Letter to the Editor

To the Editor:

Hinckley’s two new trustees, Monique Ascherl and Jack Swedyk, are blinded by small lobby trying to protect Hinckley – from what?

Highland School Board requested the old elementary school property change from R-1 to B-2. Trustee Augustine was the onlytrustee to do her job. She solicited the opinions of a diverse section of the township, compiling 221 votes: 158 residents for the change to business and 63 residents against the change to business.

Swedyk reported no such polling and Ascherl reported only one person favored changing to B-2. This happens when your personal lobby controls your decisions.

Ascherl aligned herself with this lobby. She doesn’t represent me nor does she represent the general population.

The job of a township trustee is non-partisan. Trustees represent everyone, not the loud minority wishing to control land rights of land they don’t own. Think future expensive legal challenges. Trustee decisions have impact that will last 50 years-plus.

Trustees voted 2-1. Augustine voted for change in line with the broad community, Highland School Board and Medina County Planning Commission. Ascherl and Swedyk voted to keep the property residential against the recommendation of many professional planners.

The school board may now sell the property for significantly less money as residential property; let it decay for years at the expense of school revenue or, by letting it remain residential, an unthinkable but very real scenario not discussed by the close-mindedness of our new trustees may play out. This is worse than a dollar store.

Educate yourselves please.

Jim Burns, former trustee

216 Lakecrest Blvd. ∞