Archie Stanley needs to step aside; Dems should cast a vote for Maiden

Change is long overdue in the Athens County Engineer's office. Archie Stanley, in his 32^nd year in office, has allowed the Engineer's Office to gain a reputation for favoritism, arrogance, cronyism and mismanagement. Stanley's opponent in the March 6 Democratic Primary, Jeff Maiden, will be a breath of fresh air in the county department that perhaps more than any other has the most direct effect on county residents' everyday lives.

Maiden, the son of a former Athens County engineer, the late Rex Maiden, has a lengthy and impressive resume in civil engineering, with 30 years of experience designing and building civil infrastructure projects in southeast Ohio.

He promises to provide the sort of strong, hands-on leadership that Stanley years ago ceded to his non-elected, non-engineer lieutenant, Mike Canterbury, the deputy engineer of operations. Over the past decade or so, Canterbury, in many respects, has become the face of the county Engineer's Department.

The perception of Canterbury as "acting county engineer" has been reinforced by the impression that Stanley isn't exactly an everyday county engineer.

Maiden supporters have charged that Stanley seldom comes to work any more, and cite official records showing how often he uses his county vehicle to come to the office. From Nov. 1, 2010, through Oct. 31, 2011, for example, those records show he drove the county vehicle 84 days to work, an average of seven days per month. Previous years show similar vehicle usage. Asked about this, Stanley has explained that he uses his personal vehicle to drive to work if for any reason he has to make a personal side-trip after work. On those days, the records wouldn't show him driving his official vehicle to the Engineer's office.

This, of course, would be difficult to verify or disprove with public records, though it's no mystery that people who have worked with Stanley over the years have joked about his hit-and-miss attendance on the job.

Stanley's critics also charge that he doesn't even live in Athens County, but rather keeps a primary residence in Canal-Winchester, near Columbus. We do know that Stanley, at least part of the time, lives in an apartment in a house that he rents to OU students on Peach Ridge Road northeast of Athens. This "doesn't have a primary residence here" charge would be difficult to prove one way or another, and really, we wouldn't care if he were helicoptoring in from Daytona Beach on a daily basis, if only he were doing a proper job.

But increasingly, we're starting to hear from knowledgeable sources that the Athens County Engineer's Office isn't doing a superlative job with our roads and bridges, and this is aside from the personal, jolting evidence that any resident can experience driving the county roads himself.

For instance, the Engineer's Office has been slammed for poor conservation practices on county road projects, allowing much more erosion than should be necessary.

Residents have written us with examples of unfair, inconsistent or confrontational interactions with the county Engineer's office, and especially deputy engineer Canterbury. While we're leery of such second-hand reports during election time, one of these instances made the local papers in December 2009 when engineering employees under Canterbury's direction ripped out an embankment garden on an elderly woman's Pleasanton Road property, south of Athens. The women complained that she had no personal warning that county crews were going to uproot her garden, and that when she registered a complaint with Canterbury, "he was very cold, very unfeeling."

At the time, Canterbury defended his crew's actions, saying they had a "legal right" to rip out the woman's garden in order to create clear sight-lines on the roadway. Pointing out that the roadwork had been announced through radio and newspaper spots, Canterbury declared, "We have, as far as I'm concerned, a militant group out there, and they don't want anything touched."

The perception of Canterbury's authority in the department was recently reinforced when we reported that he has accumulated a massive amount of overtime this past year – from 221 hours of OT in 2009, to 277 hours in 2010, to 545 hours in 2011. This allowed Canterbury to earn $99,068 last year, some $9,000 more than the county engineer himself (though Stanley also receives an additional chunk of retirement income, through perfectly legal "double-dipping").

Maiden had a good point when he noted that Canterbury, as second in command in the Engineer's Office, should be paid with a manager's salary rather than an employee's hourly wages. Without all the overtime, Canterbury's regular annual pay would be nearly $28,000 less. He also isn't certified as an engineer.

With all of these accumulated issues and concerns surrounding Stanley's supervision of the county Engineer's Office, we're convinced that he needs to move out of the way for a fresh, hands-on approach. We appreciate Stanley's many years of service to the county, but it's time for a change. Jeff Maiden has the experience, commitment – and the genes – to upgrade what Athens County residents get from their county Engineer's Office. With no Republican running for the seat, vote for Maiden in the Democratic Primary, and he will be our next county engineer.