Mayor’s Leadership Council has disbanded

Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell

ENLARGE PHOTO

Dayton mayor brushes off critics’ comments

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By Lucas Sullivan, Staff Writer Updated 9:39 PM Thursday, November 25, 2010

DAYTON — Less than one year into his term, Mayor Gary Leitzell’s Leadership Council has dissolved due to frustrations among some business and community leaders who openly questioned his priorities and repeated absences from meetings.

What once was a 22-member council consisting of representatives from Premier Health Partners, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has been reduced to six people representing no large employers. The group is now called the mayor’s Economic Development Task Force.

Leitzell, a Republican-endorsed independent, is using the council to try to supplant his weak position on the Democrat-dominated City Commission to push his economic development agenda. All four commissioners are Democrats.

David McDonald, Leitzell’s adviser and council co-chair, said he and the mayor talked about the issues raised at a Sept. 15 Leadership Council meeting.

Three weeks later, a letter was drafted in Leitzell’s office notifying council members of the group’s restructuring and reducing the bi-monthly meetings to three times a year. McDonald said he then twice solicited interest from all 22 members and got responses from only a few people. He said some council members were being “petty.”

“There have been discussions if the mayor is visible enough and someone brought up the Washington, D.C., fly-in (a gathering of the region’s top leaders) because he wasn’t there,” said Mark Henry, a former city commissioner who remains one of the six members of Leitzell’s council.

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