{"id":176762,"date":"2024-03-11T03:49:39","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T08:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=176762"},"modified":"2024-03-11T03:49:40","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T08:49:40","slug":"mayor-issues-statement-about-speakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2024\/03\/11\/mayor-issues-statement-about-speakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayor issues statement about speakers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>VW independent staff<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Van Wert Mayor Ken Markward has issued a statement, after a Van Wert Municipal Court jury found a man not guilty of criminal damaging and criminal mischief charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Municipal Court records show Joe Jared, a former city council candidate, was acquitted of the misdemeanor charges on Friday. He was charged after unhooking a pair of speakers on a pole outside of his business\/residence in the 100 block of W. Main St. last October and again in January. He admitted during a council meeting that he had disconnected the speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The speakers are owned by Main Street Van Wert and pipe music throughout the downtown area, generally between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Markward issued the following statement Saturday morning:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe outdoor speakers owned by Main Street Van Wert (MSVW) on the pole near 113 W. Main St. have been turned off since mid-January, pending the outcome of a criminal trial related to those speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trial has concluded, and the jury found the defendant not guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My interpretation of the jury&#8217;s verdict is that the City does not have the right to use speakers near a building if the owner resides in the building and does not want the speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the near future, those speakers will be removed from that pole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In conjunction with MSVW, the City will now consider how to handle the variety of possible conflicting future requests (for example, if a resident wants the speaker, but the owner does not).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VW independent staff Van Wert Mayor Ken Markward has issued a statement, after a Van Wert Municipal Court jury found a man not guilty of criminal damaging and criminal mischief charges. Municipal Court records show Joe Jared, a former city council candidate, was acquitted of the misdemeanor charges on Friday. He was charged after unhooking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 13:42:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176763,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176762\/revisions\/176763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}