NELSONVILLE, Ohio — After a Nelsonville City Council special meeting ended without time for public comment, verbal disagreements and heckling broke out between council members and Nelsonville residents.
An audience of over 20 attendees included individuals who were prepared to speak about the council’s recent repeal of Issue 23 via Ordinance 54-25.
Both the agenda and announcement for the Aug. 25 special meeting did not list public comment as an official item on the agenda, although the bottom of the announcement, sent out on Aug. 22, said “Citizens’ comments may be made in person.”
Prior to any Nelsonville council meeting, a press release with items on the agenda is sent out by email from Nelsonville Public Information Officer Dan Pfeiffer and then posted to the city’s information blog.
An amended special meeting announcement was posted a day after the meeting, on Aug. 26, and did not include any mention of public comment.
Issue 23, a successful citizen initiative that was passed by 70% of voters in November 2024, abolished the Nelsonville City Charter and mandated creation of a new statutory government by Jan. 1, 2026.
Nelsonville City Council repealed Issue 23 on Aug. 11, and the city has since filed a case in the Ohio Supreme Court asking to remove already approved statutory-based offices from the ballot in the upcoming general election.
Public comment confusion
The only official items on the agenda, besides a call to order and adjournment, were an executive session, city attorney remarks and city council discussion.
“I apologize, but public comment was not on the agenda. That’s it. We’re not amending the agenda,” acting Council President Cory Taylor told the Independent. “Once we’re at the [special] meeting, we were not allowed to amend [the agenda].”
The Independent was unable to verify the specific legal code to support Taylor’s statement.
Council member Nic Joseph-Saul told the Independent that 15 minutes after Taylor emailed Pfeiffer the original purpose of the meeting on Friday, Aug. 22, she sent an email in response requesting that public comment be listed as an official item on the agenda.
Joseph-Saul did not receive a response to that request because, according to Taylor, he “had already sent the notice out, so it didn’t get changed after that.”
However, the council met for a separate special meeting Aug. 20, during which citizens were allowed to make comments, even though public comment was not an official item on the agenda.
During the Aug. 20 meeting, Taylor said, “It was not on the agenda, but we had it on the notice that we provided that we were going to take citizen’s comments. So if there are any citizen’s comments we will allow that at this point.”
Council discussion
After the council reconvened from executive session, Nelsonville Law Director Jonathan Robe did not have an update, so the council moved on to discuss the repeal of Issue 23.
Council members Johnathan Flowers and Joseph-Saul were the only two council members who contributed to the discussion.
Flowers vowed to continue to oppose any future city council legislation that would override Issue 23.
“I will continually support citizens’ rights by voting no on every attempt to take the right away from the citizens of Nelsonville,” Flowers said.
Joseph-Saul spent time addressing the audience with reasons on why she voted to repeal Issue 23, stating, “I believe that it was in the best interest not only for our city, but the precedent we would be setting for the state to wipe the slate clean and start over by implementing civic education so that we as a community could educate ourselves on how to lawfully bring about the reforms we all want to see.”
After council discussion, Taylor made a motion to adjourn and received pushback from the audience for not having public comment.
“We have a motion and a second on the floor. We can adjourn. And if anybody wants to stick around, they’re more than welcome to take comments,” Taylor said in response.
Taylor’s comment was met with heckling from the audience.
The council’s decision to adjourn was not unanimous, with Flowers and Joseph-Saul voting no.
As some council members began to leave the chambers, tensions began to rise between the council and members of the audience.
Former council member Greg Smith, a proponent of Issue 23, called Taylor a “horeshit tyrant” and told the council “you won’t win the [Ohio] Supreme Court case.”
Another member of the audience said, “And you wonder why people don’t care.”
As council member Opha Lawson was exiting the council chambers, one citizen asked if he was going to stick around.
Lawson responded by saying, “Partner, no, I don’t want to hear the bullshit.”
Council members Cameron Peck, Flowers and Joseph-Saul stayed with Robe to listen to the audience while council members Wesley Henderson, Lawson and Taylor left, as did City Clerk of Council Susan Harmony.
Arguments mostly continued between Smith and Peck, with the two trading verbal jabs at one another.
Smith told Peck to “go do some meth” and Peck called him “dumb.”
Smith apologized quickly after Joseph-Saul said, “Let’s not do that.”
“I’m sorry, I really shouldn’t have done that,” Smith said. He later offered to shake hands with Peck, and Peck declined.
Peck has previously been open about his sobriety, and his recovery from substance use disorder. He said to Smith, “Here’s the thing is, I need to be honest. You couldn’t make me feel bad about it. I paid my piece. There’s nothing that you could do to me the court already [hasn’t].”
Tensions settled after Robe acted as mediator between the council and the audience, calling for silence to allow citizens to speak.
Unofficial public comment
Sue Powell, former Nelsonville city auditor, took the stand and spoke for several minutes, engaging in conversations with both Peck and Joseph-Saul.
“Even though I’m a charter person — and I still am — you’ve got to represent the people, and the people spoke,” Powell said. “I don’t think what you’re doing is — I shouldn’t say legal, because I’m not an attorney — but I don’t think it’s accurate.”
The conversation remained cordial among Peck, Joseph-Saul and Powell, but the council members disagreed with her reasoning, emphasizing the difficulty of transitioning from a charter government to statutory-based government.
Smith echoed similar ideas to Powell and shared his interpretations of the Ohio Revised Code sections under Chapter 705 and how they should be applied toward transitioning to a statutory-based government.
Verbal disagreements reignited after Smith brought up a prior incident that occurred between him and Peck outside Peck’s residence, where Smith said he was “trying to help [Peck] out,” by directly talking to him about the ORC sections under Chapter 705.
Peck then questioned Smith, asking, “When you’re trying to help people, do you call them first or sneak up on them?”
An audience member then asked Peck to be more respectful toward Smith. He responded, saying, “I don’t have to respect him.”
Smith then apologized again for the comments he had made earlier to Peck and continued speaking in support of a statutory-based government.
“I would just like to say I think we can all sit down and we can make the statutory government work again. I apologize for getting angry, but I think that everything has been overstated about the problems,” Smith said.
Smith ended by saying that if he and Powell had been on the ad-hoc committee, the advisory commission that oversees the city’s implementation of Issue 23, they “could’ve dealt with a lot of the things, what we consider to be wrong or misrepresentation that got put out there.”
A few other citizens spoke, including John Meeks, who took the stand and questioned if the council had intentionally taken public comment off the agenda.
“[Taylor] don’t care what anybody wants to say. Nobody here cares what citizens want to say,” he said.
Meeks also asked when the council will “stop spending our tax dollars to fight an issue that … 860 residents voted for.”
Meeks ended his comments by commending Joseph-Saul for engaging in conversation with the audience even when she had disagreed with them, which garnered applause.
The most unexpected appearance of the night was former state Rep. Jay Edwards, who recently announced his candidacy for Ohio Treasurer.
Edwards, who is from Nelsonville, said he came to the meeting to speak about how the council should be about fixing roads and attracting business, not fighting with one another.
Robe later told the Independent that when the council adjourned without public comment, Edwards texted him and said, “Wow, I can’t believe they would do that.”
“I texted him back. I said, ‘I think you should still come here,’” Robe said.
Edwards could not be reached in time for publication.
Edwards said he doesn’t have a position on Issue 23, and it doesn’t matter whether the city has a mayor or not. “The only change that’s going to come to Nelsonville is the type and quality of people that we get to run for council, and that’s going to run the city,” he said.
Edwrds went on to reference how citizens overwhelmingly passed Issue 23 by 70% and said, “I don’t know how you take away what the citizens want.”
“We need to respect the will of voters. We’ve got to get out of the way and let people make decisions and come together and quit taking our fights to Facebook,” Edwards said.
During a special council meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 3, public comment was an official item on the agenda.
Nelsonville City Council meets every other Monday of each month, at Nelsonville City Council Chambers, 211 Lake Hope Drive. Its next regular meeting will be Monday, Sept. 8 at 7 p.m. Meetings are live streamed on YouTube. Find more at cityofnelsonville.com.
