Race for county engineer's seat starts with a bang

The race for county engineer is off to a running start with a dispute over whether the freezing of county bridge-work contracts by incumbent Archie Stanley was a politically motivated shot at recently announced opponent Jeff Maiden.

The contracts in question have been unfrozen, and Stanley has said that the matter is merely a misunderstanding, while Maiden has cited the chronology of events as evidence that the freeze was political.

Maiden runs RJM Engineering of The Plains, which has been awarded a number of contracts for county bridge work from county Engineer Stanley's office. Maiden has said that he is grateful for the work that has come his way from the engineer's office, but questioned why several of his contracts were frozen just days after he announced his candidacy, whereas the week before, everything with the contracts seemed to be going as planned.

For his part, Stanley said that the matter came down to a misunderstanding on his part about what the expense for the work would be on the county's end, and his decision to freeze the work was to give him a chance to sort out the financial situation and was not a shot at his political opponent.

An e-mail exchange between the two was obtained by The Athens NEWS and shows that on Nov. 16 Stanley emailed Maiden for information regarding two ongoing projects RJM Engineering is doing for the county. In that e-mail, Stanley asks Maiden for a status update on the work. He also pointed to what's called "credit bridge" funding, which is a federal source of funding for bridge projects.

"We had a nice run on Credit Bridge," Stanley wrote to Maiden. "We have pretty well exhausted that wonderful source of 100 percent construction funding. But 80 percent isn't bad by any means, so I plan to keep the projects lined up for design and eventual construction."

Maiden replied to that email on Nov. 18 giving an update on the projects. On Nov. 22, Maiden had a milestone meeting with representatives from Stanley's office and the Ohio Department of Transportation on those projects. That same week, Maiden began circulating petitions for his candidacy, including to mutual acquaintances of his and Stanley. He said he then missed several phone calls from deputy engineer Mike Canterbury that Wednesday night.

On Friday, Nov. 25, Maiden received another email from Stanley. In that email, Stanley expressed concern about the 20 percent construction match because the credit bridge funding had been exhausted. He stated that he had begun to think that his department can handle the work, but he didn't want to waste the work Maiden's company had already done.

"With this all in mind, please cease work on our federal bridge replacement projects and archive the current files and plans until I make a full cost comparison determination," Stanley wrote.

Maiden said, though, that the credit bridge funds had already been allotted for the projects that he was working on, so the county's original 5 percent match had not changed and had not increased to 20 percent.

That next week, the Athens Messenger ran an article on the contracts between the two political opponents being frozen.

On Saturday, Dec. 3, Stanley asked Maiden to please resume design work on the bridge projects.

"For a few weeks I have been under a misunderstanding," Stanley wrote. "I had checked into a contract for Load Rating of Fracture Critical Bridges and was told that our credit bridge fund had been spent, and that we would have to pay a 20 percent match for federal projects from now on. I assumed that was true for the three federal bridges being designed by you. This misunderstanding led to my email to you dated Nov. 25, 2011."

Stanley said the same when asked by The Athens NEWS about the matter.

"I asked Jeff to put the projects on hold immediately until I could do a full cost comparison determination," Stanley said in an email. "Having him cease work with taxpayer money, until the fiscal issues were resolved, was the financially responsible thing to do. My intention at the time was that if the determination proved that the federal replacements remained the most cost-effective alternative, that we would resume work on the contracts. Again, Jeff's contracts were not cancelled, but put on hold while I made the economic determination as to what was best for taxpayers."

Stanley said that after determining that the match would only be 5 percent, he authorized Maiden to resume design work.

"Any attempt to make this a political issue is unfortunate," Stanley said. "It was a misunderstanding on my part. I have admitted that and rectified my misunderstanding by asking that the contracts be resumed."

Meanwhile, Maiden said on Tuesday that while he appreciates that the work is back on track, the chronology of the events indicates ulterior motives on the engineer's part.

"If it wasn't playing politics, what was it?" he asked.