Week in Review
City Council, June 5
No Camping Ordinance
The revised ordinance1 passed by a 6-2 vote, with Stuchell, Socha, Stockford, Morrisey, Vear, and Paladino for, and Pratt and Sharp against. Wolfram was not present. (Perhaps he was paid more to be elsewhere.) The ordinance will now allow the Hillsdale City police to issue civil infractions ranging from $100-$500 for public camping, effective June 20. See additional relevant sections from the ordinance below:
WHEREAS, the City of Hillsdale has determined that camping or engaging in activities associated with human habitation on or near public trails, public parks, public streets, and other areas of public property within the City of Hillsdale has a tendency to cause interference with the public’s ability to utilize and enjoy those public assets, has a tendency to interfere with the City’s ability to maintain such areas of public property, and has a tendency to cause significant damage to such areas of public property; and
WHEREAS, the City of Hillsdale has determined that camping or engaging in activities associated with human habitation on or near public trails, public parks, public streets. . . present a substantial risk of danger to the health and safety of those engaging in such activities, to neighboring property owners, to others attempting to utilize such areas of public property, and to the general public. . .
Camp or camping means the use of any public property or public facility for living accommodations, such as sleeping activities or making preparations to sleep, storing personal property, or using a tent or other structure for habitation for more than one hour at a time. Camp or camping does not include the use of public property. . . for recreational use or for authorized public or private events that involve the use of tents, awnings, or other structures. . .
Additional notes from the meeting:
Ted Jansen expressed contempt for his home town, suggesting that the “homeless problem” can be dealt with “the Hillsdale way” or “the right way.” His own personal proposal (“the right way,” of course) is to herd the homeless into what can only be described as a government-organized camp, the ultimate solution for the secure containment of government-selected groups of people. He went so far as to map out a potential site for his dream camp, which would be adjoined to the city dump.2
If you come across Penny Swan napping on a bench near Sandy Beach, be sure to call the police ASAP so she can be ticketed promptly.
Councilman Sharp, who would later vote against the ordinance, spoke strongly in favor of it: “This is an ordinance to ban camping, it’s not about the homeless,” he said, admonishing his supporters. “I don’t want to hear about the homeless on this.” He also agreed that he does not “want people camping on city property,” and noted that he promised Councilman Socha, a member of the Public Safety Committee, a “yes” vote if it was amended to a civil infraction.
The eminent Councilman Morrisey said that the issue before the council was not complicated: “Public property belongs to everyone. . . No one is entitled to use public property as if it were a private space.” Regarding its use by private citizens, he noted, “I can’t just take it for myself and and stay there any more than I can stay overnight at City Hall.”
We were once more struck by just how much power is held in the office of city attorney. The legally-clueless city council—unless they spend hours slogging through old decisions—can never fully grasp what is possible and what is not within the confines of local government unless they are assisted by a lawyer dedicated to articulating those possibilities. The easy (and lazy) answer is always to say that something should not or cannot be done, and cover one’s tracks by putting people to sleep with legalese or scaring them with threatening visions of future lawsuits, leaving the council at once satisfied and stupefied.
Mayor Stockford mentioned that the Hillsdale Police Department in the enforcement of the no camping ordinance, like most ordinances, will not actively seek out opportunities for its enforcement. Unless they happen to come across encampments themselves, city police will act only when citizens report incidents. The ordinance will take effect 15 days after its passage.
Jack McClain requested a “listening assistance device” to counteract “the soft, feminine voice” of certain council members. He also questioned whether or not City Hall is truly handicap accessible and expressed tentative support for the ordinance.
The Homeless Task Force
The mayor reprimanded the Task Force publicly for the failure of its members to establish a quorum at the past two meetings, out of four total. What we find odd, though, is that the Task Force as a task force need not follow the Open Meetings Act, which the mayor acknowledged. We apparently hold the OMA in such high esteem here in Hillsdale that we impose it upon ourselves, even when unnecessary. Karen Hill’s cold bureaucratic heart would melt at the sight of our town’s voluntary proceduralism. More details below:
Though we rather like County Commissioner Brad Benzing, we must mock his passive-aggressive letter of resignation from the Task Force.3 “My time is likely better offered to those who truly seek solutions to the issue of housing insecurity in our community,” he wrote, citing the Force’s inability to “muster a quorum” as his reason. But Benzing is an OMA veteran; he should—and probably does—know better.
Councilman Stuchell spoke in, dare we say, a mayoral tone, praising those in Hillsdale who take things into their own hands: “These are private citizens,” he said of some who have genuinely helped the homeless themselves, outside the purview of the unhelpful state bureaucracy. “They don’t need our direction to form groups and do things for the community. They can do this right now.” Stuchell even had the gall to go straight at some of the most profitable nonprofits in town, including the Community Action Agency, “which sits on a boatload of money” yet claims its hands are tied. In his view, where private citizens should help the homeless find work,4 the public task force should be “going and knocking on [the CAA’s] door, asking What are you doing with my tax dollars?”
Hillsdale Community Airport Expansion
Parking lot enthusiasts will be pleased to learn that the city council approved the construction of a $309,896 parking lot and terminal at the Hillsdale Community Airport. The funding breakdown is as follows:
The Federal Aviation Administration’s contribution: $260,440
The Michigan Department of Transportation’s contribution: $6,891
The City of Hillsdale’s contribution: $42,5655
Why exactly does the airport need a new terminal? you might ask, having never used—or even been to—the airport. Because, some say, the city will not be able to expand without a sizable modern airport. How else will our town attract such excellent establishments as Target and Chipotle? How will we, as they say, “move into the 21st century”? Who will take us seriously if we don’t get more parking lots?
Our airport grants from the federal government and the state come with numerous (mandatory) bonus paperwork activities that we can now partake in during its construction and operation, including:
“affirmative action”;
the submission of “compliance reports” to the “Michigan Civil Rights Commission”; and
“full compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Upcoming Events
Tonight, June 8 at 5:00: Library Board meeting. Without a fifth board member being added, it appears the meeting may be uneventful. Yet one must always be prepared for the machinations of board politicking.
Monday, June 19 at 7:00: City Council meeting. After ample time for deliberation, Mayor Stockford must surely nominate his candidate for the fifth library board seat.
External Links
Coverage of the passage of the “no camping” ordinance appears in the Hillsdale Daily News and at WILX. The latter includes, as representative of Hillsdale’s common man, this strange quotation from Joseph Hendee: “They don’t want the college kids knowing that we have some big problem. And it’s not just Hillsdale, it’s everywhere. You know, but, people have to have dignity and apathy.”
A new general surgeon will arrive at Hillsdale Hospital in August.
Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, MLive has put together a few charts and graphs detailing population change in Michigan municipalities between April 2020 and July 2022. (The City of Hillsdale changed about 0% in that time.) As a result of the lackluster census data, the state of Michigan now employs a “Chief Growth Officer” empowered to “work closely with” a Growing Michigan Together Council to, among all-too-many other things, “improve pre-K through postsecondary education in the state.” For her part, Governor Whitmer believes the passage of Proposal 3 in 2022 has made Michigan a magnet for “every woman engineer.” (See Bridge Michigan’s useful analysis of the Prop 3 vote.)
Over the objections of its attorney general, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board has approved the establishment of St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School, which the Associated Press is calling “the first publicly funded religious school in the nation.” (See Chalkbeat’s “explainer.”) Fauxglin is dimly aware of the existence of Islamic charter schools in certain states, but he has no clarity regarding the relevant differences.
At Quillete, Damon Linker reviews Patrick Deneen’s Regime Change and finds it insufficiently “conservative” according to a definition of conservatism that has always been popular with those eager to gain acceptance by befriending and then betraying their political enemies, namely, that “conservatives seek to conserve what’s good in the present.” In Linker’s telling, Deneen is a “Mistah Kurtz” among the Trump-voting savages, and he ends by warning the good professor that his “lovely ideational latticework” will not survive its encounter with the heart of darkness. | Reviews of the book have also appeared in the New York Times and at the Front Porch Republic (Adam Smith and Russell Arben Fox.)
Wesley Yang has provided this clarifying summary of the way our regime operates: “America’s identitarian NGO complex is in the business of greasing donations by elaborating fan fictional pseudo-realities . . . [Jussie] Smollett was an individual narcissist seeking personal fame operating within a broader structure of incentives manufactured by the identitarian NGO’s and affiliated media, who collude to generate a mutually profitable pseudo-reality.” (We also noted Matthew J. Peterson’s “Let them eat aberrant sexualities.”)
The notorious New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, in an interview with UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, admits that religion is “a net positive in a survival sense” and that it is better for the “flourishing of the species” if the many are religious. “But,” he warns, “that doesn’t make it true.”
See page 149 of the packet for Jansen’s letter, which in a mere 200 words manages to appeal to a 2009 Ninth Circuit decision, Martin v. Boise, Christ, and his own expertise. He helpfully included a map of the exact location for his camp.
Packet, 152.
The oft-ridiculed Councilman Socha, for example, appears to have helped a former homeless man find a job and secure a house.
Packet, 169.
Good catch on how advisory committees aren’t bound by the OMA which Stockford should know.
On the airport that $300k was just for a study. The terminal itself will be north of $2.5 million. And you’re correct how numerous government restrictions greatly inflate the price.
Checking it out might be educational. You’ll find when the trustees fly in, they often are met at their plane by the college van or car. They never set foot in the terminal. And nobody flys to an airport for a terminal. The bulk of the use of the terminal is for local “hangar flyers” to hang out and talk about flying. Total waste of money and what they have is fine.
Disappointing not a word on BPU board non- residency which even councilman Paladino commented on