Letters: Goodyear executive making terrible decisions, Seiberling descendant says

Goodyear’s most recent quarterly loss and stock sell-off are the direct consequences of Chief Executive Officer Mark Stewart’s catastrophic decisions to sell off the company’s most profitable business unit to Yokohama Tires of Japan, and his omission of not taking full advantage of the Goodyear name and brand to sell a broad array of rubber products worldwide.

In the South, where I have lived for 42 years, that is called “eating your seed corn.” Debts widen even as you have cut off your most profitable business unit! In Greenville, South Carolina, where I live, I see Michelin being successful by maximizing its brand and NOT killing profitable lines.

Being a great-granddaughter of Goodyear founder F.A. Seiberling, I can offer that Goodyear appears from afar to have a board of trustees that is weak, having been willing this year to hire a non-rubber executive to be CEO, and pay him $20 million a year to start. When your plate is always full, you tend not to work as hard to “do what it takes” to change the culture and results.”

As of this month, Goodyear’s market cap was under $3 billion. Debt is strangling the company. I would encourage all shareholders to demand changes now, if this once-great company is to survive.

Mary Penfield Chapman, Greenville, South Carolina

Council failed Ward 8

I am calling for more accountability in Akron’s City Council. I was one of the 20 applicants for the vacant Ward 8 seat (there were 21, but one applicant was found not to live in the ward).

I was hopeful that even if I did not receive the appointment, that someone in an underrepresented demographic on City Council would be named. The appointment process was supposed to be an open call where everyone had a fair shot, but the outcome says something else.

Bruce Bolden was appointed to the seat: a 64-year-old white man who has held a City Council seat previously and currently holds a council-appointed seat on Akron’s zoning board (since 1998).

What are the optics and ethics of this? This is not a personal issue or an issue of ageism. I am almost 40 myself and there were several other younger, compelling applicants.

I sat next to Bruce while waiting for my interview and he seemed nice. I am not implying he will do a poor job. The issue lies with the question of how does this individual represent the ward?

The average age of an Akronite is 37.1 and about one-third of Akron residents have children under the age of 18 in their home. Bruce’s demographic is already well-represented on the council, and to my knowledge, the youngest member of council is in their mid-40s. About 25% of the applicants were either 40 or younger or identified as queer — two groups lacking representation on council.

I know a rebuttal to this will be that the elections are in the spring, and anyone can run for the seat. This is true, but it does not acknowledge the personal cost and odds when running against an incumbent.

In U.S. local elections, about 92% of all incumbents win their seat again based in part on name recognition and access to funding for their campaign. City Council had the opportunity to promote more inclusion and uplift new voices, and it made a clear choice not to do so.

For all of Akron’s claims to be progressive, the same type of people continuously get promoted within this system where discussions lasting 10 minutes happen behind closed doors before giving the seat to someone they already know. The council did this despite the residents of the ward, at a town hall meeting July 11, expressing that they did not want someone already in the political loop.

There were many qualified applicants who would have brought a fresh perspective and had transferable skills that would have served Ward 8 well. As a Ward 8 resident myself — of over 30 years — the council failed us.

I do not feel represented — my perspective, my age group, my economic station. I would like to ask Mayor Shammas Malik why this is still happening, despite his message of believing that “we must change how our city government works, creating a City Hall that is more open, more responsive, and more collaborative” — a message directly from the mayor’s office website.

This process has proved to me that our city government has not changed, and that it is certainly not more open or responsive to the voices of its citizens. We all deserve to be heard and to be represented and Akron City Council missed the mark here.

The process by which appointments are made must change or be abolished — leave it to the ward to vote, especially if council members cannot even pretend to honor the input from residents and instead give preference to people they know personally who already hold appointed city roles.

Joann Collins, Akron

Support for Bruce Bolden

I put my name in to be appointed to Akron’s vacant Ward 8 council seat at the beginning of July. I went through the interview and the candidates forum. As I did, I got to hear the opinions and experience of Bruce Bolden.

It was no surprise to me, then, that he was selected by the screening committee to fulfill the vacancy. He has knowledge that someone like me simply does not possess as a previous public servant. This is why I am urging the residents of Ward 8 to support him as our new council member.

I obviously do not like to lose. In this case, though, I can handle it better because Bolden’s success is our ward’s success. We have a strong history of great representation. We had a strong pool of candidates. Supporting Councilman Bolden is our next duty and I look forward to serving Akron, specifically Ward 8, with him.

Sean Plank, Akron

Redistricting issue on ballot

Gov. Mike DeWine has come out against a ballot issue that would take the drawing of district maps out of the hands of politicians. He says the public doesn’t understand the implications if the issue passes. The fact is that he is part of the problem.

What the public does understand is that DeWine and his Republican colleagues on the present redistricting commission deliberately defied the will of the voting public and the Ohio Supreme Court and wrecked the process that was supposed to produce fair electoral maps. The maps they passed gave their party the same unfair advantage and were not “new” at all.

Keeping politicians like DeWine and his fellows out of the drawing of electoral maps is the reason Ohio voters should vote for the ballot issue on this topic in November’s election.

Jim Kroeger, Fairlawn

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Letters: Goodyear executive making terrible decisions, Seiberling descendant says