Week in Review: the Process
"I wish I were a bug"
Week in Review
City Council, Wednesday, September 10
When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Below you will find a special issue of the Review for your reading pleasure. We sought to provide an account of one of the more illuminating—if not legally decisive—public meetings that we have seen in the past three years, as Our Community™ turned out in force—including the esteemed Corey Murray,1 whose report we eagerly await.
Luke Robson, on Councilman Bentley: “He’s going to try to kill this project.”
Eric Coykendall, on the difficulties of living on Broad Street: “While most of you get to enjoy a neighborhood street, I don’t get to enjoy a neighborhood street.”
Penny Swan, encouraging others to avoid extreme rhetoric: “I think we should all dial it down, some of this anger and rhetoric. Take a breath and try to be rational.”2
Continuing: “The Road Diet is not some last-minute scheme. I voted on the thing back in 2013. . . You have to vote Yes.”3
Ginger Novak, disgruntled: “To those who want me to pretend I’m in favor of this: I am not in favor of this, and I will tell you why: Every time I take my eyes off this City Council, they come up with a new way to pick my pocket.”
Elizabeth Schlueter, pro Diet: “Frankly, MDOT ruined downtown in 2005.”
Joel Calvert read and lectured about a passage from Walkable City by Jeff Speck.4
Felicia, a business owner in Hillsdale: “It’s not changing anything when we put in a bike path or a safety zone except that several people in here can get their kids out of their carseats without getting hit by a semi.”
David Hambleton, on the fence: “Grant dollars are Satan’s work. . . It happens to be that there’s enough value in this thing that I voted for it on the TIFA board. I don’t like the fact that we stand here and pat ourselves on the back for having passed this five times, so now when it’s time to pass the money part, and you’ve got one week to do that. . . Now, when it’s money out of your constituents’ pockets, [they say,] ‘well, we voted for it five times!’”
Cindy, Filling Station deli owner: “The lanes are too narrow. . . the speed limit is a suggestion.”
Former Mayor Greg Bailey, masterfully smug: “I think they need to trust and respect the Process. . . We need to trust and respect the Process. . . I believe that it will create safety.”5
Laura Smith, on the managerial-historical consciousness: “I served on the Planning Commission for seven years when a lot of this began. . . Council passed this. Planning Commission has been working on this for decades. . . [It is] coming to fruition. I’m looking at all these business owners downtown, and I think—Moore Insurance: I called you the other day because I didn’t want to park my car outside.’”
On our shattered Community: “This is actually a moment of opportunity. It passed. . . We need to take the opportunity, rebuild the community around us.”6
Self-congratulatory: “It’s passed, Council. It’s passed. There’s a collective memory that many of you do not hold, that the citizens here hold. So you need to respect the history and all the work. . . I think we need to accept the Process.”7
Zech Steiger, contra: “We keep hearing a lot of people speaking in favor of the Road Diet and how we need to trust the Process and respect City Council and the history of this whole Road Diet Process. The Experts are in charge, and they came up with this plan, and they know what’s best for the City.”
Lamentably incorrect: “This isn’t a technocracy.”
John Novak, contra: “These commercial trucks: they’re not going to stop going downtown, and they’ll just compound the traffic pattern.”
Tim Sullivan, pro: “We live in Hillsdale Township, but we’ve chosen to invest in three buildings downtown.”
Lance Lashaway, contra: “I keep hearing about the Democratic Process, and everybody’s all excited that all the governments had their chance to run it through.”
Eric Leutheuser, pro, pouring sweet nectar into the attendees’ ears: “People can walk around. They can look at things. . . They can be with their dogs. . . It’s the People.”
Nicole Ellis, downtown business owner, pro: “We’re a huge melting pot, and that’s why I love this town.”
Matt Bell, former Councilman, incisive, on the Process: “I never voted for a Road Diet. . . For every one person in here. . . I guarantee you there are one to two hundred people who are against it. . . I bet you could probably fit all the people who are for it in this room right now. Bring it back up, Council. All it takes is four brave Councilmen to tell Lansing: ‘repair the roads as they are.’”
On people with “Skin in the Game,” i.e., the dreaded Conflict of Interest that we so greatly fear in every other situation: “If I had a special interest, I would be here too.”
Mary Wolfram, pro: “I’m here to speak for the Friends of the Dawn Theater. . . We have a dangerous traffic pattern right now. I’m very often in front of the Dawn Theater, unloading things for a show. . . It is dangerous, and it is noisy.”
Robert Livingston, contra: “Think about this: you’re down there, you’ve been sitting behind six semis to get through a single light. . . When’s the last time you were in a traffic jam, and you thought, ‘Oh, this is a great time to get out of the car and go [shopping].”
CJ Toncray: “I’m very torn on this. . . The only time I see such a great turnout is when there’s controversy. And I love it.”
Evans Mekas (sp?), with a wondrous rhetorical display:
Sam Negus, pro: “No, this place is not going to turn into Ann Arbor overnight if we go from four lanes to two. We’re not going to have skinny jeans all over the place.”
Moderately moderate: “I am moderately in favor of this because I think it’s a moderately good idea for our downtown.”
Jack McClain, on parking: “The parking lot at the Post Office says 30-minute parking. That’s a joke. There was a car parked there and I’d seen it a lot and it was an out-of-state car—I’m going to say they were apartment-dwellers.8 I actually laid a cigarette butt on top of their tire. Thirty days later that car moved.”
Andrew Gelzer, pro: “The Road Diet is going to save approximately $500,000. . . I’ve made the suggestion to the City Council that perhaps you do something with those savings. . . Address the SADs.”
The discussion above was muddled, and contained within it two separate issues, which we will attempt to bring clarity to before descending into a chaotic screed. (1) The merits or demerits of the Road Diet; and (2) the question of the Process. The former is not our concern at the moment as it seems to be more or less settled (and since we don’t care that much) and as the latter contains within it questions about Hillsdale’s past and future in ways that reach well beyond this particular issue.
What is the Process? you must be wondering. According to those who appeal to it, it seems to mean: convening boards at which the same handful of people vote unanimously—but non-bindingly!—over the course of years in favor of warm and fuzzy visions of a millenarian Bright&Beautiful Future, constructing Master Plans, and patting themselves on the back at the end of it all. The Process is rhetorically treated as a neutral machine for generating political consensus.
We, for one, find this most disingenuous. For we were astonished when we realized upon further reflection that the Process is not mere legal proceduralism, but is supra-legal. There’s nothing binding or necessitous about it in any sense. It demands submission to a species of political unity that invariably involves the victory of the managerial class’ ideology. The ideological aims of the Process are articulated in the many Plans, which we wrote about before. The Plans, in turn, are meant to restrict the range of political possibilities, i.e., permanently enshrine the managerial will while offering elected officials the illusion of choice. The Process’ imperative is not only to browbeat participating citizens into voting Yes in particular instances, but also to demand that they affirm the prevailing supra-legal schemes and techniques.
And yet the Process transcends mere technique: it is, it turns out, the moral basis of Our Community, a Community that is far more unified than it is common. Participation in Our Community is contingent on one’s deference to the Process, to one’s pious reception of the sacred tablets (riddled with misspellings and poor syntax) from the priests on high. Law-abiding Process deniers are labeled “inDecent,” “disIngenuous,” or “Negative” in a kind of hysterical political theater. (Those who are deeply concerned about ad hominem rhetoric had best take a harder look at the types of things the managerial class is willing to say about their opponents, even if they’re smiling all the while as they say it.) After all, “nobody panics when things go according to Plan, even if the Plan is horrifying,” but when reality refuses to conform to the Plan’s control, “everyone loses their minds.”
It seems, therefore, that we have been asking the wrong question. Not What, but Who is the Process? For the Process is not a thing, but a person, or, rather, a set: it is synonymous with Our Community—the Planners, champions of our modern virtues of Decency, Decorum, and Positivity. The Process, to laymen like us, can only be glimpsed in the very actions of the Staunch Conservatives, those with “skin in the game”—those virtuous (monied) few with a direct financial stake in the outcome of a policy discussion.9 And if you don’t have “skin in the game,” then, you are impelled to conclude, you aren’t really a part of Our Community.
And yet, as the Process Proceeded Wednesday evening, Our Community patted itself on the back while it ignored a most uncomfortable part of the legal process. For there still, to this day, remains an inconvenient and obscure document known as the City Charter, which nobody present seemed concerned about in the slightest. It was ignored by half of City Council. Councilmen Gerg, Socha, Bitchin’ Bob,10 and Morrisey all missed the meeting. As the Hillsdalian observed, the City Charter has the following to say about this type of behavior:
Any two or more members of the Council may by vote either request or compel the attendance of its members and other officers of the City at any meeting. Any member of the Council or other officer who when notified of such request for his attendance fails to attend such meeting for reason other than confining illness or absence from Hillsdale County shall be deemed guilty of misconduct in office unless excused by the Council.
The squishes at that publication, however, left out a most unnerving detail for those bold men of Process who so Decently ignored the law. From Chapter 5, Section 2:
After notice and hearing, any elective city office shall be declared vacant by the Council upon the occurrence of one or more of the following events before the expiration of the term of such office.
. . .
(e) If the officer shall be found guilty of any act constituting misconduct in office under the provisions of this charter, by any court or by vote of five or more members of the Council at or following a hearing.
External Links
“I wish I were a bug.” Penny Swan memes herself.
“I believe the benefits of fluoride in the water outweigh the costs.” Gary Wolfram.
“The number of people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death who work as teachers, nurses, psychologists, social workers, and other ‘helping professions’ is immensely disturbing. We have a serious problem in this country.” Christopher Rufo. 11
Some said Mr. Murray has “porked out” a bit since they last saw the man. Not our words.
Who does Ms. Swan mean by “we all”? Does she speak in the Majestic Plural, like us? We will leave a couple examples of Ms. Swan’s rational public discourse here, for posterity.
Once more we can rely on Ms. Swan to lay bare the essential managerial position.
We perused a few pages of Mr. Speck’s 2013 book, and our trepidations were confirmed: Millennials, which Mr. Speck positively characterizes as “a generation raised on Friends,” have been self-righteously remaking the world in their own craven image as they merge their hipster aesthetic preferences with the Boomer commitment to managerial Processes—
On the Portlandification of America: “Surveys—as if we needed them—show how creative-class citizens, especially millennials, vastly favor communities with street life, the pedestrian culture that can only come from walkability.”
On remaking one’s world to appeal to the “creatives”/corporate Millennial marketing class: “future economic growth will take place where the creative people are, and then works to lure more residents downtown.”
On the profound meaning of bike la—sorry—Buffer Lanes: “A bold green stripe down the side of a street—or many streets—tells residents and potential residents that a city supports alternative transportation, healthy lifestyles, and cycling culture, and that it welcomes the sort of people who get around on bikes. For the most part, those people are the millennials and creatives who will help a city thrive.”
You can watch Speck’s TED Talk here.
If the [Process] that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the [Process]?
We hadn’t heard—is the community broken? Who broke it?
If one wished to publicly discredit Norms and Processes, this sort of rhetoric—telling people that they ought to defer to those with the esoteric knowledge—might be just about perfect for getting the job done.
“Apartment dwellers,” a blight on the human race for Mr. McClain.
“Skin in the game” has traditionally been understood as a conflict of interest. People with SADs on the line, however, do not have “skin in the game.”
Note the time and date.
Speaking of which, here are some people who put “laugh” emojis on the HDN’s Facebook post announcing the death of Charlie Kirk, many of whom have much interest in witchcraft and cat-keeping.
The anti-Democratic attempts of Matthew H Bentley and his college puppeteers have been resoundingly defeated. I went to that meeting and it was humiliating. Honored town elders uniformly spoke on behalf of Community Safety and the wisdom of the women in charge of the many past committees.
As this town's strong staff comes together to heal from his divisiveness, I can only pray for Scott's return. We are going to build the safe roads; we are going to have lifeways; we are going to (one day) have a dispensary!
Riply and Newt...run away!1! He eats everythgin!!!!11