Good downtown effort

Congrats are in order for the Downtown Monroe Business Network for trying to keep their places open longer on a coordinated basis. Anyone who's had a small business downtown understands how hard that is to do. It's almost as bad as staffing a booth at the Monroe County Fair -- you have to spread yourself and your workers even thinner.
The idea is to capture some of the people who might come to downtown restaurants for th e Blues series events.
There were some heavier crowds downtown this past week but the point is that the downtown merchants are trying to coordinate things. It's not a bad idea since a lot of people work during the day and shop at night or on weekends.
It's always a risk to do these things and hopefully it will pay off for the downtown stores. I'm not sure who's idea it was, but at least it an effort worth trying.
Gabe Martin of Martin's Shoe House heads up the downtown group. If anybody knows what will or won't work downtown, it should be him since his family's store has been downtown since the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Good luck to the group and if anybody hasn't been downtown on a Thursday night, they should try it.
Try supporting our small downtown merchants for a change, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Junk mail

It's the political season and that means more junk mail from candidates. I got a bunch of the stuff the other day and really enjoy it because of all the crap it contains.
Here's a sampling:
John Manor has a little mail piece that says "Lansing is broken, and John Manor is the kind of leader we need to fix it."
(So like what has he led recently?)
It also says he's an award-winning journalist and family man whose running for the state house.
(He's a journalist? You mean one of those people who ranks below lawyers in terms of public trust and respect?)
It calls him "Independent Reformer John Manor."
(No it doesn't mean he's running as an Independent. The only place it says he's a Republican, though, is in the tiny print saying it came from the Michigan Republican Party).
Bottom line, it presents him as someone who shades the truth, is paid to distort truth and is afraid to admit he's Republican. But the brochure's tiny print also notes that it's "not authorized by any candidate," so I guess we can't blame John.

Junk mail number two came from Kate Ebli, Manor's opponent.
It says "as a vice president of a communications company, Kate Ebli fought for tax incentives that helped create hundreds of jobs ..."
(She used to work for Comcast and lobbied for tax breaks for that cable company).
It also says she supports repeal of the Single Business Tax -- "and believes in the power of local businesses to create good jobs with health care benefits."
(So do I, but why is that a qualification to hold office?)
It also says "she opposes giving taxpayer resources to illegal immigrants and supports punishing employers who hire them."
(I guess that means she'll shut down Monroe County's illegal immigrant detention center and go after Monroe County farmers who use migrant workers).
At least her flier clearly identifies her as a Democrat.
Bottom line: Her qualifications for office are about as slim as Manor's.

Junk mail number three came from Randy Richardville.
It says he "knows how to attract businesses and create jobs. He's been doing it for years. As an economic development director, he's brought good-paying jobs to our communities"
(We'll when he was a Repbublican state legislator, he probably did work to bring jobs to the county, but he's only been an economic development director for about a year.)
It also says he's "ready to change the anti-jobs climate in Lansing."
(I guess that means throwing all the bums out of the Republican-controlled legislature).
Bottom line: He's seems afraid to mention he was term-limited as a House member because he might be seen as a career politician (as if there's something wrong with that).

Junk mail number four came from Dick DeVos, the Republican running for governor.
It says he has "the guts to get the job done."
(That's cause he'll be a real man as governor, not a girly-man.)
It says he will create "more health insurance options for businesses and their employees to reduce the price of health care."
(Since when is the state in the business of creating health insurance options for business? Is he talking about a state-financed health insurance plan for private business? It thought that was a Democratic concept.)
It says he is "the independent leader that nobody can buy."
(That's because he's a multi-millionaire who doesn't need the money.)
It says he's "not a career politician."
(Unlike that evil Randy Richardville).

I can't wait for the next batch of junk mail.

Just more rumors, of course

I have been told that some portion of the tiny segment of semi-regular readers of this blog have been reading and posting comments on "company" time, if you know what I mean.
If this continues, someone might report you to your "supervisor."
These are just rumors, of course.
Now get back to work!

Blush a little, blush a lot

I was following a Monroe Police car the other night and I guess I noticed for the first time they have their Website -- www.monroepolice.org -- painted right on the car. I figured for them to pay to have the address on each patrol car, it must be some helpful site.
So I went there.
I expected to find some basic crime prevention tips.
Nope.
I expected to find some statistics.
Naw.
I expected to find a place where I could file a complaint online, like the sheriff has.
Apparently not.
I expected to see maybe some pictures of cops in classrooms spreading the good word to kids.
Not quite.
I took a breath and looked again.
Then I realized the site apparently hadn't been updated for months and apparently some parts haven't been updated for years.
That's okay though.
My guess is that it's probably being maintained on a totally volunteer basis by cops on their own time.
If so, I can understand if its a little behind the times.
But, folks, every cop car is a rolling advertisement for this site. Basically, 24 hours a day, there's a car on the streets saying look at the site.
In that context, it's a bit of an embarassment.
Then I remembered the story I heard about the sheriff's department having to handle a serious crime in the city not too long ago because no city police detective could be mustered to the scene.
Now if that's true, it really is an embarassment and an even poorer advertisement for the police.
I wonder if the city's hired-gun efficiency experts will hear about that when they do their interviews of various city employees.
I bet that kind of stuff just cheeses off the real working stiffs in the police department. And remember, most of them carry guns.

Hold the phone!

What's this? The city is going to re-fill that city hall switchboard operator post?
That spot was dropped in order to save money. Ever since then, I've heard nothing but complaints from my fellow citizens about not being able to contact anyone at city hall. Some people also aren't quite sure where to go if they visit city hall in person.
This might be a case of city officials being too close to the situation. I'm not sure they realize that most city residents don't ever have to go to city hall for any reason, or rarely for any reason. And if you're an out-of-towner and get a parking ticket, not only can't you find city hall, you're not sure where in city hall you have to pay your ticket (since you're also ignorant of the parking-ticket-fixer program run by downtown merchants).
You can figure out why the city might not have heard the beefs about the switchboard operator position -- no one could get through the telephone maze to voice their disapproval.
But better late than never, though. City officials probably don't really have a clue about how right that move really was.
Now let's hope the city's hired-gun efficiency consultants don't come back with a recommendation to dump the position.
That REALLY would be a bad call.

There oughta be a law

Cell phones are a great invention. I have one myself.
I don't think they oughta pass a law that says you can get a ticket for using a cell phone in a car.
Anything can distract people from driving, not just cell phones. I've never heard about any fatal car accidents where someone killed themselves using a cell phone. Sure, pedestrians have been hit or run over by drivers using cell phones, but I've never heard of someone just running off the road.
What bugs me more about cell phones is the lack of common courtesy on the part of cell phone users. In church, at plays in meetings, some idiot always has a ringer or tone on. Doesn't it dawn on them that the things never existed at some point and they managed to be out of phone contact for a whole church service and still survived. They oughta fine people who create a public disturbance because they don't know how to put a cell phone on vibrate.
They also oughta fine people for talking loudly on their cell phones. It's usually totally unnecessary.
I was in a drug store the other day and some woman is walking through the aisles talking loudly on her cell phone, describing all the physical symptoms she has. Talk about TOO MUCH INFORMATION!
She should be fined AND sent to a leper colony.
Also, have you noticed how people using a cell phone can't seem to stop moving about. Next time you see someone in public standing up using a cell phone, watch how much they walk and pace and change positions. It's like they have to have body movement to get their message across.
They should be fined too!
I guess the whole point will be moot once they conclusively determine that cell phones really do cause brain cancer.
On second thought, maybe that's what the problem is with irritating cell phone users.

Decisions, bias and wasted dollars

Cash-short Monroe City Council decided to pay a company $77,000 to find areas in city government that could be trimmed in order to save a couple million over the next couple of years.
It's good that council is thinking about this stuff, but they're selling themselves way short. Their consultant is going to talk to various city department heads and a few other employees and tell the city what it already should know about itself. How long can you be mayor of a city and not know where the waste is? How long can you serve on city council or have been a city employee and not know where efficiencies could be found? Does anyone think that Ford Motor Co. had to hire a consultant to come up with ideas that might turn the company around?
Hardly.
So what is it that the city is buying? They are buying political deniability.
But only a dose or two.
As John Martin, one member of the council correctly observed Monday, at some point the consultant's recommendations are going to come to council and the final decision on whether to put them into effect will lie with council. And the final decision-making will be made in the usual way -- dependent on which department head or employee group lobbies most effectively and where the council's bias might be.
Suppose the consultant came back and said you have too many cops for a town this size, or you don't have enough serious crime for a police force this size, you should just contract with the sheriff's department. The council would just rubber stamp that idea, right.
No way. They'll weigh their feelings about the police department, their friends on the department, the police chief and how they figure their constituents would react. After filtering the recommendation through all that, they'll act accordingly and someone else will get the shaft. Any deniability will dissolve.
Martin's right. At some point, you won't be able to blame it on the consultant any more. So what's the point. Are we actually so stupid we don't know where the waste is?
Speaking of stupid, how bullheaded does the council have to be not to reverse itself on the silly little ice arena office decision. Mark Worrell hit the nail on the head in addressing council Monday. Just say you had second thoughts, pay to have the management office at the ice arena moved downstairs and take the monkey off your back when Canlan, the arena management company, says it couldn't turn the place around financially.
If anyone doubts that's what might happen, just visit the new arena that opened up the road at Summit Academy. They're going to eat Canlan's lunch. Canlan needs all the help it can get.

No reservations about the city hotel

There's an article in today's Monroe Snooze that says Ken Wickenheiser has bought the old Ciy Hotel and is going to turn it into loft apartments and street level business space.
He's the guy who has spent a pile on turning other downtown rat traps into very viable spaces. Maybe the city should put up a monument to him in the town square.
Better yet, maybe the city should put up a downtown investor wall of fame somewhere visible so all the folks who have taken a gamble on downtown can be recognized -- folks like the Beneteaus, Gruber-Sutton-Graves, Piedmonte, MBT, the Wilsons, Bicas, the Jonses, the Weaklys, the guy who brought his insurance firm to the corner of Monroe and First Sts. Heck, the list could go on and on. To do this in the face of the typical bureaucratic roadblocks one can encounter is deserving of thanks from everyone who's left that cares about downtown. Their efforts also enhance the property values of neighboring property owners who just sit on their hands.
Good luck to Mr. Wickenheiser and others who seem to have no reservations about rolling the dice downtown.

And another thing ...

While I'm ranting about charities, isn't it amazing how many soup kitchens there are around Monroe. I'm not knocking them. They're examples of the purest form of charity. A group gets together and perceives a community need, pools its resources and takes action. The action doesn't necessarily mean they come knockin' on your door lookin' for a donation or tapping you at work. They just find the resources -- sometimes their own -- and do it.
I've played a tiny, tiny role in one of these kitchens and what's more amazing is the full course meals they pull together, complete with desserts. I really admire what these people are doing and hope they're not being taken advantage of.
It's also amazing how many people participate in the annual Relay for Life. Again, it's a bunch of well-motivated people tapping their own resources for a common goal. There are countless efforts like this around the county and most of them seem to do their jobs without the assistance of a professional fundraising group.
They proves that charity really does begin at home.

Let's just call it The Wrong Way

I guess you could call it blasphemy or pretty close to it. But am I the only one getting a little weary of the annual United Way drumbeat. Let's face it, the charity -- at least around here -- seems to have a monopoly on fund raising. All kinds of companies and organizations rally around and sponsor concerted fundraising efforts at plants and businesses. Each year, United Way sets a goal and if I remember correctly it hasn't made its goals for the last few years. I think this weekend they're going to have volunteers on street corners asking for donations. Do they actually think no one has the opportunity to give to the United Way at their plants or offices? Do they think that with business the way it's been that people have a lot of spare change to throw at them? Do they figure that a lot of people just passing through the town are going to dig deep just because they're on the street corner? The United Way isn't really a service agency anyway. It's a fundraiser and distributor. of donated money. After taking an administrative cut, they dole out the rest to agencies that ask them for funds. At the same time, those agencies often do their own independent fundraising. I guess what bugs me is that tons of service organizations raise funds individually and do good works without having a lot of expenses, so what makes the United Way so special that it can tap about every company around for concerted organized fundraising? This is a pretty generous community and there are scads of foundations that quietly do good works. We might need a United Way -- I don't know -- but I think sometimes they go about it the wrong way. I'd welcome any thoughts, explanations or condemnations.

What could a white Republican lawyer have against Detroit?

The season of political dirty tricks has begun. Notice the newspaper ad Wednesday asking "$14 Million For What?" It rats out Rep. Kathy Angerer for voting to send $14 million dollars in extra funding to Detroit Public Schools. "The result -- a teacher strike that cost taxpayers $8.8 million a day." The ad urges readers to call Rep. Angerer and "tell her to stop wasting our tax dollars."
In the fine print, it says it's paid for by "Working for Michigan's Future."
I'm not necessarily a big fan of Angerer, but I suppose the underlying message here is that the Detroit system -- or any other in the state -- should be left to just collapse, and everyone will be better off. That's not only ignorant, it also smacks of racism. Anyone who's familiar with the challenges the Detroit school district has been facing in recent years would at least argue that teachers should be paid well just so they can be retained in the system. If critics of Detroit teachers spent one day in a Detroit Public School classroom, they'd probably nominate them all for sainthood. If they haven't, they should shut up.
But that doesn't stop people like Alan Wilk, a Lansing attorney for Dykema Gossett, the fat cat law firm, from heading up Working for Michigan's Future, which apparently is going to be taking potshots at candidates in key Michigan races until the November election. Wilk, of course, belongs to the Michigan Republican Lawyers Association, which sounds like the kind of group that exists only to do good works for mankind. But he's also worked on the staff of past Republican legislators, so it's understandable he'd be more than willing to carry the toilet water for the GOP.
It's a pretty rank ad. He's probably so proud of it, he and Matt Milosch -- Angerer's November GOP opponent -- are toasting each other over it.
If they are, though, Wilk better be the designated driver. It's a matter of public record that Milosch can't hold his liquor.
But I'm sure that won't become a campaign issue.

Remember 9/11

Today's the 5th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
More than 3,000 people were killed.
Government officials say we are winning the "war on terror."
How can they tell?
They say the proof is there hasn't been any further attacks.
In reality, we can only take solace in the fact that we've slowed the terrorists down.
They killed about 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
It's taken them five years to match the toll in American lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But we really are winning the war on terror.
Yeah. Right.

Prognosticator update

Well, I'll reluctantly take credit for correctly predicting the winner of the District 4 county commissioner race between Floreiene Mentel and Pat Kosanovich. Faithful readers might recall (check the archives if you don't) that I predicted correctly more than 80 percent of the county races in the August primary. I predicted Floreine would win. Of course, the vote turned out a tie. So they drew straws and Floreince got the long one (or was it the short one?) and she was declared winner. But since that's a really stupid and primitive way to decide a close election, both women agreed to a formal recount. The recount was held Friday and the outcome was still a tie, so Floreine still was declared the winner. Forget about that strange glitch involving incompetent poll workers in Precinct 6 where Kosanovich clearly was a big winner. They couldn't recount those ballots because poll workers put the official security seal on the box with blank leftover ballots, not the box that had the voted-on ballots.
County Clerk Geri Allen said it's not clear that it would have changed the outcome. Duh!
What is clear is that this kind of stuff will put Allen's re-election in doubt in the future.
Now Kosanovich said she will launch a write-in campaign in the general election. Those are long odds that she'll win with that tactic, even if most of the voters logically conclude that she was screwed over on this one.
So, reluctantly, I will count Mentel as a winner, even though it increases my prognosticating accuracy.
Coincidentally, it sounds as if Floreine has found some introspection in all of this and has taken to writing her memoirs. Maybe it's a sign that she won't run in the future. If so, it's a good sign. She's a nice lady but, like most of her fellow commissioners, she doesn't belong on the county board.

City cheapskates and the ice arena

The saga of the Monroe ice arena gets whackier and whackier.Folks around here might remember the big controversy about whether a private developer should build an ice rink in the area or whether the city should build a municipal one. Insaner heads prevalied and the city scared off the priivate developers (and the private risk) by pushing forward its own plan.
So the thing was built and in practically its first year of operation even some of the less bright people in the city had the feeling it would leave the city skating on thin financial ice. Well, even the last freespending administration (the Iacoangeli crew) recognized what a drain the ice rink was on city finances so they decided to give the old private ice management team the heave-ho and find a new ice management team. (It is kind of funny how some people still are deluded into believing that the Iacoangeli crew sunk the city's finances by buying and razing dilapidated homes, building splash parks, etc. when the underpinning of the city's current financial problems go back years with the ice rink and still persist today). Nonetheless, Canlan Sports got the management contract and few would doubt these guys are pros -- it's a Canadian outfit that runs ice rinks all around Canada. They've already made quite a few changes in an effort to generate more income (the average city councilperson couldn't tell you what changes, of course, because none of them are that close to the situation). One of Canlan's proposed changes was to move the management office from an inaccessible location on the second floor to a customer-friendly first floor location. The city HAS the capital improvement money to do the work, which in the context of other city spending we've seen, comes at small cost. But when the pitch comes to city council, they give it a thumbs down. We really haven't seen any good results from Canlan, they say. Some of those opposing the idea were some of the newest city councilmen. Here's a clue guys -- when Mayor Al vote WITH Councilwoman Compora on an issue, you gotta believe he sees some of the compelling wisdom of the idea. Hell, he sure doesn't need to mend fences with HER! Forget about her, just fall back on your habit of voting which ever way he votes. It's probably the safest bet.
So what did you accomplish with your independent "thinking?" You gave Canlan an out it can use if it can't turn around the ice arena financially. The monkey's on your own back again. Six months or a year from now when one of you guys starts asking how the ice arena is doing, Canlan's going to come in and say we've done this, this, this, this and this. But we would have been successful if you guys had let us do the office renovation to make the place more inviting and user-friendly so that when people come into the building they know where to go to talk to the people in charge. I can see the Monroe Snooze headline now: Canlan blames city for tying its hands.
By then, the city's financial hole will be deeper and its employees will be fewer.

Have a blast at the park

What a great deal Monroe Township officials made with Stoneco recently.
Remember how long ago township residents and officials fought against the Stoneco quarry being started off Telegraph Rd. on what once was the Dennison farm?
They went to court to stop the quarry, but lost. Then there was a settlement that stipulated how long the quarry should operate and exactly where on the site they can quarry and how far away from the property boundaries they can quarry.
Now we have townships officials wanting to develop a park on 22 acres near the township hall off Dunbar Rd. Suddenly, Stoneco offers 35 acres of its property near the quarry to be part of the proposed park land. So the township says okay, we could use a 60-acre park, 22 acres won't be big enough.
So Stoneco says you can have the land but you have to void parts of the old court agreement and let us quarry earlier on weekends and work longer hours and quarry closer to our borders.
And it's a done deal. Because someone decided a 22-acre park isn't big enough. Because we need a township park about as big as Munson Park.
So the people living near the quarry, who already have to endure periodic dynamite blasts that crack their foundations, their plaster and knock dishes off their shelves find that the quarry is getting its restrictions relaxed because someone at the township sold them down the river.
Does the name Al Barron ring a bell?
Looks like this will be Al's last term in office.
He'll have to go into a rehab resort for ex-township officials/wife-girlfriend beaters/drunks.
Before he does, maybe he can have one last blast at the new park.

Worse than graffiti?

Have you noticed the graffiti that seems to becoming more commonplace in places around downtown Monroe. The city is doing a pretty good job of keeping the graffiti covered up along the riverwalk. It seems like it's one of the few places where gutless little cretins can deface public property. It makes you wish that instead of the new pavilion in Loranger Square, they'd bring back the public stockades.
Speaking of graffiti, how long do we think it will be before some idiot scrawls something on the new pavilion or the new brick of the new bank building?
Also speaking of graffiti, did you hear the one about the downtown business owners who decided to paint a pleasant mural on the brick along W. Front St. It's the north wall of the Brent's Locksmith building. Upstairs, some game women are trying to make a go of an art gallery downtown. Of course, they figured sprucing up the outside of the building might help. Word is that someone -- we won't mention who it might have been in city hall -- decided that the decoration didn't fit in with the facade guidelines of the city. Word is that someone was going to be forced to paint over the mural. Word is that the new city manager Mr. Brown came to the rescue and decided it would be better to have that mural than just the piss stains from street people, alcoholics and others whose only purpose in life seems to be to find a public place to loiter. Heck, at least when the city hotel still was operating a lot of these people had some place to stay out of sight.
BTW, there's no truth to the vicious rumor that the new city manager is related to Don Brown, the owner of the city hotel who has been refusing to fix up his building to meet city standards.