The Local Area Watch

THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF TEACHING

Few things annoy your executive director like the prattling of people who laud public school teachers for taking on such a tough job for so little pay. Other than the fact that this silly sentiment has no relationship to the facts, why should I be bothered by it?* An article in last week’s Grand Rapids Press provides the answer.

Thirty-five Kenowa Hills Middle School teachers refused to meet with parents at an open house to discuss academic plans for the students. The teachers stiffed parents because they were aggrieved at having to attend an activity not mandated by their contract while their health benefits remained under negotiation. Art teacher Steve Leedy groaned to Press reporter Nardy Bickel that playing hookie was “the single-most difficult decision I had to make.” Considering that a suburban public school teaching slot is just about as undemanding a sinecure as the taxpayers provide, I believe Steve.

AWOL computer specialist Marcia Milanowski blamed the parents for not realizing how deeply the negotiations over health benefits have affected the teachers. Yes, of course. It is not enough that parents have to put in twice the number of hours at work every year required of the typical public school teacher to earn the money to pay for those health benefits. These parents need to also sympathize with the educators as their delicate sensibilities are being rattled by the routine process of contract negotiations.

This shows how much students, parents, and taxpayers are at the mercy of the public school teachers’ unions when the organized self-absorbed arrogance of teachers like Leedy and Milanowski is nothing like an immediate threat to their jobs. So long as parents have no choice but to pay the salaries and benefits of these people, the parents and their children are entitled to the loyalty of these public servants. If Leedy and Milanowski don’t think the parents lavish them with sufficient remuneration to merit their loyalty, they can always look for a better deal elsewhere.

(* Yes, of course, there are teachers who do a remarkable job. Indeed, I know one teacher in the Rockford School District who has taken on the thankless task of working with the district’s most difficult students and has earned every penny of what we pay him. It is the fact that so few of our public educators are willing to do this kind of work and so many are ready revolt at the smallest demand we make of them that it is evident that a perverse sense of entitlement, buttressed by the country’s most powerful union, is turning the teaching profession into a racket.)

PITCHFORKS, PETTINESS, & PUSILLANIMITY

This morning Free Press commentator Dawson Bell was non-plussed about the disgust property-owners have vented over the State legislature's approval last week of Gov. Granholm's plan to accelerate the payment of property taxes over the next three years. However, he acknowledged the sincerity of the sense of grievance the taxpayers with "torches and pitchforks" have.

The grievance is real. It is perhaps the pettiness of this latest manipulation of the state's finances that is most galling -- especially in the absence of any fundamental reform of the way the state operates. While the government continues to dole out cash for ill-advised projects, it doesn't hesistate to demand more and more from us (as exemplified by the recent squeeze to finance a new zoo), and it still can't do so many of the important things right (like the MDEQ's enforcement of the law). To think how explosive the disgust of taxpayers would become if it became widely known that the State of Michigan has in its possession the evidence to collect $20 billion in environmental fines from an out-of-state bank (e.g., caught-red-handed-on-surveillance-videotape kind of evidence), but doesn't because that would upset the bureaucrats at the MDEQ who have swept the matter under the rug.

Your rug, that is.

FOX IN CHARGE OF THE HEN HOUSE

Today the Detroit Free Press reports that attorney Charlie McCallum of the Grand Rapids law firm Warner Norcross & Judd L.L.P. (FYI: Boss Logie's firm) has been appointed chairman of the American Bar Association's standing committee on ethics and professional responsibility. Hmm. In a certain sense, one can't argue that McCallum doesn't understand the ethical and professional quandaries lawyers can get themselves into.

I wonder what advice McCallum would dispense to a lawyer who is partner in a law firm while also an officer of a corporate client that is employing his wife as an executive with the authority to purchase from another client of his, for whom he is managing a financial workout, a property he needs to sell to stave off bankruptcy. Don't get caught?

CITY RATTLES SABER AGAINST CWA LIABILITY

City Document Disposal Technician -- ahem, I mean, Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff -- sent us a response on September 7th to our Clean Water Act notice. He sounds upset. He threatened contempt of court and sanctions if we proceed against the City. Apparently Ophoff doesn't quite get the fact that we are already proceeding against the City in an action formally approved by the Michigan Court of Appeals. Moreover, I'm surprised that Ophoff doesn't better understand the meaning of contempt. After all, it takes a hell of lot of contempt as a person on the taxpayers' payroll to destroy government records to hide from the taxpayers what Boss Logie was doing to screw them.

COOL CITIES ARE NOT PLANNED

The Sept. 7th edition of the West Business Michigan News informs us of yet another city planner pitching her wares to G.R.'s downtown crowd. The latest idea is to expand the definiton of downtown Grand Rapids, re-organize its governing bodies, and then re-plan this new bailiwick with a new body to conform to Governor Granholm's "Cool Cities" agenda.

Hmm. First of all, why must Grand Rapids be anything other than what it is? A decent, clean, and orderly middle-sized city with a strong manufacturing and agricultural base only a short drive from some of the most beautiful shoreline in the world, world-class golf courses, the great north woods, and countless sports and fishing lakes, while the charms and luxuries of the big city are less than three hours away in both directions.

Second, assuming we should want a "cool" Grand Rapids, how do you plan it? It's a quality organic to a community that requires a mixture of factors for its propogation that no one can deliberately bring about or control. You cannot plan a "cool city". Indeed, trying to do so strikes me as very uncool.

NEWS OF THE NEW ZOO DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BLUE

Now that the voters rejected a new tax to pay for a new zoo, no one is sure what's going to happen. What seems to have escaped the attention of our county and city commissioners is that better is not always bigger.

That was the case two years ago when Boss Logie failed to twist enough arms to get approval of a $100 million (taxpayer-funded) expansion of John Ball Zoo over the sinkhole-ridden tract of land his pals had just optioned to purchase. That was also the case when in August taxpayers were asked to pony up the bucks to build a "wildlife park" on land the Meijer's family has generously donated for the project.

There are already enough big zoos within a few hours' drive of Grand Rapids in Chicago, Battle Creek, Toledo, and Detroit. Why do we need another one, especially when John Ball Zoo as it is has been drawing more and more visitors every year? Why not figure out what the current zoo is doing right and redevelop what we got with the resources available?

Why not make our small zoo unique rather than further impoverish the taxpayers (and provide one more opportunity for the Usual Suspects to dip their beaks) with a grand project that in the end will still be outdone by what other nearby cities have to offer?

MEDICAL SCHOOL BOONDOGGLE

GVSU Prof. Ben Rudolph had an interesting column in the latest edition of the West Michigan Business News. Rudolph warned that Michigan State's offer to re-locate its medical school in Grand Rapids is no gift. Perhaps not on the face of it, but if the Usual Suspects can figure out how to get the taxpayers and genuine philanthropists to foot the bill, the MSU medical school will be like manna from heaven for them as they pocket all the construction contracts and service concessions this boondoggle will have to offer. Fortunately, the post-Logie regime hangover, of which a white elephant convention center is just the biggest headache, seems to have made most of the marks unusually skeptical of this project early on.

SPECTRUM WHITEWASH

OK, I'll admit my expectations for the Grand Rapids Press are not exactly lofty, so I am more amused than outraged by its latest indiscretion.

In the Sunday edition of the editorial section of the paper, reporter Kathleen Longcore gave Spectrum Health Corporation a wet kiss in a lengthy article about how swell the merger is that devoured two robust area hospitals to produce the bloated behemoth on the hill. The Press's kid glove treatment of Spectrum should be no surprise, because publisher Dan Gaydou is an ex-chairman, a current board member, and bootlicker of Spectrum's godfather, Rich DeVos. (And yes, I mean "bootlicker" only in the most kindly and praiseworthy sense.)

Of course, the disclosure of this conflict of interest somehow never made it into Ms. Longcore's article.