Brimfield to swear in new fiscal officer amid number of controversies

Brimfield Township’s new fiscal officer has faced headwinds after township trustees learned she had been found fiscally liable in two cases filed in Portage County Common Pleas Court related to her small business.

In one case, Jasmine Golden was found liable for, among other things, having acted with fraudulent intent when she failed to pay the construction company working on her new bakery build-out. In the other, she was found liable for having broken her lease and damaging her landlord’s property at the bakery site, located in the Meadowview Square shopping center between Kent and Ravenna.

Golden told The Portager she was transparent in her interviews and believes her past hardships as an entrepreneur give her hard-earned experience that will be beneficial to the township.

Golden will be sworn in to the role during the township’s trustee meeting on Aug. 6, which starts at 8 a.m. Trustees also expect her to explain her past and ongoing legal woes at that time.

The roadblocks to Golden’s appointment are only the latest in a contentious few weeks for Brimfield’s financial department.  

John Dalziel, the township’s fiscal officer for almost two decades, resigned effective July 31, the day before Golden was previously scheduled to be sworn in. Dalziel stated that he was resigning to devote more attention to his private insurance business. But his decision coincided with financial concerns lobbed at him by Trustee Nic Coia.

Instead of overseeing Golden’s originally planned swearing-in ceremony — the final step in officially taking office — Trustees Sue Fields and Mike Kostensky on July 31 held an emergency meeting rescinding both Golden’s appointment and their acceptance of Dalziel’s resignation. Coia did not attend the meeting.

Later that same day, though, Holly Woods, Brimfield’s business manager, said the Portage County Prosecutor’s Office advised that the trustees’ actions were invalid because the trustees had actually appointed Golden on July 28 and had already forwarded their resolution to the Portage County Board of Elections.

Woods declined to provide The Portager with a copy of Assistant Prosecutor Chris Meduri’s statements to the township, saying he had notified her that “all correspondence from the prosecutor’s office reflecting legal advice falls under the attorney client privilege and cannot be provided.”

According to the township’s Aug. 4 Facebook post, Brimfield’s legal consultant is looking into concerns residents have raised “so that they may be addressed appropriately.”

Speaking to The Portager, Fields said she and her colleagues chose Golden, a Brimfield resident, “based on her educational background and skillset presented. She’s phenomenal.”

In a July 28 social media post, the trustees noted Golden’s extensive experience in local government, nonprofits and educational accounting. She holds a master’s degree in forensic and fraud accounting, the post states.

The trustees later received information “that I believed needed to be confirmed prior to her accepting the position and being sworn into office,” Fields said, adding that she had insufficient time to research the new information prior to the scheduled swearing-in ceremony.

“Holly Woods, our business manager, was gathering the information for us to review. My intent was to slow down and delay the appointment date for a short time to make certain the board was well informed,” Fields said, declining further comment.

Despite Golden’s unresolved bankruptcy and the civil judgments against her, Woods said the township’s insurance company, through the Ohio Township Association Risk Management Authority, can and will cover her with the necessary Faithful Performance of Duty process, which the township uses instead of bonding its employees.

Dalziel’s term of office would have expired March 31, 2028. Should Golden be sworn in as the township’s newest fiscal officer, her name, as well as those of anyone who would like to oppose her, will appear on the November ballot.

Past lawsuits against Golden

The civil cases against Golden centered on Oh My Yum, a bakery business Golden established in Meadowview Square, a shopping center near the Kent-Ravenna border. One case focused on Golden’s failure to pay a construction company for its work building the bakery; the other focused on her breaking her lease at the shopping plaza.

The first case, filed Feb. 13, 2024, in Portage County Common Pleas Court, pitted Golden, then owner and operator of the former Oh My Yum bakery, against Mitter Construction, LLC and its owner/operator Nathan Mitter. Mitter alleged that Golden had failed to pay the final $81,486.74 she owed for construction work he had completed at her Meadowview Square business. The bakery no longer exists.

In April 2024, Portage County Common Pleas Judge Becky Doherty ruled against Golden, finding her liable for “breach of contract and fraudulent inducement,” of having “acted with fraudulent intent,” and of having “made material misrepresentations to plaintiffs which were intended to deceive plaintiffs.”

Doherty ordered Golden to pay the outstanding bill, but Golden filed for bankruptcy in June 2024. Later that month, Doherty ordered her employer, the Portage County Board of Developmental Disabilities, to garnish her personal wages.

Meanwhile, in April 2024, Meadowview Property, LLC had sued Oh My Yum Inc. and Golden’s spouse Phillip Golden for $122,426.57 for unpaid rent and damages to the premises. The lawsuit also named Jasmine Golden as Oh My Yum’s statutory agent. Having filed bankruptcy, Jasmine Golden was not named in the original lawsuit, but was later added as a defendant.

In June 2024, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio issued a one-year extension of the bankruptcy case, noting that the Goldens intended to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy together. The case has not yet been resolved.

According to court documents, Jasmine Golden was the listed tenant of the Meadowview Square store, and she had signed the lease. In July 2024, Doherty ruled against Oh My Yum, Ltd. and the Goldens for the full amount.

Golden’s response

Golden told The Portager she never informed the interview panel about her civil legal entanglements because she believed they would come out in the background checks.

“Why would I need to tell them that if they’re going to run a thorough background check and find all those items out?” she asked. “I was very transparent in my interview by informing them that I know what a failed business is. I personally didn’t think it mattered, because it has nothing to do with my job or what I can do or with my duties as a fiscal officer.”

Golden said she learned some “hard lessons” that allow her to offer hope to others, from a multi-million dollar township to a business to a person. She said she applied for the job to help clean up Brimfield’s financial challenges and bring transparency, accountability and hope to the community she calls home.

“I go through things to be a testimony. God puts us all on a journey, and mine just includes that hardship, and now I can help other people navigate through that hardship,” she said.

She attributed the Common Pleas Court rulings to her having failed to respond to Mitter’s accusations of fraudulent intent.

“They assumed the allegation was true because I didn’t respond in a timely manner, because I was in the process of retaining legal counsel. So anytime something goes unanswered, they decide for the plaintiff, but there were no facts against me that I did what they claimed that I did,” Golden said.

Both cases are now associated with Golden’s still-unresolved Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing. 

Acknowledging that Brimfield is embroiled in its own fiscal difficulties related to the fire station expansion project, Golden said her experience gives her insight.

“I’ve been on the side of that, so possibly I have a perspective that can help in a situation, because I have been there. It’s something that you can’t hide from. You can’t run from it. You have to face things head on,” she said.

Brimfield’s hiring process

Woods, who is responsible for conducting background checks on prospective employees, said those checks explore criminal convictions, not civil liabilities.

The township’s standards exceed those of the state, she said, noting that elected officials need only be township residents who are eligible to vote. A fiscal officer doesn’t even need to have relevant experience, she said.

Brimfield Township Police Captain Chris Adkins, who was a member of the township’s interview panel, said a more extensive background check is reasonable for a person who handles millions of taxpayer dollars.

Adkins told The Portager he’d asked Woods on July 14 for the resumes and any background information she had on all three candidates who had applied for the post. She only provided the candidates’ names, which, since more than one person can carry the same name, is not enough to conduct a reliable check, he said.

Woods, Adkins said, assured the interview panel members that she would conduct the background checks, and she did. The business manager told The Portager that by July 21, she knew that none of the candidates had criminal histories in Portage or Summit counties, that they had no federal criminal histories, that their Social Security numbers came up clean, and that they were not on the National Sex Offender registry. An Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation check was run, as well, and came back clean.

“If she were elected, there’s no background check that’s done. There’s no background check done at all. There’s no fingerprints that are done for an elected official,” Woods said. “So this is more than what would ever be done for someone who’s elected.”

That’s not good enough for Adkins. Though he was a non-voting member of the interview panel that also included the trustees, county Auditor Matt Kelly, a second representative from the auditor’s office and Woods, Adkins said he urged his colleagues to conduct a more extensive background check. At the minimum, he said he would have researched local court records associated with all three candidates.

Adkins said he still believes Golden is “a great choice,” but added, “I just don’t like that the public had to provide the background information to us.”

He told The Portager he decided not to send the trustees a July 17 email he’d written detailing his concerns, but did send it on Aug. 2. On request, he sent a copy of the email to The Portager.

Adkins’ email reiterated his frustration over being asked to interview candidates without knowing anything about them. Quickly glancing over a resume a few minutes before an interview is unfair to the candidates and to township residents, he wrote.

Accompanying the Aug. 2 email was a note:

“Had I had a chance to do a basic background check before the interviews, we could have talked to Jasmine about the bankruptcy and fraud allegations, and got her side of the story — which is the proper way to interview a candidate,” Adkins wrote. “What happened on Thursday would not have happened and we would not look the way we do now. This all could have been avoided.”

Previous allegations from Coia

The hiring is only necessary at all because Brimfield’s current fiscal officer resigned in mid-term. In the lead-up to Dalziel’s final day in office, Coia questioned if taxpayer dollars had been mismanaged.

Coia, who is seeking reelection this fall, said his concerns centered around the township’s general fund balance and the cost of Brimfield’s fire station expansion.

Dalziel had not provided critical information, leaving trustees to figure out where to find the funds to cover the township’s basic needs, including salary payments, Coia told The Portager. He said he had been asking Dalziel how Brimfield finances got into such a state, but had received no answers.

“When a fiscal officer ‘retires’ in the middle of a financial mess, I don’t see that as retirement, I see that as resignation. Resignation from accountability,” Coia wrote in a July 8 Facebook post. “And it happened the moment I said ‘enough is enough’ and refused to be bullied or intimidated into silence. Since then, I’ve watched meetings go unattended, financial concerns ignored, and communication fall apart.”

Taking issue with Coia’s premise, outgoing trustee Kostensky said that while some information requests take time to process, the flow of information from Dalziel’s office had never been lacking.

What is clear is that the $8 million the trustees originally budgeted for the fire station expansion quickly turned into $9.5 million when pandemic-era prices sent supply costs skyrocketing, Kostensky and Dalziel told The Portager. The fiscal officer also said he does not believe the trustees could reasonably have prevented additional fire station expansion overages, now at $670,000 and growing.