Your Monroe city election results

Here are the official Observer predictions of the outcome of the Monroe city elections.
Mayor -- WORRELL, by a wider margin than the last two contests between Iaco and Cappy because Iaco and Burkett will split most of Cappy's votes. Thanks partly to Cappy himself who chose to throw Burkett a bone, guaranteeing a split. McIntyre and McElligot will just make Worrell's margin greater. McElligot will, of course, come in last.
1st Precinct -- CLARK in a squeaker over Hensley because people tend to trust a state cop more than a Detroit Edison worker. Clark also needs this win if he ever plans to run for sheriff, which he probably will.
2nd Precinct -- Floriday will be upset when PAISLEY wins because he doesn't even have Paisley's track record of ethics and professional licensing problems, junkets to Hawaii and attempts to bump retirees from the retiree board. Sweat will pull votes from both of them, but not enough to make a difference.
3rd Precinct -- McGhee, naturally.
4th Precinct -- MOLENDA because Martin and Guyor will partially split beenthere-donethatvotes and Martin hasn't even pretended to be interested in city business except for trying to get John Patterson a parking pass.
5th Precinct -- CONNER in a close one because she knows how to use absentee ballots and Compora's in your face style has never flown well in Monroe and because Rosenberger is a recluse, for pete's sake. But Compora wins anyway because her goal on council was to make life miserable for Cappy.
6th Precinct -- BENETEAU, who might end up as mayor someday, but not in this decade.
Clerk -- EVANS for at least another term or two unless city voters decide the city doesn't need such an office.

Disclaimer -- The above predictions do not necessarily reflect the Observer's personal preferences and are not meant to be used for wagers or influencing betting pools. Use of the predictions for any other purpose than amusement is strictly prohibited.

BONUS PREDICTION -- Order of finish in mayor's race: Worrell, Iacoangeli, Burkett, McIntryre, McElligott.

Sidewalks paved with (your) gold

Down at the bottom of a article in the Monroe Snooze the other day was a proposal from Monroe's city engineer to approve a new tax to pay for sidewalk improvements. The way Pat Lewis explained it, the city would save a lot of money, time and paperwork if it just designated about a tenth of a mill, maybe more, for sidewalk repair. Basically this means the city wouldn't have to send out nasty reminder letters to homeowners that they have to repair the cracked block of sidewalk in front of their house or else their car will be booted.
Actually, the city just will go ahead and pave it and attach it to your property tax bill. This always has been a time consuming process and a bone of contention because homeowners -- even if they agree the sidewalk needs repaired -- then have to hustle up a contractor or try the do-it-yourself route -- and hope the repair meets city standards.
Lewis' plan makes some sense. He basically wants to spread the cost of each sidewalk repair across the whole group of homeowners to eliminate all the hassling and quibbling.
I got a better idea. Why not stop pretending that homeowners have some inborn responsibility for keeping up their sidewalks? Most had nothing to do with wanting a sidewalk, installing it or even using it. Besides that, it's a divider between the property that the homeowner owns and the right of way or boulevard that the city contends it owns.
Why don't we just all bill the city for upkeep for the boulevard -- all the gas and trimming we do on that godforsaken no man's land?
I didn't think the idea of saving money was simply to shift costs to millages to be paid by all. Why not just cut out the sidewalk repair program totally and save everybody a lot of cost and hassle. After all, if it's the homeowner's responsibility, they will be the ones sued if someone trips, not the city, right?
What headcase is going to back a tax increase right now anyway?

First election predictions

It's that time of year when I start making political predictions.
I already have a good idea of how most of the Monroe city council races will turn out, but I need to wait a few more days for things to settle out a bit in a couple of races.
Yeah, I've already got the mayor's race nailed down, but there are some council spots that are tough to figure.
I mean I'm confident I could score 75 percent right now, but if you've followed this blog for a while, you know I shoot for 90 percent, but usually hit 82 to 86 percent.
There's just a whole batch of candidates, which means a lot of dark horses and spoilers, so I'll hold off for a few days.
Just to give you a taste of my accuracy, however, I'll predict Beneteau and McGhee for council and Evans for clerk.

Time for a citizen's arrest

I don't know how this escaped me, but I'm told that Monroe County sheriff's officer Brett Ortolan is trying to hold up the county for some sort of software program he developed to log department reports.
Word is the county needs something like this.
When questions were raised about whether it would be a conflict of interest for the county to purchase this from Ortolano, the county attorney said it probably wouldn't be.
THIS IS NUTS!
I don't care if the software program is the best thing since the 9 mm. It is a clear definition of a conflict of interest, especially if the county just hands over the dough to Ortolano.
They should fire the attorney for charging for that kind of advice.
What should the county do?
Write bid specs -- at least go through the motions -- so that it appears they are trying to follow proper procedure. Who knows, they might get a better program at a cheaper price.
If they don't, just watch, some programming company will file suit claiming it was frozen out of an opportunity to bid.
Then the county attorneys will make more money trying to defend the county!

Another food-for-thought theory

Let's chalk this one up to misguided campaign helpers.
Have you noticed the number of campaign signs that are on front lawns alongside FOR SALE signs?
I know it's a tough real estate market, but isn't this sending the wrong message about the candidate.
If I have a DINGBAT FOR MAYOR sign in my yard, right next to my FOR SALE sign, what message am I sending? My first impression was that the property owner was saying this place is going to hell and I'm getting out of here so I really don't care who's mayor. This DINGBAT guy might or might not be good for the city (or neighborhood), but what do I care, I'm leaving town.
Or maybe they're saying, if this guy gets elected, I'm leaving town.
Or maybe, if this guy gets elected, he's not going to make things better, so I'm leaving town anyway.
Really, is there any good spin you can put on something like this?
Maybe, I'm hoping this guy gets elected because then people will think the city's on its way up and I'll be able to sell my house and get outta town before they wise up?
At the very least, it looks like a candidate is being supported by someone who's intent on leaving town.

Signs of group think?

As I drive around the city, I see more campaign signs in groups.
Maybe this is supposed to be truth in advertising, but I think it's a dumb move.
Sure, it's a way to spread signs around as quickly as possible. You hit one house, get permission to post a sign as well as signs for two of your campaigning friends.
But it's goofy. To me it looks like Iacoangeli, Guyor and Floraday or Paisley, Burckett and Conner stand for the same things.
As someone who doesn't have a real clue about how city politics works, I'll just chalk it up to my ignorance. Let's say you're on the periphery of politics and you don't know much about anyone, but you know that Guyor or Paisley is a stinker because they don't return you phone calls. When you see one of their signs alongside others, doesn't it lower your estimation of those other candidates?
But when I see a sign like Bob Clark or Mark Worrell standing alone in a yard, I get the sense that these guys are independent thinkers not beholden to anyone, and not group thinkers, who will vote lockstep if they get on council and don't seem to be affiliated with the stinkers I don't like.
Am I the only one in town who thinks that if everyone on council thinks alike -- no matter what they think -- it's not necessarily a good thing?
If that's what we're shooting for, maybe we should just have a single-rule dictatorship. That won't be messy at all.

Did he have someone in mind?

It's been a busy week and I missed the local version of Comedy Central -- the MPACT broadcast of the Monroe City Council meeting.
But someone told me that soon-to-be-mayor Pat McElligot stood up and advocated a fast-track implementation of the city slash-and-burn cost-cutting study.
Hmmm. I wonder if he had anyone specific in mind to lop from the city payroll?
Like maybe his ex-squeeze and her new main squeeze?
I guess you gotta start somewhere.
But if it was me, I'd wait until I got elected mayor so I would have the pleasure of dropping the axe myself.
I think his message was that council can't stand Pat.