October 3, 2020

Today, our community was visited by several different groups, some of which informed the City that they intended to exercise their rights to assemble and protest on public property. From the moment the City learned about these planned events, our number one priority was the health and safety of our community.

The City did not invite these groups, but it was our obligation to communicate with them as best we could to learn about their plans and intentions – just as we have with past groups that have staged a protest here. I want to thank the New Albany Police Department, Ohio Department of Public Safety and all of our local law enforcement partners for remaining vigilant throughout the past three days in monitoring and reacting to a very fluid situation. Based on the information learned from law enforcement, the City followed our practice of notifying residents about the anticipated time and location of the protests while doing our best not to drive up interest in the events from protesters or counter protesters.

On behalf of the City and our Council, I also want to express our appreciation to the entire New Albany community for remaining calm and level headed during these events. It is certainly a theme for 2020 that we have all lost some control over events taking place in our lives. But we still control the manner in which we react to those events; and thus, each of us have the ability to impact the outcome.

Today, several groups of protesters gathered here to express their viewpoints and then left town without incident in large part because of the collective manner in which our community reacted. Thank you.