two weeks cited by the board “gets missed all the time. It is no big deal.”

He challenged the opinion provided the elections board by county prosecutors.

“We asked for a legal opinion. That is process we follow,” board member Jim Oda said. “We were looking at the legal opinion we had.”

Columbo said the courts have given direction through their opinions on what the code wording means. Those opinions have said “the two weeks is more or less aspirational,” he said. The important deadline, he said, is the code deadline of filing the petitions with the board of elections at least 90 days before an election.

Neither he nor his law partner, who has been practicing 40 years, can recall any petition being denied because of the two-week deadline, Columbo said.