Where's the Love?

We're afraid Seven Hills Mayor David Bentkowski doesn't like us very much. And he is especially dipleased with our June Rating the Suburbs issue.

"Our gripe wasn't a bunch of whiny mayors worrying about their suburban rankings," he told Jimmy Malone and John Lanigan on WMJI yesterday morning. "We don't need some gimmick publication to tell us that Seven Hills is a great place to live."

(Hey, we haven't pulled out any gimmicks since ... oh, wait, we do have something planned for April. But you'll have to wait for that. In the meantime ...)

"Our biggest gripe ... was the fact that this is a waste of taxpayer money," Bentkowski continued. "My biggest gripe was every time they do their little survey every year they send a public records request that we have to answer to city hall. I have better things to do than have my chief of police do an exhaustive research survey for the benefit of Cleveland Magazine."

Sure, I could argue that Rating the Suburbs is an incredible reader service that's a valuable starting point for anyone looking to buy a home in Northeast Ohio or that our survey is actually not that time consuming or that it's not even a public records request at all. This is, which was sent over yesterday.)

But why argue. Even if he's not fond of us, we loved — seriously, loved — the mayor's interview. (Kudos to Jimmy & John for the Know Your Mayor segments. They're awesome.) In it, we learned that the mayor will never give another dime to the University of Toledo, his alma mater, because it's offering free tuition to public school students in Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo. ("Government shouldn't be giving free college to people," he argued.)

We also learned that he replaced Drew Carey as a server at the Denny's on Rockside; he has a 9-foot pool in his home but doesn't know how to swim ("It's a Polish thing," he explained); he went to 52 different charity events in 52 weeks; he's probably gossiped about more online than any other official in Northeast Ohio; and there are a ton of women in Seven Hills who love him, and their names are Agnes, Betty, Ethel and Myrtle (they enjoy playing bingo, watching Matlock and making pierogi).

Now, we love all those things, too. So go ahead, add us to your list of admirers.

(Listen to the entire interview here.)