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Warren Mayor Jim Fouts releases recorded State of the City speech

Posted at 10:40 PM, Mar 29, 2017
and last updated 2017-03-30 17:16:08-04

The Mayor of Warren, Jim Fouts, has released the State of the City address, but instead of delivering it in person, he made a video recording.

WATCH FULL ADDRESS HERE

7 Action News spoke with Warren City Councilman, Ron Papandrea, who said he didn’t speak directly with Fouts, but he can guess why he did this.

He said Fouts wanted to focus on the positive success of Warren without interruptions or protestors.

There have been protestors at some of the city council meetings recently.

"These protestors have threatened to boycott business and picket businesses and he wanted to avoid any possibility that the state of the city address being disrupted in that way,” said Papandrea.

7 Action News was at Tuesday’s council meeting where things got heated with protestors.

Fouts is accused of making degrading and racist comments on tape recordings, but he has maintained the tapes are not him. 

"He says that's they're not him and I take him at his word, we've shown the technology is out there where you can manipulate people's voices,” said Papandrea.

Papandrea said the people of Warren are happy with their mayor.

"The more people from other cities come and tell us here in Warren that our mayor is no good, the more popular he's going to become frankly,” said Papandrea.

The mayor did return a phone call by 7 Action News.  He stated he was at a concert and couldn’t speak long but would be happy to discuss the state of the city on Thursday.