Conzelman's FOIA Requests Cross The Line Of Human Decency

The necessary disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not represent Patch in any way. I do not get paid by Patch, nor do I get paid by any political campaign, nor do I volunteer for any political campaigns. These are merely my opinions, and should be taken as such...

So we're about six weeks, give or take, from the Plymouth Township elections, and things look to be heating up. Plymouth Township was known for the last 20 years or so, of having some bare knuckled, brawls at election time, and we thought that had ended when the Edwards, Price, Conzelman regime was broomed out of office. We were wrong.

Nancy Conzelman, much like a bad dream, or maybe a foot fungus, has come back for more. She has been on a slow burn ever since Clerk Jerry Vorva waxed her butt in 2016. It was a resounding victory. The kind of victory that generally sends a message to the loser, that their political career is over. People don't come back from losses like the one that Nancy Conzelman suffered. Not if they're smart.

I have called Nancy Conzelman many things over the past 6 year or so, but smart is never a word I have used to describe her. Mean, vindictive, corrupt, arrogant, and condescending are generally the words I have used to describe this woman, and the taxpayers of Plymouth Township overwhelmingly agreed with me, based on the results of the 2016 election.

Either way, Nancy Conzelman is back, and she is looking for revenge against her perceived enemies. I don't think she has any kind of chance to get that revenge at the ballot box, even though she switched parties, to guarantee she didn't have to run in the primary against Clerk Vorva again. Maybe that was the one smart thing she did. She suddenly went from masquerading as a Republican, to being an anti-police Democrat, so that she wouldn't have to put her faux conservative values up against a true Republican, in Jerry Vorva. He would have beat her 80-20, or maybe even worse, in the primary.

So what is Ms. Conzelman doing now? She found four women, who are apparently willing to be cannon fodder in the general election, and she is using them to prop her up, in some kind of “Squad Ticket.” They call themselves “Women For Plymouth” and they must think that this gimmick is going to somehow work, and sweep them into office. They are grossly underestimating
the knowledge of the Plymouth Township voters. Plymouth Township is not Portland. The good folks in Plymouth Township don't fall for that sort of thing.

Plymouth Township voters are smart, and they stay informed. They've been fooled before by the likes of Ron Edwards, Richard Reaume, and of course, Nancy Conzelman. They had been lied to before, by these folks, and they finally had enough, and they put it all to a decisive end in the 2016 election. You haven't heard a peep from people like Edwards, Reaume, or Price since the 2016 election. They were smart, and they knew when their political careers were over. They listened to the voters, and moved on.

Richard Reaume, who pretty much handed the 2012 election to newcomer Conzelman, was so smart, that he didn't wait for the 2016 election. He resigned two years into his term, when folks were coming with pitchforks to the township board meetings. He was sick of defending Conzelman, and her tyrannical antics in the Clerk's office. The most egregious being the censoring
of public comments at the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees meetings, when public sentiment against her, and her cohorts was reaching a fever pitch.

The good folks in Plymouth Township were incensed by her actions, and they stormed the Board of Trustees meetings. She was soon forced to quit censoring the Plymouth Township taxpayers. This is just one example of how Nancy Conzelman used her office to punish, and silence her critics. There are many more examples of her vindictiveness, and most township voters
remember them all too well.

So now we'll talk about Nancy Conzelman's latest escapades. In this attempt to regain power in
Plymouth Township, and punish her perceived enemies, she will stop at nothing to win this election, and make no mistake, if she wins this election, and becomes the Plymouth Township Clerk, she will use every power of that office to punish her enemies. You can create a lot of
mayhem in the Plymouth Township Clerk's office, no matter how many Trustees you have on your side. Or in Nancy's case, not on her side. I honestly don't think that there is one current member of the Board of Trustees that wants her there. They don't want the chaos, they don't want to be associated with her. They know her history.

To begin with, I do not think for one minute that Nancy Conzelman cares about the other 4 women on her ticket. I think she is simply using them as her vehicle to try and win HER election. By having these four women on a slate with her, she feels that she somehow has legitimacy, and maybe she's right. Had Nancy Conzelman simply run her own campaign, with no slate of
candidates to take silly, social distanced pictures with her, the whole township would have had a collective laugh, and she'd have been ignored during the campaign, and at the ballot box.

So the squad was formed. The Women For Plymouth. Honestly, I feel a little bad for these women, because they are being used. They are newcomers to the political arena, and they are being used to give Nancy Conzelman a little bit of legitimacy, and whenever she is done with them, whenever they are no longer useful to her, she'll discard them like yesterday's trash. That is how Nancy Conzelman rolls. I've seen her in action since 2012, and a Tiger never changes it's stripes.

Truth be told, I don't know much about these four woman, other than what I have seen on their Facebook pages, and some other research I have done. I know that I wanted to attend a “public” Zoom meeting that Marisa Downs hosted for the voters, but I was shut out of that meeting. Not allowed to attend. I wonder if Nancy Conzelman had anything to do with that? I was shut out of that meeting, so I am left to make my own assumptions about these candidates. If they have a problem with that, well it is their fault, not mine.

So, let's get back to Nancy Conzelman. She is currently doing some dirty, lowdown things of her own. I don't know if her fellow squad mates know of them, but they will now. It seems as if Nancy is using the FOIA laws to go on a little fishing expedition. She's looking for dirt. Why? Because that's how Nancy rolls. I understand politics and all that, but Nancy is currently crossing a line of decency. There are certain lines that you just don't cross. Nancy it seems, is looking for dirt on Jerry Vorva, but she is hurting a person who doesn't deserve to get hurt. A person who just wants to be left alone. A person who just suffered a family tragedy.

Nancy Conzelman is looking for dirt on former Deputy Clerk, Sandy Groth in order to try and embarrass current Clerk, Jerry Vorva. Well, most folks in the township know that Sandy Groth resigned her position of Deputy Clerk awhile back, and they also know that Sandy ran in the primary against Clerk Vorva. So in Nancy's mind, there has to be dirt there, and Nancy wants all
the juicy details.

Most folks in the township also know that during the campaign, Sandy sadly lost her husband, Larry Groth, who is the former Fire Chief for Plymouth Township. Nancy doesn't care that Sandy is grieving the loss of her husband, who served our township with great honor and dignity. Nancy wants some dirt. She wants it so bad, that she's willing to try and shame the widow of our
former Fire Chief. Sandy Groth is trying to figure out how to go on, after losing her husband, and now she has to deal with Nancy Conzelman's witch hunt. To me, that is a line that you just do not
cross. It is despicable.

Now Sandy Groth and I have known each other since 2011, and we both have very strong views on politics, and on things in Plymouth Township. Sometimes we agree, and sometimes we don't. Most times we agree. This time we didn't agree. I did not think Sandy should have run against Jerry Vorva, and I told her so. I knew Nancy Conzelman was going to try some sort of desperate come back, and I felt that a bruising primary was exactly what Nancy Conzelman was hoping for. The only chance that Nancy Conzelman had, was for Plymouth Township Republicans to get divided over a contemptuous primary between two well respected people. I made my opinions known to Sandy, and then I stepped back, and let it all play out. I did not take sides here at Patch, and I did not try and tip the scales with an editorial.

Much to Nancy Conzelman's disappointment, the primary was not contemptuous between the two
candidates, everybody in Plymouth Township mourned the death of Chief Larry Groth, and folks from both sides did their best to console Sandy, who by the way, chose to run, long before Larry passed away.

So here we are. Nancy Conzelman, who parades around town, as a woman who stands with all women, is looking to trash a woman, who is grieving the loss of her husband. She cares not what anguish that is causing, because Nancy has only one thing on her mind. Revenge.

Nancy Conzelman has made game of abusing the FOIA system. She has made a flurry of FOIA requests about anything to do with any election Sandy Groth has ever been a part of. Nancy Conzelman has made FOIA requests about the separation agreement between Sandy Groth, and Plymouth Township, and those requests have been granted. I know that, because I have made my own FOIA requests. Two can play that game. I have seen every single document that Nancy has seen. Guess what? There's nothing there. No dirt. Everything done properly.

That was not good enough for Nancy. She wants more. She's not done fishing. A smart person would cut bait, and move on. A decent human being, would leave it alone. Leave Sandy alone. For some reason though, Nancy thinks there is still some silver bullet with Jerry Vorva's name on it, and she doesn't care who she destroys, or who she hurts, to find that bullet. So unfortunately, I don't expect that Nancy Conzelman will leave Sandy alone.

For my part, I have not left Sandy alone either. I have prayed for her, and her family, and I let her
know that. I have told her that anything I can do for her, to let me know. For her part, Sandy told me that she is going to pray for me, because I have some upcoming struggles that I'll have to deal with. That is how decent people treat each other, even when they have disagreements. The bottom line is that Sandy Groth is no longer a candidate for political office, and she is no longer an employee of Plymouth Township. She is a private citizen, and I'm pretty sure she just wants to be left alone, to go on with her life. Nancy Conzelman, out of human decency, should honor that, but she won't.

Nancy Conzelman will keep digging for stuff. Stuff that is nobody's business. Not Nancy's, and not mine. Nancy knows this. Nancy Conzelman knows that there are certain things that cannot legally be shared with the public. She is the former Clerk. She says she is smart. So she should know these things. Heck, Nancy used to exact control over the FOIA requests like a tyrant when she was the Clerk. She once tried to charge me $50 for a lousy copy of a Board of Trustees meeting. She didn't like me, so she charged me $50 for something that every other municipality charged $5 for at the time.

Remember what I told you. If Nancy Conzelman is elected, she will use the Clerk's office to punish those she doesn't like, and she pretty much hates everybody. She did it when she was Clerk, and she'll do it again. Only this time, she has several axes to grind. Much revenge to be had. The collateral damage will be every single Plymouth Township taxpayer.

So I have some questions for Mary Starr, Marisa Downs, Christal Corliss, and Nabeleh Ghareeb. Do you women know about Nancy Conzelman's constant FOIA requests to attempt to dig up dirt about Sandy Groth? If so, how do you comport that with your Women For Plymouth campaign? It seems rather hypocritical to me. More importantly, it seems unjustifiably dirty. It crosses the line of decency. Is this the kind of campaign that the Women For Plymouth want to run? Is Nancy Conzelman the kind of person you want to be associated with?

The people in Plymouth Township are going to be asking these very questions, and you four women had better have good answers for them. This is about human decency...