Puzzling and Bizarre

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | March 26, 2022

Local politics are an ongoing festival of bizarre actions and puzzling decisions. In what follows, the names have been omitted to protect the guilty.

Traverse City’s City Commission is establishing priorities and laying out their plans for the next year or two. As always, they’ve hired a consultant to help steer the process. Beth Milligan reported on preliminary results in her article in the March 13 edition of The Ticker (an online sister publication to Northern Express).

After what was reported as “multiple strategic planning sessions,” the consultant came up with what she described as high-level themes. They were “focusing on long term impacts, approaching challenges with optimism, focusing on solutions, considering future generations when making short-term decisions, considering goals and actions through the lens of the climate crisis, understanding constituents may want opposing things and keeping this in mind while making decisions.”

Good grief, that was an exercise in the obvious. One does hope our city commission was already on board with all of that without needing to be told. Focusing on solutions? Well, yes, we sort of expect that of our elected officials, despite what seems like their hesitancy to find solutions and their difficulty focusing. Those vague goals do have the distinct advantage of making objective analysis impossible.

To be fair, the consultant also suggested some less lofty issues: housing and homelessness, water systems, access and mobility, climate, connecting people with each other and nature, and economic development. To her everlasting credit, she did not use the words “affordable” or “workforce” as adjectives preceding “housing.”

Grand Traverse County Commissioners, in an unusually charitable mood, have decided to simply give Twin Lakes Park, a potential jewel in the crown of the county park system, to Long Lake Township. Not content with that generosity, they’ve also decided to include $31,000 annually for a few years to help defray the cost of maintenance on the park they just gave away.

They did this with minimal discussion and despite the strong objections of their own Parks and Recreation Commission and some nearby residents. One commissioner complained the park doesn’t make a profit, though that is not the purpose of county parks. With $18.2 million extra dollars to spend, one would think they’d find a few extra tens of thousands to keep and maintain what is a spectacular natural resource. Something is not right here.

The county is also going to dedicate some parking at the Governmental Center to permitted facility employees and install ubiquitous parking meters in the rest of the lot. They are concerned, they said, about those living or visiting the nearby Commongrounds Cooperative development. You might recall the lack of vehicle parking and proliferation of bicycle racks at the new residential/retail co-op was met with great fanfare when it was announced. Why, people will be biking, walking, and taking the bus so they won't need cars, we were told. It’s a failed philosophy being repeated with other buildings downtown. Eliminating parking isn’t a solution—it’s an expansion of a problem.

Whitewater Township, in the northeast quadrant of Grand Traverse County, wants to create a new master plan as charter governments are required to do from time to time. To that end, their planning commission recently met with the addition of a consultant hired to help guide them through the process. As reported by Jordan Travis in the March 20 edition of the Traverse City Record-Eagle, that first meeting didn’t go so well.

A certain amount of basic data is often, or always, included in every community’s master plan. Geographic size, number of households, and basic demographics from the U.S. census are included. As soon as those demographics were mentioned, a wave of ignorance broke out among some planning commissioners. The breakdown in common sense was quick and complete.

The Census Bureau’s numbers for the township triggered an almost immediate and completely irrational disconnect. Keep in mind that census numbers have neither a political affiliation nor a political ideology; they’re just numbers.

One commissioner said he was “…opposed to this whole color thing.” Another said the demographics themselves were “…government and media promoting racism.” One commissioner mentioned a Chinese sister-in-law, another, a Black brother-in-law. One commissioner wondered if they could just say theirs is a “diverse community” and move along. The consultant was forced to remind them they are not diverse by any known definition. The township is 94.7 percent white, 2.6 percent American Indian or Alaska native, 0.2 percent African American, and 2.5 percent Latino or Hispanic. (Those are the Census Bureau’s descriptors.)

Finally, the coup de grace for their planning commission’s reputation was the individual who was reported to have said, “…it's not like you don’t let colored people in…” The consultant and one commissioner resigned almost on the spot. Their next meeting is scheduled in April.