Dec 2009
Year End Reflections
December/31/2009 13:49
2009 was a notable year in Grosse Pointe Shores politics. Spurred on by the phony promise that the higher 20 mil property tax limit was a provision to be utilized only in the case of distant, dire future emergencies, like “ if the Ren-Cen or the Ambassador Bridge get blown up”, voters went to the polls in February, and adopted the new city charter.
The February council election was unprecedented, as Shores voters unequivocally rejected the Cooper slate of incumbents who campaigned collectively. Despite Mayor Cooper’s endorsement, voters sent Carl Kratz and Glen Peters packing. Even more stunning was the fact that two new comers who were elected, Ted Kedzierski and Dan Schulte, were rewarded with first and third place finishes!
While section 3.8 of the new Shores charter indicates that the top vote getter becomes the mayor pro tem amongst all city council members of equal seniority, Mayor Cooper promptly showed the public that it would be business as usual, by passing over top vote getter Ted Kedzierski, and nominating Brian Hunt for the position. Residents were told that if the charter was adopted, that the new city government would get a fresh start. Since all those elected had zero seniority on the Shores city council, Mayor Cooper disregarded the electoral mandate of the people, and ignored at least the spirit of the charter by having the council incumbents vote to make Brian Hunt the mayor pro tem.
It took only three meetings of the city council for Mayor Cooper and his slate to ignore the residents who spoke out at the property tax hearing. The five incumbents outvoted the newcomers and raised property taxes 1 mil or 7%. So much for the incumbents’ campaign promises that becoming a city would result in cost savings, and should not lead to new taxes. As far as the promise that the average property tax bill would rise by only 60 bucks, look at your own summer tax bills and see for yourself.
Residents were told the tax increase was to improve our fund balance, and go for road construction. Now, come to find from the city auditors that due to several years of deficit spending, the Shores unrestricted general fund balance was a negative $210,000. Don’t tell me that the council was not aware of this when they voted to raise taxes under the above pretenses!
The gravity of the Shores grim fiscal reality was made painfully clear when the Free Press published the fact that the State of Michigan has our city under fiscal watch, warning that municipal financial turnarounds are not easy. The Shores failing fiscal grade was based on 2007 data. Couple the falling property tax revenue over the past several years with the negative general fund balance, deficit spending, excessive employee wages, unsustainable retiree benefits, and rising total Shores expenditures and it is very unlikely that our next financial health assessment from the State will be any better.
The incumbent’s reaction to this grave crisis: reappoint Brian Hunt as finance committee chair, and reject the Shores citizen’s demand to impanel a blue ribbon committee of residents with expertise to help provide guidance. Is it realistic for residents to expect that the incumbents who created the current fiscal mess have the ability to solve the problem when they failed to recognize it in the first place? What concrete actions have the incumbents taken to avoid another tax increase in 2010?
Looking ahead to the upcoming New Year, and thankfully on the positive side, Shores residents should be encouraged by the willingness of many citizens to rise to the occasion and to support the democratic effort to hold Mayor Cooper and his incumbent slate accountable with the Shores Recall petition drive. As this year ends, I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation both to the loyal cadre of dedicated volunteers out circulating petitions, as well as to the many concerned Shores voters who have lent their name to the cause by signing the petitions. Your support means more than words can express.
As the first decade of the new millennium ends, I remain optimistic that 2010 will be another history making year in Grosse Pointe Shores. Who know what events there will be to blog about at the end of the upcoming year?
Tyranny or Liberty for the Shores?
December/14/2009 19:36
As the recall campaign progresses, it is interesting to hear fairly uniform feedback from the volunteers who are canvassing the Shores to collect signatures. A number of consistent observations have been made. First, and most encouraging, is the fact that most Shores residents are gratified to learn many of the objective facts about the precarious financial situation of the city from the recall workers, who report that the baseline level of cognizance amongst the citizenry as to the precise details of our financial crisis remains relatively low. As the volunteers spend time educating voters as to the specifics of the Shores fiscal crisis, the vast majority of residents who sign are endorsing the recall of Mayor Cooper and all four of his incumbent council slate.
The discouraging news is that many of those residents who are unwilling to endorse this democratic effort to hold the responsible officials accountable indicate that they fear repercussion if they lend their signature to the cause. The reported reasons are again consistent: “I’m worried if they see my name that they will raise my taxes” or, “I plan to appeal my tax assessment, and if I sign the recall then they will turn me down.” Others fear other undue imposition of city authority, stating “I’d like to sign, but I’m going to need to apply for a building permit soon”, or “They will make me replace my unlevel sidewalk if I take a stand.” Others feel intimidated for social reasons, like “I went to school with one of the council members” or “We belong to the same organization.”
The fear of retribution from the city government that many Shores residents have is understandable at surface level. All one needs to do is to review some of the Video Clips posted elsewhere on the web site to see the scorn and derision that residents and even newly elected council members are treated with by the incumbents.
Other threats to our civil liberties are apparent. Tax dollars were used to fight a freedom of information act request to make employee and salary information from becoming public before the council and charter election. Shores funds were paid to the municipal attorney to review candidate literature, as documented in the billings from the Clark Hill law firm, an incident that remains under investigation by the Michigan Department of State. Mayor Cooper had citizens ejected from a public meeting by the police chief. The spirit, if not the letter, of the Open Meetings Act appears to have been violated when a special council meeting with the Shores water supply consultants was held without the public receiving due notice.
Rather than fearing retribution and being intimidated by the incumbents, I hope Shores residents will take the time to reflect on our democratic system of government and feel empowered and energized. If you feel menaced, what better reason for a change in authority do you need?
Why not sign the petitions and exercise the civil liberties that our Founding Fathers and countless others since have fought and died to provide us with? The fact that many citizens in our city feel threatened by the administration of Mayor Cooper and his slate is sickening. For those sitting on the fence about the recall, what better reason is there to show you why Shores citizens need to act now and hold the incumbents accountable?
Nobody could express things any better than Thomas Jefferson, whose words still ring true over two centuries after our patriot forefathers led a revolution against unfair taxation:
“When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
To have a fellow Shores resident bring the recall petitions to your home for signature, please use the Contact Form on the last page of this web site, and a volunteer will be in touch with you shortly. It is high time the Mayor Cooper and Shores incumbents fear the citizens, rather than the other way around.
More of the Same: Can we afford another two years?
December/06/2009 10:36
Those citizens at the December 1st, 2009 Shores finance committee who expected a real change in the way our incumbent council operates were sadly disappointed. After the fiscal crisis facing our city has become painfully evident, both by virtue of the recent auditor’s report as well as the recent article entitled “Seeing Red” in the Grosse Pointe News, you would think there would be a real impetus for change and for concrete action.
At the last council meeting, Mayor Cooper’s solution to the fiscal crisis was to appoint the whole council as the new finance committee. This move effectively brought critical deliberations on finances out from the setting of well-attended and now televised council meetings, to the suboptimal venue of non-televised and less well-attended committee meetings. At the first meeting of the committee as a whole, Mayor Cooper and Mr. Vick rebuffed Councilman Schulte’s request that the finance committee meetings be recorded- yet another broken promise to citizens that Shores government would operate more transparently.
Those at the last Council meeting recall that Councilman Schulte made a motion that Ted Kedzierski be made chair of the new finance committee. This was certainly a very reasonable proposition in view of Ted’s expertise as a CPA, his unique qualification as a certified forensic accountant, and the fact that Shores voters recognized this by rewarding Ted with the highest vote total during the council election. Mayor Cooper refused to let Dan’s motion be acted upon at the council meeting. I understand a former city council member who was at that meeting later chastised him for doing so.
At the finance committee, the mayor told those in attendance, it was “his job” to make nominations, and he moved to reappoint Brian Hunt as finance committee chair, a motion that the rest of Mayor Cooper’s slate unquestionably supported. Rather than look to new leadership, the incumbents stuck with a chair whose distinguished tenure was marked by the deficit spending that depleted our general fund, and the state of Michigan placing the Shores under fiscal watch because of our failing civic financial health grades.
In this time of calamity, I think Mayor Cooper would have done well to take a lesson in leadership from Abraham Lincoln. How did this backwoods lawyer with no military experience rise to the occasion and lead our country out of the Civil War? Two of Lincoln’s greatest strengths as a leader were his ability to recognize which generals were not performing as expected, and the decisiveness to promptly relieve those officers of their duty. The other lesson Mayor Cooper should take from Honest Abe is that rather than disenfranchise his political rivals; he should engage them in the process and made use of their talents, as Lincoln did with his war cabinet.
Mayor Cooper however, takes the polar extreme. He tries to isolate those not on his slate, and deprive them of the information needed to do their jobs effectively. At the finance committee council members (but not the public) were given answers to a series of fundamental finance questions that Councilman Kedzierski asked way back in July.
In Ted, we have a council member who has shown real initiative, and has been making the type of realistic suggestions that the city needs to rapidly adopt to get out of our deficit situation. How does the Cooper administration handle the Ted’s request for the information he needs to do his job? STONEWALL HIM for over four months. Ted has told me that Mayor Cooper has even asked him why he wants to look into the records of past Shores spending, why not just concentrate on the future? That’s analogous to telling a pathologist who wants to look into why a patient died not to even bother with an autopsy! Just what are they trying to hide at Shores city hall that lurks beneath the grim fiscal facts that have already come to light?
At the committee meeting, Councilman Schulte tried to impress upon his colleagues the essence of acting promptly to take immediate, concrete action to reduce city expenditures, indicating that some definitive proposals should be made that evening’s meeting. His plea for action fell on deaf ears, as the council would not even take any significant action on the suggestion from a variety of residents regarding the benefits broadening the finance committee by impaneling citizens with “blue ribbon” financial qualifications.
The incumbent council members’ clear failure to recognize they have a created a problem which requires outside help to solve brought to mind the work of a well known hominoid anthropologist by the name of Dr. Brian Hare. In reporting on his observations on primate behavior Dr. Hare notes: “The experiments show that chimpanzees spontaneously recognize that when they are faced with a problem they cannot solve on their own they need to recruit help.”
Like the chimps of Dr. Hare’s research, Mayor Cooper and the incumbent council need to realize that more of the same is not going to solve the problem. Fortunately Shores voters do have a way to recruit help and effect change, and that is by signing the recall petitions.
As one citizen stated to me after the meeting, the incumbent council members appear to be temporizing and laying low, intentionally failing to take definitive action. They are hoping the recall campaign is going to go away, so they can then raise our taxes even more. Well, the incumbents can rest assured that at this stage the recall is not going away. The fact is that Shores citizens have no better way to hold the incumbents accountable than to sign the recall petitions now.
When the petition drive succeeds, there will be a window of opportunity for the incumbents to make one last attempt to show residents they are serious about taking concrete steps to solve our fiscal calamity, without burdening the taxpayers further. If Mayor Cooper and his anointed slate fail to do so, then Shores voters can engage their democratic right to vote them out of office and engage fresh leadership.
If there is one thing that became clear watching the incumbents at the finance committee, it is that the Shores citizens cannot tolerate two more years of the same lack of vision and faulty leadership that got us into the current mess. If you have been sitting on the fence about the recall, and if the lack of definitive action by the incumbents has convinced you of the need to hold them accountable, use the contact form on the last page of the website, and a petition volunteer will contact you shortly.
Don’t sit back and take the chance of letting the Shores slide into receivership, stand up and get involved!