Week in Review: Workforce Dwelling Units
"Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality!"
Week in Review
County Commissioners, Tuesday, November 14
A Cross of Blue?
Leininger and Ingles proposed an amendment instituting a “Hard Cap” “limit[ing] a public employer's total annual health care costs for employees based on coverage levels.” This included switching the County Employees Health Care Coverage from Priority Health to Blue Cross Blue Shield.”
Wiley spoke strongly against this move, arguing that Blue Cross ““speaketh with forked tongue.” He suggested that they would raise their rates quickly, despite promises for the cost of the first two years.
Further, the insurance committee recommended staying with Priority Health. Wiley placed his faith in the committee (the voice of God?): “the committee has spoken; the employees do not want Blue Cross.”
Ingles argued in contrast that the committee offered recommendations, but the County Commissioners ultimately had to weigh that recommendation in the balance with all the other County concerns.
The amendment failed 2-3, and then a resolution was passed maintaining the current health care options for County employees for 2024.
Money Matters
Lifeways wrote a letter to the County asking for $40,000 that is due them but has gone unpaid over the years. Mark Wiley’s response: “That’s horse-hockey.”
The 2024 proposed budget went back to committee after Leininger’s health insurance proposal failed. But the commissioners interrogated the budget committee about various line items anyway.
Benzing asked about the Sheriff’s office parking lot—there have been “safety concerns” about the lot. Leininger reassured him that it was still “on the stove” but just “on the backburner.”
Mark Wiley asked about the budget line “Special Services”—There was a request of $1,200, but the potential budget appropriated them $52,000. Wiley: “What’s up? And what’s “special services” encompass?” Leininger explained that that money was given for the possibility of another probation officer, a lease on a “skidstair” for the facilities office, and an intern position (It seems like a new coffee maker would be cheaper).
Leininger reminded the board that the proposed budget was calculated based on levying the “maximum allowable millage rates ” and “maximum allowable property tax value that we have.” “When you consider adopting that budget, remember that when it comes to levying the taxes to fund that budget.”
Misnformation
Joe Mason warned the County about the danger of misinformation, especially at the local level. “Any bit of misconception can turn into misinformation which can spread like wildfire in the community.”
He wanted to clarify that Brett Leininger does care about County employees, despite his attempt to move them to Blue Cross. Further, Mason praised the Hodshire family: “Someday, something in this County is going to be named ‘Hodshire.’ It might be a road, it might be an alley, whatever.”
A Michigan Pipe Dream
Benzing alerted the Board that the new “Clean Energy Bill” was getting passed at the state level that would require that by 2030, 50% of energy consumed in MI has to be from renewable sources. By 2040, 100% of energy has to be renewable. Benzing: “by 2040, I will be 82. I will be grumpy. And the reason Brad is going to be grumpy, is with the rolling blackouts three days a week, I will be very grumpy.”
Miscellaneous
The Moscow Clerk Resigned as of Dec 31.
Benzing went to a medical training to prepare for the possibility of a community disaster. What does he know that we don’t?
Benzing remarked that the new waste management commission is permanent and will likely need a full-time employee to act as commissioner for waste management for the county. That person will need to have “technical expertise” as a garbage man, of course.
A Sentimental Closing Thought
Mark Wiley: “Even though we spar in these meetings, we still can smile and laugh and joke, and ‘we’re all good.’”
Camden School Board Recall: Return of the Redskins?
See our prior coverage here. In short, Sarah Wilcox of Camden led an effort against anti-Redskin activists/school board members, Emily Morrison, MA, LCP, IMH-E (II)1 and Jesse Crow. Wilcox’s efforts were thwarted by the outgoing County Clerk, Marney Kast and the bold and civilized Abe Dane—deputy to the County Clerk and Kast’s aspiring successor.
But Wilcox is back, this time with even more signatures, according to a report from the embattled Corey Murray. Both Morrison and Crow, whose terms are set to end in 2026, will now likely face a recall election in May of 2024. Yet the gears of bureaucracy are turning slowly: per Dane, there is still a chance for county officials to locate any number of invalid signatures:
“The Hillsdale County Clerk's Office is currently reviewing the signatures filed for any errors or invalid signatures,” Dane told HDN, adding that “Crow and Morrison have 30 days to submit challenges to the petition signatures.”
Fink Declares Candidacy for State Supreme Court
Our district’s current state representative, Andrew Fink, will run for a seat on Michigan’s Supreme Court. According to his campaign website, Fink’s “major career choices” demonstrate his “unwavering commitment to our constitutional freedoms and structure of government.” He will pursue one of the two seats on Michigan’s high court that will be up for grabs in the November of 2024 election, presumably challenging incumbents, Republican David Viviano and Democrat Kyra Harris Bolden in a “nonpartisan” statewide race.1
Running to replace Fink in District 35—perhaps among others—will be Republican Thomas Matthew, the current Branch County (i.e., Coldwater) Commissioner. The drab candidate claims he is “fully aware of the needs of the counties in which he will represent and the State of Michigan when elected.” According to Ballotpedia, Mr. Matthew ran for Ohio’s state senate as a Democrat in 2014. Hillsdale County must send forth a challenger. . .
The War on Leaves
Walking through town this week we came upon what appeared to be a mobile construction zone. Two large industrial trucks, a small pickup with flashing lights to warn passersby, two miniature tractors, and a behemoth yellow machine making a din. Our approach, however, revealed that it was really only the city of Hillsdale’s leaf collection outfit, fit with seven employees, each operating a leaf removal apparatus. It was the War On Leaves.
Fallen leaves cause much hysteria around town.2 What could possibly be done with them? we ask in collective desperation. A leaf excess could cause a mental health crisis! Besides, shouldn’t the city be providing leaf collection ‘services’ for me? Unable to think through any alternatives, we residents of Hillsdale—via our representatives—determined that the leaves needed to be made to be gone from what the city now calls our “workforce dwelling units.” Not only out of our own yards, but out of the city altogether. Banish the leaves!
We first tried to confine the leaves in shipping bags—but this proved to be far too much work. What about our careers? the people said. And nobody has time for leaf raking with the latest Netflix miniseries on the docket.3 Sometimes it gets cold outside, or even hot! No—only the machines could save us. So the city brought out the artillery in the form of the leaf collector and its ancillary appliances, requiring the aide of no less than six additional machines and apparently almost as much “manpower” as before.4
Upcoming Events
City Council, Monday, November 20: See the packet here, if you dare.
Resolution for Setting Annual Service Fee for the Workforce Housing Development at 440 & 450 Hidden Meadows Drive (packet, 260):
With almost unanimous support (7-1), council previously began the process of giving Allen Edwin Homes a tax break in exchange for their building a series of duplexes at “Hidden Meadows.” These high-end duplexes were, at the time of the introduction of this idea several months ago, deceptively called “single family homes,” whereas it is now admitted in the packet that they are really “duplexes.” The notion that they were to be single family homes helped win the support of several councilmen. We hope the council does not blink in the face of this rhetorical sleight of hand.5
City officials recommend granting the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program because the city must be transformed into a blob of “workforce dwelling units.” Don’t worry—they’ll be different colors.
Allen Edwin has requested the tax break by way of a 10% PILOT exemption for a 15-year span. The city will forego a total of a minimum of $214,000 in revenue over that time, not including any revenue lost due to increases in either property value or increased millages.6
Saturday, December 2: Downtown Hillsdale’s Light-Up Parade and “Christmas at the Poorhouse.”
Thursday, December 7: Glei’s Orchards and Greenhouses and its 280 acres of mature apple trees is going up for auction. We hope Luke Robson has enough cash to save us from Lansing’s forthcoming wind/solar rural demoralization campaign.
External Links
“We have a clerk that we can work with now. From that standpoint, it’s been a great improvement.” Chief Deputy Clerk Abe Dane courageously stands his ground in the pages of The Guardian against forthcoming “political violence.” For all her efforts to get the Red Eye to look upon Hillsdale—which may include taking and posting to the Internet photographs of other people’s children—Miss Swan’s signature brand of gumshoe melodrama merits only a link.
“We’re committed to helping all of our counties, within the scope of our authority and helping where we can make the most difference.” According to Corey Murray, U.S. Attorney Mark A. Totten had a Really Good Meeting with local law enforcement.
“If we love this place, we have to make it beautiful. To the extent that these buildings are beautiful, that these spaces we live in are beautiful, it is a mark of gratitude for the place.” The Collegian interviews Luke Robson. Robson also has another pair of posts at his Substack that are worth reading: one on the Front Porch Republic Annual Conference and another on his plans for a trade school in Hillsdale.
“The second thing is, every person on social media should be verified, by their name. That’s, first of all, it’s a national security threat. When you do that, all of a sudden, people have to stand by what they say.” Nikki Haley.
“I don’t know that we’re a free country; I’m not sure. . . . If they think that you’re conspiring on the Internet, they can subpoena your entire life.” Tucker Carlson interviews Douglas Mackey.
“The Federal Communications Commission has enacted new rules intended to eliminate discrimination in access to internet services, a move which regulators are calling the first major U.S. digital civil rights policy . . . The order also provides a framework for the FCC to crack down a range of digital inequities.” Associated Press. See Commissioner Carr’s dissent here.
“Secret Service agents protecting President Joe Biden’s granddaughter opened fire after three people tried to break into an unmarked Secret Service vehicle in the nation’s capital.” Associated Press.
“Who cares? Seriously. Who cares what James Madison would have thought about internet regulation? Who cares what Thomas Jefferson might have said about the war in Ukraine?” Michael Lind, sounding Our Ford’s “history is bunk” mantra in the pages of the Integralist Compact.
“The rise of parenting expertise happened in concert with the overall proliferation of other forms of pseudo-expertise, a large part of which involved the denigration of the ordinary, uninitiated individual’s ability to adequately manage his affairs. It is an expertise that arose hand in hand with a generalised pessimism about the ability of human beings to manage their fate.” Ashley Frawley, writing at UnHerd.
“The West really has done as Baudrillard diagnosed, seeking to overcome all domination by enforcing a closed system of compulsory liberation, one in which all must be complicit as stakeholders in the replacement of our given life and world with an automated, artificial version, wherein the most infinitesimal traces of injustice must be hunted down and expunged.” James Poulos.
“Education degrees and teacher licensing, by the way, should be done away with. They are expensive and ineffective. Undergraduate education licensing can be used to keep some people in the profession and other people out. It may also discourage the right people from going into teaching in the first place. In the end, teacher certification requirements may ultimately contribute to intellectual mediocrity in America.” Daniel Coupland, writing at The Federalist. It’s good to see that recent political results haven’t scared the College away from telling the truth about “teacher colleges.”
“Dedicated church services to bless the weddings of same-sex couples could be held within weeks, after a narrow vote at the Church of England ruling body.” The Guardian.
“The iconic narratives used to prop up the ‘continuing oppression narrative’ have an odd habit of turning out to be false . . . A curious feature of this process is the interchangeability of both the iconography and the rhetoric of various street-action movements demanding redress for different identity groups. The stock of common slogans, brandished with religious fervor, share a peculiar quality in common: They bear no relation to reality.” Wilfred Reilly.
Farewell
What is Left to Conserve in America Today?
All-too-early on Wednesday night, Fauxglin awoke from a drunken stupor to find himself in attendance at an ISI-hosted debate at the College’s beautiful and deceptively named Plaster Auditorium, a debate featuring Glenn Ellmers and Susan Hanssen on the question of whether there is anything left to conserve in America. As he emerged into consciousness—woke to the crisis!—Fauxglin did not remember how or why he came to be sitting with this sad little crowd of hyper-dressed future Hill staffers, overachieving undergraduates, and scoffing grad students, except that maybe he recalled . . . having heard . . . there would be an open bar! Now he knew himself, and now he could listen to what was clearly shaping up into a debate on the role that sodomites should be permitted to play within the conservative elite, given their congenital tendency to subvert both fecundity- and revelation-sourced piety. But then it seemed to him that Professor Ellmers refused to take the bait (perhaps the size or kind of the crowd made it unworthy of the difference of passion), and that there was a conspiracy to repeatedly sound that fraught word—revolution—in a tone that would render it anodyne: here there will be no violence, no pain, no fighting, we’re just talking about a few Deep State jobs here and there, certainly no violence, no pain, no fighting, no one will be able to say I meant violence, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Perhaps it was the wine, but we found ourselves weary, especially after the question-and-answer period, of the bolder-than-thou posturing, of the constant non-saying and even anti-saying that is operative on the Right. In our most cheerful moments since that evening, we have even hoped that it was precisely this anonymous being-weary at which the whole thing was aimed. Otherwise, what has happened to ISI? Why did they invite a sayer like Dr. Hanssen, a knower of poetry, to this sort of thing?
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie
Fauxglin would also like, in closing, to take this opportunity to write in praise of Greta Gerwig’s very funny Barbie, a movie whose sense of humor is deliberately and viciously subverted7 in its final act as Gerwig reveals to American women how the ranting feminist—by enacting the fantasy that particular women feel what they feel qua collective (“any woman can be a lawyer, so I should feel like exactly like successful lawyer barbie”)—can only accomplish the manipulation of the Barbies into a C-suite-endorsed neoliberal voting bloc.8 Barbie herself prefers a reality in which the real thirty-or-forty-something product of feminism desperately hopes there is enough time left for her to have children. Of course, now she has the even more consequential role of Eco-Leadership Barbie available, so freeze the eggs! You’ve got time!
It is of course possible that Viviano or Bolden decide not to run.
Fortunately there aren’t any serious issues—like drug problems—in Hillsdale.
Our beloved Titus Techera is currently recommending The Young Pope.
A friend of the Review was lectured this year for accidentally raking a handful of walnuts into a leaf pile because a walnut could break the machine.
As usual, councilmen are hardly paid and are given bureaucracy-ridden 300-page packets to read two days before the meeting. The writers of such proposals clearly hope that the councilmen fail to notice their machinations.
We hear endless chatter about the poverty with which the city of Hillsdale has been struck. For this reason, any number of compromises are deemed entirely permissible if they increase city revenue. But when global hedge funds legally owe the city hundreds of thousands of dollars, the council eagerly passes out breaks. If this new PILOT is now granted, the impoverished city will have bypassed nearly half a million dollars in revenue—enough to pay City Manager Mackie for three years—in a two week span.
As surely as a simple memento mori shuts down the Barbie dance craze.
Fauxglin would like you to ignore the fact that he only agreed to watch this movie after his wife, tired of his mid-life Duolingoing, ripped his phone out of his hand and smashed it on the floor.