A group of messages shared in a local Facebook group earlier this month has raised questions, both broad and specific, about transparency and ethics within public bodies and the separation of public identities from private ones.
Public discussion of these questions began Saturday, Jan. 4, when local resident TJ Turner posted a range of screenshots from a Discord server to the Facebook page Yellow Springs Open Discussion.
Discord is a free computer and mobile device application that facilitates group communication via text, media sharing, voice and video. People who use Discord group themselves into “servers,” or channels accessed by those who are invited to the group.
The screenshots Turner shared were taken from the Discord server of Springers 4 More Springers, or S4MS. As the News reported in June 2024, S4MS is a local group that aims to work with local elected bodies and residents to reform the Village zoning code, support affordable housing initiatives and serve as an advocate for tenants. S4MS has most recently worked to support the proposed LIHTC affordable housing project — about which more can be read in this week’s story, “LIHTC project advances.”
Turner wrote in the Jan. 4 Facebook post that screenshots from the Discord server were shared with him by a “concerned citizen,” and stated a concern that school board members Judith Hempfling and Rebecca Potter had joined the server and had attended or hosted potluck gatherings/meetings with members of S4MS.
As Turner wrote in the Facebook post: “There is a private lobbying group in town calling themselves ‘Springers for More Springers’ (S4MS). They have been holding meetings, to include with our elected officials, and swaying their actions on both the School Board, as well as on Village Council.”
Turner’s comment referred to the discussion within the posted screenshots, which includes partial minutes from S4MS meetings, some of which were held at Potter’s home; discussion between Hempfling, Potter, YS Home, Inc. Executive Director Emily Seibel and other members of S4MS, whose names are blocked out, on a GoFundMe campaign initiated to help pay for an application to subdivide and rezone the 3.6-acre parcel of Morgan Fields eyed for the LIHTC project; reminders of upcoming meetings of S4MS and discussion of upcoming agenda items; and a July 1 email in which Hempfling states that she and Potter have been attending S4MS meetings, but “not representing the school board.”
The screenshots, in their entirety, may be viewed at bit.ly/S4MS_Screenshots. The screenshots posted to Facebook include notations, in red, characterizing the content of the Discord messages; a second copy of the screenshots, shared with the News by Potter, includes further notations intended to clarify those characterizations. Both documents are included at the above link.
Then, on Monday, Jan. 6, Turner made a second post to the YS Open Discussion Facebook page, noting that two members of the News staff — Reilly Dixon and this reporter — had joined the S4MS Discord server in June ahead of the paper’s June report on the purpose and scope of the group.
His concern, in part, was a comment from Dixon — who, in addition to reporting, also does production and ad design work for the News — communicating with members of S4MS within the Discord server about an ad the group had placed last summer, recommending that group members remove their four signatures from the ad, as they had already been “heavily mentioned and quoted” in the News’ June article. Dixon stated he was working with members of S4MS to adjust the copy on their ad to suit their needs, in a similar manner as he and other production staffers at the News work with all advertisers.
Turner’s second concern was that News staffers had not reported on the presence of school board members within the S4MS Discord channel or at S4MS meetings.
Turner wrote in the screenshots’ accompanying Facebook post: “At first read [it] appears that these YS News reporters are actively helping the S4MS group, ensuring that the S4MS group is ‘heavily mentioned and quoted.’ … Since you clearly have access to the S4MS discord channel, and your reporters are members of that channel, how about publish all the correspondence for the public to see?”
Both posts garnered a number of comments from local residents, with some questioning whether the involvement of school board members in S4MS in both the Discord server and the group’s meetings constituted a violation of the Open Meetings Act — a part of Ohio’s Sunshine Law that requires public bodies, like the school board, to conduct public business in meetings that are open to public attendance or observation.
Board transparency
The News reached out to legal counsel for the Ohio School Boards Association, or OSBA, for clarification on the Open Meetings Act and whether it had been violated in the S4MS Discord.
A representative said the OSBA could not provide comment on the specific matters at hand in Yellow Springs, but provided background information on Open Meetings Act requirements and pointed the News to the state’s exhaustive Sunshine Law Manual.
In particular, page 111 of the manual defines a “meeting” of a public body as “a prearranged gathering of a majority of the members of a public body for the purpose of discussing public business,” and includes electronic communications in its broader definition.
In general, gatherings of fewer than a majority of a public body’s members — in the school board’s case, fewer than three members — do not constitute a “meeting” and are not subject to the same regulations.
Speaking with the News earlier this month, Turner said that he did not believe that Hempfling and Potter violated the Open Meetings Act in making comments on the Discord server, since only the two of them ever did so — a “majority” of members was not present. However, he said his concerns extend beyond that requirement of Ohio law and into best practices for the transparency of a public body. He took issue with Hempfling’s email statement, noted earlier in this report, that neither she nor Potter were officially representing the school board with regard to S4MS.
“It may not be an Open Meetings Act violation, but it is not what they said they would do as elected officials,” Turner said. “It’s unethical, in my opinion, because they are absolutely representing the board in front of a group that they did not tell the board that they were representing themselves in front of.”
Turner added — noting his experience as a former school board member who served for five years — that he believes it would have been prudent for Hempfling and Potter to have the school board approve their participation in S4MS, and to report the content of those meetings publicly at subsequent meetings of the board.
“We’ve done that in the past at other meetings — the [YS Development Corporation] meetings get discussed and brought into the board packet,” he said. “So why not this one?”
Potter, who also spoke to the News this month — and noted that she was speaking on her own behalf, and not that of the school board — said she believes there’s a difference between meetings of the YSDC, a quasi-governmental body, and S4MS, a citizen-led group.
“I really don’t think any government body, including a school board, can compel a community group organizing around an issue to publish their minutes,” she said. “And why would we? They’re not a government body.”
Turner said he also believed that the Discord server messages illustrated that Potter was “conducting board business months before she was authorized by the board” to do so with regard to the LIHTC project. He referred to the fact that, in September 2024, Potter was chosen as one of two board representatives to an intergovernmental task force with Village Council to continue exploring options for the proposed LIHTC project.
The Sunshine Law Manual also notes that the “Open Meetings Act requires the members of a public body to discuss and deliberate on official business only in open meetings.”
For her part, Potter said she did not believe any of the messages she or Hempfling shared regarding aspects of the LIHTC in the Discord server constituted either discussion or deliberation of “official business.” Everything mentioned in the server, she said, had already been discussed and deliberated on with the rest of the members of the school board in public sessions dating back to a May 21, 2024, meeting, when the board first approved resolutions to explore the possibility of selling district land for an affordable housing project.
Meeting agendas and accompanying documents were available to the public to reference discussion points brought up in the Discord, as was video of public sessions.
Potter also pushed back on the notion that she was precluded from discussing anything already in the public record outside of school board meetings, regardless of her appointment to the intergovernmental task force — though she noted that she had been tasked to work with Hempfling on “investigating the feasibility of the LIHTC project” at the board’s May 21 meeting.
In a broader sense, Potter said, her view is that the First Amendment protects the rights of citizens to gather and express themselves — including school board members meeting with community members on their own time. However, she said she feels that the First Amendment rights of members of S4MS who don’t hold public office have been “threatened” by the sharing of their messages online without their consent.
“Secretly taking information and distorting it to undermine the credibility of the group and imply that they are breaking the law — that is intimidating, that is silencing,” she said.
Turner said his sharing the messages online was not an attempt to silence anyone, but instead to bring the group’s activity into the public arena. He said he does not plan to pursue any legal action against the group, but that he believes Hempfling and Potter’s involvement with S4MS “needs to come to light so that people can see what their elected officials are doing.”
“That’s transparency,” he said. “That’s how you do work in the public eye.”
S4MS members respond
With regard to S4MS as a whole, Turner said he believes that the group qualifies as a political action committee, or PAC, and should register as such.
He cited Ohio Revised Code Section 3517.01, which defines a political action committee as “a combination of two or more persons, the primary or major purpose of which is to support or oppose any candidate, political party, or issue, or to influence the result of any election through express advocacy.”
“They have not registered with the state of Ohio; they don’t have a treasurer; they’re not disclosing who’s giving them money,” Turner said. “They’re actually in violation of law.”
Jessica Thomas, a local resident and member of S4MS, said the group does not meet the definition of a PAC.
Thomas has hosted several group meetings at her home, and said that, while the group has advocated for zoning reform, affordable housing and tenants’ rights, they are not a “formal advocacy group” and haven’t spoken for or against any candidates, parties or ballot issues — local or otherwise — since their formation.
“Springers 4 More Springers is not a single-issue group,” she said. “We’re organizing around really public topics, and our goal was transparency.”
Thomas said that, at the outset, S4MS had an “open-door policy,” in which anyone who asked was invited to join their Discord server, and all were welcome to attend their meetings. They asked that all those who joined the Discord server introduce themselves, and later, those who had not done so were removed from the group for inactivity. For that reason, she said, it’s unclear who captured and shared the Discord server messages with Turner. No one asked S4MS to share their messages publicly, she said, and the messages were shared out of chronological order and removed from their wider contexts.
“There were things shared in those messages that had to do with people’s private lives — they had nothing to do with the LIHTC project,” she said. “Presenting these decontextualized messages publicly is incredibly problematic.”
Specifically, she pointed to one notation on the screenshot document alleging “elected officials handling district money” — which referred to a GoFundMe campaign S4MS initiated to pay for an application for subdivision and rezoning, she said, specifically to avoid using school district money.
“It’s disingenuous to suggest that [S4MS] was doing anything untoward with money,” she said. “We collected money for a certain purpose, contacted our donors to ensure that they were okay with what the money was going toward and ensured that the expenditure matched what we said we were going to spend money on.”
April Wolford — another member of S4MS and a Home, Inc. board member who said she has a long history working in advocacy and activist spaces — said she feels “deeply troubled” about both the public sharing of the Discord messages and the wider tenor of discussion around the LIHTC project over the last year, particularly on social media. As an alumna of Antioch College, she recalled that the college used to hold regular forum events, in which folks came face-to-face to learn about and discuss a wide variety of issues.
“We don’t have those forums now — and social media does not serve that purpose,” she said.
She added that the “younger generation of activists” increasingly uses forums like Discord and Slack to organize and disseminate information. The possibility of having that information shared without their permission, she said, means they often “can’t be vulnerable in the spaces where they’ve chosen to have these conversations.”
“You can’t screenshot a face-to-face conversation — but you can in Discord,” she said.
Wolford said she wishes those who had concerns about S4MS had reached out to the group directly rather than disseminating its messages online, and then discussing those concerns within a Facebook group.
“Posting salvos online, it’s like, ‘You shoot, then I shoot,’” she said. “It’s a very different thing from a dialog, where you can see when you say things that hurt people — or maybe discover that your opinion is not that different from mine.”
Two thefts took place at downtown businesses at the turn of the new year and spurred the Chamber of Commerce to send out a word of advice to local business owners late last week: Keep an eye out and take security precautions.
The Chamber reached out via email to local member businesses, including the YS News, on behalf of the YS Police Department on Friday, Jan. 3. The email detailed two after-hours break-ins at local businesses Unfinished Creations and Miguel’s Tacos food truck.
The first theft, at Unfinished Creations, took place sometime between when the business closed on Tuesday, Dec. 31, and when it was reported to police late Wednesday morning, Jan. 1. Items taken included small change and decorative stones.
The second theft, at Miguel’s Tacos food truck, took place between 10 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 2, and 11 a.m. Friday, Jan. 3, when it was reported. This time, $150 in cash was stolen and, according to the email from the Chamber, the business’ “locks were compromised.”
In a separate email with the News, Chief Paige Burge said that the YS Police Department does not currently have a suspect, or any details that would lead them to believe the events are connected.
“The only similarities currently are that both incidents occurred after hours and money/cash appear to be what was targeted,” Burge wrote. “I will add anecdotally, in a town such as ours when we see more than one occurrence like this, they are typically related.”
She added that, over the last five years, the police have only seen one year with a trend of breaking and entering during the months of January and February, in 2023, and noted that the police identified and apprehended the person responsible.
The local police are actively investigating both recent incidents of theft and are in the process of gathering all available evidence — efforts that Burge said “will be ongoing.”
“While the general public may not always see the efforts that go into investigating these types of incidents, we are committed to running down every possible lead and avenue for information that would help solve these crimes,” Burge wrote. “If anyone saw or heard anything in the area in the evening/early [morning] hours on the dates these offenses were committed, please call the Yellow Springs Police Department.”
In the meantime, the police have increased patrols in the downtown area after businesses have closed. Police and the Chamber of Commerce have issued a series of security recommendations to business owners, which include:
• Remove all cash — Do not leave any money in businesses or vehicles after hours;
• Check locks and security measures — Double-check that premises are fully secured when closing;
• Maintain operable cameras — Ensure any security cameras are functioning and recording during nonbusiness hours.
Chief Burge told the News that similar recommendations extend to local residents, too; she said the Village has taken 349 reports of theft since 2020, which include thefts from businesses and vehicles and the thefts of other unsecured property. She noted that, though most of these types of thefts take place in the summer months, the season “makes no difference in a crime of opportunity.”
“The best recourse we have is eliminating the opportunity — lock your homes, your vehicles and ensure your garage doors are shut every evening,” Burge said.
Yellow Springs reeled Saturday, Jan. 11, upon learning that it had lost a beloved member of its community: Frederick Peterson, Psy.D., known as “Doc Pete” for his work as a clinical psychologist, and as a friendly, welcoming presence to those who crossed his path.
The YS Police Department released a statement Saturday morning reporting that officers performed a welfare check at Livermore Street residence at approximately 11:21 p.m. Friday, Jan. 10. Upon arrival, officers discovered a person, now known to be Peterson, with apparent gunshot wounds. According to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, or BCI, Peterson later died from his injuries.
A suspect in connection to the case was “quickly taken into custody without incident,” according to the police statement.
“This case remains an active and ongoing investigation,” the statement read.
At press time, the YS Police Department and BCI had yet to publicly identify the suspect involved in the shooting. However, public arrest records show that Frederick Dane Muenchau-Peterson, Peterson’s son, was arrested and booked into Greene County Jail Saturday, Jan. 11, on charges of murder, felonious assault and improperly discharging a firearm.
The elder Peterson was confirmed as the victim of the shooting by his wife, villager Deborah Dixon Peterson, via Facebook.
In a public statement shared online and with the News, Dixon Peterson wrote that her husband was “taken from us in a senseless act of violence, leaving a void that can never be filled.” She went on to ask for “patience and privacy during this tender time.”
Read the full statement from Dixon Peterson at the top of page 4 in the Jan. 17 issue of the News.
In response to Dixon Peterson’s online statement, a flood of comments was posted by those who knew and loved “Doc Pete,” with folks noting his death as a “huge loss” and describing him as an “incredible person and professional.”
Peterson was a psychologist, writer and educator whose work focused on sexuality and gender and trauma resolution therapy. He was the author or co-author of several works, including 2020’s “The Gender Revolution and New Sexual Health” and a textbook, released in 2022, “Sex and Gender: Current Clinical Concepts and Practices.” He was one of the final clinical fellows of the Masters and Johnson Institute, founded by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, who were pioneers in the study of human sexuality. He was also, as the News reported in 2022, a passionate educator on issues of cultural diversity and white privilege.
Beyond his professional life, Peterson was an “incredible, loving husband,” Dixon Peterson told the News this week.
“He had this way of instinctively knowing and giving a person what they needed,” Dixon Peterson said. “He has truly been the wind beneath my wings, and I cannot express how devastated I am that he’s no longer in my life.”
She said Peterson loved people, no matter who they were, “warts and all,” and had a talent for “meeting people where they were,” in both professional settings and in his personal life.
“That was probably one of his greatest gifts — he created this space of acceptance, and people responded to that,” she said.
Dixon Peterson said her husband loved being a part of the Yellow Springs community, and was keen to give his “time, money, patience and knowledge” to those around him.
“He was ready to step in, no questions asked,” she said. “I’ve received so many calls and texts and letters from people who are just devastated.”
Dixon Peterson described Peterson as a “devoted family man” who had several children, each of whom he “loved dearly.” She said she mourns “what was taken” from herself and Peterson’s family, but also for the wider community, on which “Doc Pete” left a lasting impression.
“This is so fresh that it hasn’t even rippled out yet,” she said. “You know, you throw a pebble into water and it ripples out — this is going to ripple out for years, and it will affect not only people in the community who have benefitted from knowing him and from his expertise and talents, but the potential people who could have benefitted from him. His death has robbed so many people.”
Peterson was, Dixon Peterson said, the “most beautiful man” she had ever met.
“I was amazed that he chose me and I was humbled on a daily basis to be around him,” she said. “I loved and admired him.”
The News will continue to follow this story as it develops.
The YS Community Food Pantry, located at Central Chapel AME Church, 411 S. High St., is open 2–4 p.m. the second and fourth Thursday of each month, except for national holidays, when it moves to the Tuesday before.
Pantry access is from the Stafford Street parking lot at the back of the church.
The next open dates are Jan. 23 and Feb. 13.
Mercifully, my sister-in-law is safe.
She lives on the eastern side of Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, which, for now, is shielding her from one of the worst and most devastating wildfires in U.S. history.
They began Tuesday, Jan. 7, when Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds caught a spark and quickly spread the blaze across nearly 40,000 water-starved acres, turning so much of LA into a nightmarish inferno.
At the time I’m writing this, on Jan. 13, the wildfires have claimed the lives of 24 people, forced approximately 180,000 others to evacuate and have destroyed more than 12,000 residences, businesses and schools. Two dozen people are missing, and the infernos created upwards of $250 billion in damage. Those numbers will surely go up with each of my keystrokes.
So much of LA is incomprehensible. Hollywood opulence has been reduced to ash and whole neighborhoods are smoldering ruins. Though the blazes indiscriminately tore through celebrity mansions and lower-income communities, the Associated Press has already surmised that the wildfires will likely leave behind huge disparity in their wake — rendering LA, a notoriously socio-economically unequal city, even more unequal.
The Altadena community, for example, has been an affordable haven for generations of Black and immigrant families avoiding discriminatory housing practices elsewhere. The Eaton fire has almost entirely leveled that area.
The celebrities who lost their homes — including Paris Hilton and Mel Gibson and the like — will surely bounce back, but what of the Altadena residents? Where will they go?
I’d like to think places like Yellow Springs would welcome them with open arms.
I have, after all, met a number of relatively new villagers in recent years who have referred to themselves as “climate refugees.”
One new Yellow Springs family told me not long ago that they were tired of the ongoing threat in California of wildfires, mudslides and earthquakes. Another person, this one from Colorado, said the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire was the final straw; she sought refuge in the less variable, more predictable conditions of Yellow Springs.
Climate migration is nothing new. The International Displacement Monitoring Centre estimates that an annual average of 21.5 million people were forcibly displaced each year by weather-related events — such as floods, storms, wildfires and droughts — between 2008 and 2016.
That figure reached a record 32.6 million in 2022. The Institute for Economics and Peace expects even that to grow to frightening highs in the coming decades: By 2050, a predicted 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally due to climate change and natural disasters.
What we must accept is that 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history, that wildfires are unusual in Southern California in January, that capitalism encourages irresponsible logging and matchbox landscapes, that catastrophic cyclones shouldn’t reach Appalachia, that wildfires are burning hotter and moving faster than ever, that growing coastal storms can carry more moisture, that so many biomes have turned into pressure cookers, and that people on the margins are always the first to die and suffer the brunt of climate collapse.
If we accept all that, then we necessarily must also accept that people will seek refuge where they can — that the demographics of the Midwest will change enormously over our lifetimes.
We saw last fall how our new Haitian neighbors — who themselves sought refuge next door — were treated. Will we make room for a future mass of Floridians whose homes sunk into the sea? Or will they suffer the same hateful, nativist ire?
Like anywhere else in the Midwest, Yellow Springs must prepare for tidal waves of new neighbors. What will our raft look like?
*Tin Can Economy is an occasional column that reflects on object, form and scale. It considers the places and spaces we inhabit, their constituent materials and our relationship to it all. Its author, Reilly Dixon, works in production and as a reporter for the News.
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