With a city government that is strapped for cash, has no idea how to spur economic development and has been given clown noses to wear at commission meetings, it’s no wonder Mount Clemens is in the mess that it is. There is no perfect solution for these (and the other issues facing the city), but if we do not start taking steps in the right direction soon, then the city will go downhill, and fast. Think South Warren fast. A big underlying issue is that the people are not represented in city government; they have no say in what happens.By switching out system from electing all city commissioners at large to a ward system that will allow for neighborhoods to be more represented, give the voters a better choice, and encourage more people to vote and to run for office.
A ward system, for those who don’t know, is where the city is divided up into parts, and each part is represented in government by an elected individual. If there are parts A, B, C, and D then people from Ward A can only vote for a candidate who lives in ward A, and so fourth. This is exactly what activist and former mayoral candidate Gloria Haller is proposing, thus far it has gotten public support from former school board member Joe Rheker and sitting board member Larry Humphrey, while getting opposition from Mayor Barb Dempsey.
Much of this is the fault of the people themselves. If you don’t vote, then you are held prisoner by those that do (of course, not voting because you have no candidate you want to vote for is completely different). And there are even less people who are willing to step up to the plate and run for political office.
This issue borderlines cronyism, where a section of the city breeds all the people who will run it. How bad is it? There is only one elected official in Mount Clemens who lives north of Cass Avenue: School Board President Earl Rickman.
This map shows where the Mayor, the City Commission, and the School Board members live.
The southern 2 neighborhoods control the whole city of Mount Clemens
This map is taken directly from the new Master Plan of Mount Clemens. This is the neighborhood map, and from what I can tell by itself, is very accurate. Neighborhoods 7 and 10 (which also correspond with current voting precincts 2 and 9) run the entire show.
Driving through these areas, it’s not hard to see where this is different from the rest of the city. These are the nicest neighborhoods in town, and the people that live there are likely to be the most successful, college educated and have a little extra cash in the bank. Others who live in these neighborhoods include long time Mount Clemens High School Principal Nelson Jackson, Charter Commission President Jake Femmineneo, and former Congressional Democratic Whip David Bonior.
Due to the nature of these ares, it’s not surprising that these people are more likely to vote and more likely to run for office themselves. Voter data all across the country will give similar stories: higher income and better education almost always lead to higher voter turnout.
Due to the small voter turnout in Commission and School Board elections, there is absolutely no need to run a city-wide campaign if you are seeking office. If you win precincts 2 and 9 (on election day and the absentee), you’ve just won the election. I know this first hand, I won 14 of 17 precincts last year when I ran for school board and still lost the election, having lost precincts 2 and 9 and tied in precinct 1. This means that when you run a campaign, knocking on doors all over the city means nothing.
We have a culture where only 2 neighborhoods elect the officials. With all these politicians in the same area, it’s no wonder that they breed more politicians from the same neighborhoods. And when your friends and neighbors are all running for something, you get to know them pretty well, even if you already didn’t.
When election time rolls around, someone from neighborhood 7 will see a name on the ballot he recognizes. Maybe it’s his friend or long-time neighbor. Maybe he’s knocked on your door to talk to you about the campaign or you’ve gotten something in the mail from his committee. Over the years you might have seen this candidate washing their car or doing their own landscaping, maybe even playing ball with the kids and the family dog on the front lawn.Maybe your kids are friends with theirs, and they walked to school together, or even dated! Either way, it’s a community within a community. And this is someone you know either through reputation or just because you’ve seen them out and about and know they’re a “good person”.
That same person in neighborhood 7 might also see another name on the ballot. Someone who knocked on their door once or twice during the campaign. You’ve never met them beforehand, and you don’t know what kind of person they are. They seem very nice and very well intentioned, but aside from a quick conversation and a little reading, you know nothing about this candidate’s character, how he conducts his life, or anything else other than what he wants you to know.
When election day comes, guess who is going to get the vote?
Meanwhile, why would someone from neighborhood 9 even consider voting on election day? They may see a handful of names on the ballot, where none of which have knocked on their door or given them any information. If they are an informed voter they may have read their profile in the C&G paper or Macomb Daily and seen their website if they have one, but that’s it. And odds are, they are someone from the other side of town, who lives in a very different part of Mount Clemens than you do. So different in fact, that if you were shown pictures of the different neighborhoods side by side, you would never know that it’s the same city. It’s easy for people to not vote when they don’t feel represented, and that’s exactly what happens.
For someone who wants to make a difference, running an election is difficult if you don’t live in the right neighborhood. The people that statistically always vote will be harder to win over when they don’t already know you. Especially when one of their neighbors in on the ballot. And when you see all of your neighbors putting up yard signs for the local guy, you start to think “well these guys are all like me, and this is who they like, so this candidate must be my kind of guy”.
The machine just generates more cogs. The candidates ignore the rest of the city, as they don’t have to answer to them. It matters not what they do as long as they appease their neighbors.
By putting the city into a ward system, we eliminate this. This will allow people from different neighborhoods to elect someone who they know, who they may have known for a long time. This will allow the candidate to take their message right to the people, instead of trying to impress folks from the “rich side of town” into voting for them over one of their neighbors. This will entice more people to run for commission as the campaigns will be easier to manage with a smaller geographical area and less expensive to run with a smaller voter base to work with.
At meetings, this will bring new, fresh perspectives to the table. Mount Clemens, despite being small, is not small the way that Armada, Romeo, or Oxford is small. We are one of the most diverse cities in Macomb County, with different ethnic groups, races, ages, incomes, lifestyles and viewpoints. Because of this, we are underrepresented across the board. And as the old saying goes, “No Taxation without Representation”.
This will also make sure that there is no cronyism in board appointments or replacements: people will be elected by their neighbors come special election or anything else. For example, take a look at the map again. Towards the bottom there are 2 shapes that overlap, one of those is a newly appointed school board member and the other is a siting elected board member. I am not making accusations against the qualifications of newly appointed school board member Laura Kropp. But I will say that it surprises me not one bit that despite being the voter’s 2nd choice to sit on the board last May, I was passed up for appointment that was given to a sitting board member. And while I have no evidence to support this theory, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit of she was “asked” by her neighbor to apply for the appointment, so the board could use the opportunity to pass me over.
Opponents of the Ward plan say that it will force the new commissioners to only serve their neighborhoods, as opposed to the city at large. This point is downright laughable. If the current commissioners are doing their best to work for Mount Clemens as a whole then the system needs obvious reform. Because right now, it isn’t working.
Let me say that again: the current system is NOT working. Businesses are closing up left and right, neighborhoods are in decline, and people are moving out. The current elected officials have failed us.
The more realistic story is that they are not serving the community at large, but their own little community within a community: Seminole Hills and the Wilson School Area. Precincts 2 and 9. Neighborhoods 7 and 10. Whatever you want to call it, it’s the southwest end of town and it runs the show.
Because of this, there is no accountability. All you have to do to win is be from that area and show your neighbors that you’re like they are. No matter what way you want to look at it, the city is suffering, the people are underrepresented, and the people have little say in anything that happens. Their cries at board meetings can be ignored, because the commissioners know that if the angry person behind the mic gets everyone he knows to vote against you, you still have a strong base.
The one thing about the Haller Ward Plan that I do not like is the raising of pay for the elected officials. People are driven to public service for things other than the pay, and the better campaign platforms that can be developed as well as the chance of knowing that they can win an election will be more than enough to get more people to seek public office. The other small thing would be that the school board should be included in this as well.
With that being said, it’s time for a change. A Ward system would give better accountability, different viewpoints at the table, and allow government to be what it was meant to be: of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead of a few elite neighborhoods that have power over the rest of the city with no accountability overall for their actions.
Let’s take this step to save our city and bring responsible government to Mount Clemens.
Lately, I’ve taken up a strong interest in photography as of late. In doing so I’ve decided to upgrade from my little Samsung NV15 P&S to a Nikon D5000 DSLR so I can get more serious about what I’m doing. I had some great encouragement with my Old Main at Wayne State picture with the University featuring it on their site and twitter feed, and my Down the Tracks shot was a Daily Deviant on DeviantArt last month.
I’ve been quite humbled by the encouragement that people have given me, and it has pushed me to keep pushing myself. I have a lot to learn, but am having a blast doing it.
With that in mind, I’ve found myself in more of a “take pictures” kind of creative mood instead of a “write stuff down” creative mood. So, I realized that before too long I’d end up turning this into a photoblog, which I don’t want to do. So I’m going to launch one sometime in the coming weeks at the start of the new year. The site is currently being developed and it will be a more complete actual place to showcase pictures and allow for comments instead of this place, which really is better for writing than pictures. I’ll have a fully integrated store to order prints, better than the one I’m currently using, and will look great.
More info later. And thanks for your support everyone
I was recently discussing the issue of the Oakland University strike with someone. While the pay and benefits are obviously big factors in collective bargaining agreements, something else came up. One of his talking points for supporting the strike, well, stuck me. He was the notion of intellectual property in the classrooms and who it actually belongs to: do the lessons belong to the professors or the University.
Well, he wasn’t the least bit pleased about the idea of putting lessons online for people to see. He didn’t think it fair that “some kid in Oklahoma” could view the lessons and “learn for free”. Realistically, if schools like Yale, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, etc. all do this and see no threat, than Oakland University has absolutely no argument and no reason to be threatened. Lets take a look at why. Continue Reading
The internet is a funny place in many regards. The anonymity seems to continue to disappear as people get more comfortable with their online profiles, and people are exposing the weirder sides of themselves at a rather alarming rate.
Along with this comes with the internet creeping into our every day lives. Now that social networking has brought our personal thoughts, political opinions, and the mundane details of our lives into the view of others, we’re looking at our friends in a different lights.
Somehow in the midst of all this, is the Facebook application Speed Date. Somewhere between an e-Harmony account and trolling Myspace profiles lies the logic between this application: look at a random bunch of pictures and quick profiles, see who you like, and contact them. All the while, not looking like a total creep in the process. Oddly enough, I can’t remember when or why I added this app, but I know it only started paying attention to me after I got a girlfriend and as thus, kept trying to hook me up with weird local girls.
But the weirdness doesn’t stop there. The whole point of Speed Date is to find someone to hang out with (at least), right? So it makes you wonder why some word their profiles and likes the way they do. Let’s explore some of the “matches” Speed Date has sent me and encouraged me to “send a flirt” to.
Here’s a handful of local girls that “teh interwebs” thought I might be interested in. Really.
NeighborhoodScout.com is a fantastic resource for people looking to move. It as all kinds of fun stats on where want to live, how far your “neighborhood” goes, crime rates, school information, etc. No doubt it saves a Realtor a ton of time every year as they work to convince people to buy homes all over the country. Of course with this data, you can see where the safest and most dangerous neighborhoods are in the country.
Walletpop.com did a story recently analyzing the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the nation. Only one Detroit hood made the list, coming in at #23: The Mount Elliott / Palmer neighborhood. Within this small scope of streets there are a little over 150 projected violent crimes every year (or one every 2-3 days), the violent crime rate per thousand is almost 100, and the odds of you becoming a victim of such a crime if you live there is 11%, which is quite a bit by most standards (even the most dangerous neigborhood in America has odds of 25%).
The thing that makes the Mt. Palmer neighborhood interesting is that it’s a mix of residential dilapidation and an industrial wasteland: the neighborhood houses the Motor City Industrial Park, a massive complex that was once home to Packard Motors and now sits abandoned, with no clear owner, and is set on fire seemingly every couple of weeks now. As a Realtor, the only convincing point I could make to sell a home here is the price. There is nothing else that is even remotely inviting.
Mt. Palmer is located on the east side of the city, between Gratiot Avenue and I-94 to the east and west, as well as East Grand Blvd. and Mount Elliott to the north and south. You can view a map over at the Neighborhood Scout Website. It’s common knowledge that the east side of the city is more problematic than the west side, however while the residential parts don’t appear as bad on the outside, it looks as though this really is the place where anything can happen.
Here come the pictures. The sepia tone gives it a nice eerie feeling to it all, but of course you can see the full roll of pictures in full color over in the photos section. Click on any photo to view a larger resolution. Continue Reading
Just what we need: More government control over another aspect of our lives. As a former smoker (still a hookah smoker), I can tell you up front that this bill is a complete joke and abuse of power.
How you ask? Well lets just look at the “findings” by congress right from the bill itself.
1) The use of tobacco products by the Nation’s children is a pediatric disease of considerable proportions that results in new generations of tobacco-dependent children and adults.
That’s all well and good. However Childhood Obesity (up to 33% of kids) is much more rampant than the number of high school seniors that smoke (up to 24%). Not to mention that studies are showing that teens are smoking at substantially lesser rates than in years past, and this figure continues to fall yearly. Other problems facing kids, such as childhood obesity, all the nonsense on the television and in the media, and the glorification of anti-culture culture is on the rise, and much more dangerous. Continue Reading
So after years of always borrowing somebody’s camera when I wanted to go on trips, etc I finally bought my own. Going into it all, I created a list of criteria that I was looking for that is has to have:
Be small enough to carry around with me (compact or subcompact). No more missing Kodak moments all the time.
Use SD cards, not XD, compact Flash, or Sony Memory Stick. I already have a 2 gig SD card, don’t want to buy another.
Li-Ion Battery if replacements are cheap enough, otherwise I’ll deal with getting some rechargeable ones.
Good image quality, final product more important than pixels.
Priced around $200ish.
After spending hours of looking at product reviews online. I had to find cameras that I could find reviews on, matched my specs, and were available in store. I have to be able to at least hold the camera in my hand to make sure it will feel good (not awkward, I have big hands). If I order online, I have a rather great risk of ending up with a camera that will be virtually unusable to me. Circuit City had the best prices and selection online of cameras in store, so that’s where I decided to go. I had 3 cameras in mind leaving the house. Thanks to NewEgg, Circuit City, and MyProductAdvisor.com for being big helps in deciding what direction I should go in.
The Fujifilm FinePix f50fd was my top choice, but I couldn’t find anyone anywhere that carried it. Its 12mpxl , has a nice lens on it, a wide ISO range and got solid reviews. I like FujiFilm cameras, my 35mm is a FujiFilm and the pictures it takes are amazing (yes I still have my 35mm. And yes I even know where it is).
Next was the Canon PowerShot A720 IS. I’ve been hearing great stiff about Canon’s products lately, and this sucker has a 6x optical zoom, nice shutter speed, and all the features I’d want.
Of course Circuit City didn’t have the Canon on display because it’s being discontinued, just 1 for sale in a box that I couldn’t open. Which probably means the price will be dropping soon. The Samsung however, they do have. I was almost tempted to get the open box / display NV10 because it was only $50 without cables or anything, but I decided against it. You never know what you’re getting, especially with a camera I didn’t want in the first place. So that was tempting, but ultimately out of the question. After picking up the NV15 I loved the look and feel of it all. I couldn’t play with it as the battery was dead but after playing with the other sub compacts at the store and hating them all I decided to go for it.
Here’s the front view of the camera
3.8 inches wide, 2.4 inches high, and .7 inches deep. Super tiny, almost the size of my sidekick LX, although the camera is a bit heavier. But it fits in my pocket nicely.
Something that I had to take a gamble on was the Samsung Smart-Touch interface. Which is either a big selling point if you like it, or a major turn off if you hate it.
Here’s the back of the camera:
The buttons along the bottom and side are what make up the smart touch interface. Instead of using a touch screen that will smudge, the buttons take on new roles depending on what screen you’re looking at. And you don’t have to keep hitting all these buttons, you slide your finger across them to change menus and stuff. It’s really cool, and a very elegant solution to the problem.
In addition, it hits every other point on my list. It uses a Li-Ion battery with cheap replacements. Uses SD and the High Def SD. And it was marked at $200 but the website had it for $152, so I got that price instead. Looks like a winner, but what about picture quality?
Since it was dark out, I figured it would be good to try and snap some night shots, see what the camera really can do. The biggest things I’ve had problems with as far as digial cameras go are the night shots and the shots coming out unclear because of my hand shaking. So off to Detroit I want.
These pics of Detroit and Mount Clemens were all taken from within my car, sometimes stopped, sometimes not so much.
Here’s a shot of downtown. It’s nicely lighted so I didn’t have it in night mode (it has night mode, day mode, kids playing mode, mountains off in the distance mode, and lots of other things).
All things considered, they come out pretty good, but the 1 thing I noticed is that it’s really hit or miss with this camera. A lot of pictures turned out amazing, a lot of others really sucked. You take off the feature that stops the shaking and all of a sudden pictures don’t turn out very clear.
But I highly doubt that’s the camera’s fault. It has auto settings, programmed settings, and a manual setting where you can change everything to your liking. So once I play with it a bit more I’m sure I’ll be able to tweak it to the way I want it. This is something I’ve noticed that I really like about it, it can be as simple or as complex as you would like it to be. So for people that just want to point and shoot, it works. For people that want to fine tune their pictures, it works.
Pictures with subjects off in the distance I found harder to focus on, so they didn’t come out as well.
But when it knew what the focus was, the pictures came out great. I had a few shots where it was fighting between buildings and traffic to get the correct subject and the best focus, and in turn neither one became the focus and the picture was a wash. But sometimes, it worked perfectly.
Once I learn to tune it the way I want and really learn to use it, I’m sure I can get all my night pictures to rock.
But how to the night pictures turn out during the day time? I went to Mount Clemens to do a comparison.
For the most part, they don’t look too bad. I’m still very leery about how motion shots will come out if the camera has a problem finding the subject to focus on. But for small dogs winking at you, it seems to work great.
I also put the NV15 on my tripod and took some shots out my window at the neighborhood. With the tripod holding it down the camera didn’t need the anti-shake stuff at all and the pictures in daytime came out very clear, despite the fact that there was a dirty window between me and the subjects
Not too bad altogether.
The camera has a lot of features that are geared at novices that I’m sure will be good selling points for them, but it’s something I’ll never use. The color correction is nice, and being able to add sepia, change to warm and cool colors is nice, but it’s all stuff I’d rather do in Photoshop (the red eye flash however, does not fall under this category. Nice addition there). And the weird picture framing things it does I will never use, it’s a feature that takes the picture and puts it in some weird frame or a turned page or some other stuff. I’m sure the teen girls will eat it up, but I don’t much care for it.
I’m not going to get into the techy stuff like the ISO specifications, detailed lens info, etc. You can read about that elsewhere. The bottom line is that this is a very good camera at the price. If you’re looking for a small something to carry around with you that will give you pretty good image quality at a good price, this will do the trick nicely.
