The Local Area Watch

DEAD CROWS AND MOSQUITOS

Only a few years back crows by the hundreds would gather in the trees behind a house my family owns on the northeast side of town.  They would chatter among themselves for several hours and then decamp en masse for another place only to return the next day.  The crows don't come back now.  The West Nile virus, which has decimated bird populations across the country, is a likely culprit.

West Nile virus is also a threat to human beings.  It can cause meningitis, encephalitis, and now poliomyelitis (swelling of the spinal cord which can results in paralysis) in sufferers.  There have been thousands of cases in the United States over the past few years.  Michigan has been, fortunately, spared the worst of the disease.  Only sixteen cases were reported in the state in 2004.  West Nile has been most virulent in California and the Southwest.  (Click on the map for details.)

Nevertheless, every summer still presents of risk of contracting West Nile virus, because the disease is spread by mosquito -- and the little bloodsucker is not jokingly known as the Michigan state bird without reason.  Local mosquito control programs have been effective in suppressing these pests, but Grand Rapids City Manager Kurt Kimball wants to ax our program to deal with the City's $135 million five-year budget deficit.

The disease's northeasterly march towards the Great Lakes region is still over the horizon, so maybe the need for the program is not urgent.  However, Kimball's proposed elimination of the City's mosquito control program is in concert with eliminating groundskeeping for City parks this summer.  One can imagine the rich breeding grounds for mosquitos that a lack of park maintenance around the lagoons of Riverside Park, for example, will produce.

The things that directly benefit the residents and taxpayers of Grand Rapids, like mosquito control and mowed parks, are not what is sinking the City into the red.  It's payroll for unnecessary administrative staff, free healthcare insurance for City employees, and an underfunded pension program that is the problem.  The City used to be able to keep the parks open and clean and free of pests with a whole lot less in tax revenues.  The one big thing that has ballooned over the past thirty years, while the City's population has remained stable, is the City's payroll.

It's time for City Manager Kimball to get back to some old-fashioned priorities:  Residents and taxpayers first, City staff second.  Tell Mayor Heartwell and the City Commission to keep our parks and neighborhoods healthy and safe this summer.

BILLIONAIRE BAIL-OUT SLIPS THROUGH

Just for the record, folks, the Grand Rapids City Commission (with only Commissioner Jendrasiak dissenting) quietly caved into Amway-founder Rich DeVos and approved a $5 million tax subsidy for his new hotel project at the corner of Pearl and Campau downtown.  Instead of DeVos and his fellow developers picking up the tab for the public infrastructure changes and additions their project requires, we taxpayers through the Downtown Development Authority get to pay.  Plus this subsidy qualifies DeVos and crew for nearly $6 million in relief from the state's Single Business Tax.

Exactly what good any of this does for us the taxpayers is unclear.  As a business proposition a new hotel downtown is a shaky one with vacancy already running nearly 50% for existing lodging in and around downtown.  Indeed, DeVos's hacks admitted that the hotel project probably wouldn't be viable without the tax subsidies.  So that was our problem to fix for this alleged billionaire?  Because DeVos couldn't be sure to turn a profit on the deal, the City Commission felt obligated to pledge our hard-earned tax dollars in the middle of a budget crisis that threatens to shut down public pools and fire firemen to help this pyramid builder into the black?  This would be absurd were it not for the fact that important City services will be axed because of the mismanagement of existing tax dollars.

At least this should put to end once and for all the tripe that Rich DeVos is a great benefactor to Grand Rapids.  If he in fact has that $3 billion fortune Forbes magazine has attributed to him, how in good conscious could he lean on City taxpayers to subsidize a business deal?  That five million dollars in City tax subsidies will cost us a whole more than it would DeVos if he truly is a billionaire.

It should also highlight the Grand Rapids Press is little better than a flack for the players in town that publisher Danny Gaydou loves to suck up to.  The Press's editorial fawning over DeVos and his hotel project was bad enough, but did any of you even notice an article in that rag reporting the City Commission's approval of the tax subsidy?  Like the way the Press evaded reporting the deep opposition to the hotel subsidy, it gave us no word of the Commission's final vote other than the standard public record notice tucked in with all the other notices issued by the surrounding suburbs and townships.

Certainly a slippery way of doing business when our elected leaders fork over millions of our dollars to a billionaire and the town's watchdog doesn't let out a whimper when it happens.

HOPE ON THE HILL HIGH AND DRY

The Van Andel Institute, also known in the more insipid P.R. circles as "Hope on the Hill", is passing the hat to endow a $3 million project to research Parkinson's disease.  The VAI is the creation of the late Jay Van Andel, business partner of the still-breathing Rich DeVos with whom he founded Amway Corporation, the granddaddy of all multi-level marketing schemes.  Upon his death last December, Van Andel left according to Forbes Magazine a fortune of nearly three billion dollars.  In the past Van Andel had pledged this fortune to the VAI.

So why is the VAI now soliciting three million bucks, a mere one-tenth of one percent of Van Andel's estate, for a research project?  Have the Van Andel heirs left the "Hope on the Hill" high and dry?

Well, we do know Jay's kids yanked from the VAI the support it was receiving from their father's private foundation.  In January the foundation reportedly had $150 million in cash, which Jay's kids said they were going to re-organize into a new foundation.  Thus, less than ten years after its founding in 1996 by Van Andel, the Van Andel Institute is bereft of Van Andel family funding.  Nevertheless, one of the kids, David Van Andel, remains in control of the institute as chairman and chief executive officer.  Indeed, along with the young Van Andel, the usual suspects populate the VAI's small board of trustees, including the pyramid builders' colleague Peter Cook and Autodie demolition expert John Kennedy.

Sure, David Van Andel and his wife pledged a few bucks for the Parkinson's research project, along with several others for a whopping grand total of half million dollars so far.  But this is chicken feed compared to the three billion dollars the Van Andel estate is supposedly worth.  If the Van Andels will not support their father's namesake institute with the tiniest fraction of that fortune, why should anyone else?

Then again, maybe we must support the VAI because Jay's kids cannot.  What if the billionaire image the Amway founders played was just another part of the sales pitch to flog their distributorships?  We now know that before its reorganization Amway had overstated its profits for twenty-five years by an estimated 25%, which makes all the difference between a net worth numbering in the billions and one hanging around zero for the families of the two pyramid builders.  That might explain why Jay's partner Rich sold off Plaza Towers in downtown Grand Rapids and has been rattling the tin cup for public subsidies for other business ventures like the new Marriot hotel also downtown and a new arena for his Orlando Magic.  That might also explain why the Amway heirs are selling Hyundais, managing minor league sports teams, making dresses, and manufacturing metal shelving instead of boosting the core business to a new level of success.

Then again, maybe Jay's kids do have the billions and don't think the VAI's mission is worth even a small chunk of that change.

ENCORE: COMPLACENCY

[Note: This article was originally posted on February 24, 2005.]

Obviously the Local Area Watch is hard on the local media, especially the Grand Rapids Press.  What President Bush just finished telling the Ukrainians a few minutes ago about the importance of a free press explains why.  The Ukrainians are embracing a burgeoning democracy after staring down the remnants of the old Soviet regime that tried to steal the recent presidential election from the reformers.  The President advised these new democrats that a free press was vital to ensuring the "transparency" of government.  Indeed, it is.

But here in the U.S. where we don't worry about the foundations of our democracy, we can become complacent.  It is especially easy to become complacent when our watchdog, the free press, prefers to lull us into ignorance with splashy graphics, huggable front page news, and features that tug at our heartstrings than do the hard work of revealing the news behind "business as usual" in our local communities.  It has struck me as a little bizarre that people are generally better informed about the national political scene than what is happening in their own backyard. But then getting that local info means editors have to push their reporters to go out and find it.  There are no services, like AP or Reuters, collecting this stuff for them.  Nothing short of hard work is needed to report on local government and public institutions.  Therefore, what happens at townhalls and city halls often goes unreported.

Our newspaper of record, the Grand Rapids Press, is unfortunately a prime example of what's wrong with local media.  This is an insipidly-designed newspaper that happily went without a reporter at Grand Rapids City Hall for several months not so long ago.  Nor does it help when the publisher of the Press hankers to pal around with pyramid-builders like Rich DeVos and his ilk or sit on the boards of powerful organizations like Spectrum Health Care.  (Little wonder long-time editor of the Press, Mike Lloyd, has gone silent on Spectrum's machinations.)  Conflicts arise and the light the free press must shine on those who claim authority or privilege in the name of the public good grows dim.

Without that light, government cannot be transparent.

BUS DRIVERS RE-BOOTED

Last week I reported on Grand Rapids Public Schools superintendent Bert Bleke renegeing on his commitment to consider keeping the support staff on the school district's payroll if their union could come up with $1.9 million in wage and benefit concessions.  The support staff union did this and it looks like Bleke did not respond in good faith.  Instead he immediately began negotiating a deal to privatize the bussing of students with Dean Transportation of Lansing.

It is Bleke's apparent lack of good faith in dealing with the support staff while singling them out for privatization that we take issue with and not with the need for Bleke to reduce the school district's expenses.  Therefore, I will report without comment new information about the Dean Transportation deal.

Dean Transportation has reported that it will offer the GRPS bus drivers employment with a 15 to 19% reduction in wages, no paid vacation, and no employer contribution to health insurance.  So drivers will have an opportunity to keep their jobs, although not on terms as generous as the taxpayers provided.  No word yet on the disposition of the jobs for the custodians, cafeteria workers, and the rest of the school district's support staff.

PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS, PART II

A couple of weeks ago I chided Gov. Granholm for picking winners and losers in business through special tax breaks, such as the $40 million package she offered Toyota to locate an R&D center in southeastern Michigan.  I made the point that it was better to reduce the tax burden on all businesses than to select a few favored companies to receive the tax breaks.  The market -- i.e., we the consumers, not our politicians -- should determine which businesses prosper.

It kinda sorta appeared that Guv Jen was going to do just what I ordered with her reform of the despised Single Business Tax the state levies on all businesses.  It is essentially a value-added tax with a bewildering set of credits and recaptures that makes it incomprehensible to taxpayers.  One thing Guv Jen proposes is to eliminate the double-taxation upon capital intensive businesses, primarily manufacturers, by adding a personal property tax credit to the calculation of the SBT.

Great!  No reason why manufacturers should be penalized by the SBT.  But then Guv Jen also proposes to recoup the tax break to manufacturers by levying a 2% tax upon insurance premiums, thus shifting the tax burden to service companies.  So instead of punishing manufacturers and rewarding service providers, the SBT would do just the opposite.  Once again, the governor is proposing a tax policy that picks winners and losers on the basis of today's conventional wisdom that manufacturers should be favored.  [Note:  I say this as the general manager of a manufacturing plant.  I do love smokestacks, folks, but I don't expect my choice of business to be favored by the government.]

In fairness to Guv Jen, I should note that she also wants to re-jigger the SBT to weight it more heavily on a company's profits than its payroll.  A timid step, but it's in the right direction.  If it makes sense to tax businesses differently than individuals, taxing profits is the most equitable basis.  At least that tax is based upon the market's determination of which business's are the winners and which ones are the losers.

DEQ LET POLLUTERS WALK

On Tuesday the State Auditor General's office released a report confirming what we have reported here:  The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has been easy on polluters, leaving residents with unremediated "hot spots" and taxpayers with the tab for clean-up.  Under Russell Harding, the director of the DEQ during the Engler administration, that agency undercut the efforts of state prosecutors to hold polluters responsible for serious violations of environmental laws by blocking investigations or striking lenient settlements.

The Toxic Towers scandal is just a part of Harding's legacy of lax enforcement of our anti-pollution laws.  The auditor general's report focuses on five cases in which Harding and his top deputies ran roughshod over the efforts of DEQ staffers and the Attorney General's office to hold polluters fully responsible for the costs of cleaning up the hazardous wastes they released into the environment.  A couple of the cases are in the region:  An Allegan County landfill contaminated a nearby municipal well field and a Whitehall manufacturer dumped toxic waste into White Lake.  Click here to download the auditor general's full report.  (Note you'll need Adobe Acrobat Version 5.0 or later to open up the file.)

Keep in mind, folks, these are cases for which there is an extensive record because there was at least some enforcement though so lax that the taxpayers were left holding the bill for as much as 80% of the clean-up costs.  The report just scratches the surface and does not address all those cases like "Toxic Towers" in which Harding let polluters walk away scot-free, leaving it to citizens like us to enforce the law.

WHITE WASHING CLEAR WATER PLACE

It's deja vu all over again.

The Press, the Business Journal, and Fox 17 all ran puff pieces on the DeVrieses' Clear Water Place project this week.  This is the same redevelopment of the old Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant that I've been calling "Clearwater Plaza" in these pages.  Not a mistake really.  "Clearwater Plaza" was the moniker for the previous plan to redevelop the filtration plant, and a grand and glorious vision it was.

Five years ago some of the Toxic Towers gang -- the owners of Dykema Excavators Inc. and Prein & Newhof Inc. -- put together an outfit called GEWT (the Global Enterprise for Water Technologies) to raise $30 million from the State of Michigan,  Michigan State University, and the Pew Foundation to hide the toxic landfill the Boardwalk developers had created at the filtration plant under a renovation of the site, re-named Clearwater Plaza, as a research center for "clean water" technologies.

An irony to be sure, but the benefit of the plan was that there would likely never be any further soil testing at the plant.  That's because the plant would not be sold to GEWT; it would be leased to it for 20 or 30 years.  So there'd be no bank financing involved that would drive the need (under federal regulations) for environmental testing of the plant that in turn would reveal the contaminated soil the Boardwalk developers dumped there.  Instead the poison would remain concealed.  (I have to thank Assistant Attorney General Mike Leffler for this insight.)

Clever plan, and the local media helped GEWT execute it by uncritically promoting Clearwater Plaza with puff piece after puff piece until the big gala to kick off the project in November 2000.  The Ambassador, Peter Secchia, had been recruited to lean on State Senator Ken Sikkema to shake the money tree and produce about $10 million in funding for the project from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).  Professor Mackenzie Davis of MSU's engineering school had been gulled into bringing the university's support for the Clearwater Plaza project.  And local philanthropist Robert Pew had been targeted to donate the rest of the $30 million GEWT sought.

A lot was riding on the big event and all the hoopla the local media helped to churn for it.  But it went fizzle.  Why?  The feds ordered the DEQ to investigate reports that the Boardwalk developers had dumped 20,000 tons of contaminated soil at the filtration plant.  Although the Boardwalk developers were able to derail that investigation and escape prosecution (so far), the facade GEWT needed to raise funds for Clearwater Plaza project had fallen apart.  One by one, the DEQ, Davis, and Pew walked away from the project.

The odd thing was that after all the hyping of Clearwater Plaza, not one of the media outlets promoting it, especially the Press and the Business Journal, ever did a story to follow up on the collapse of GEWT.  Now we see the same sort of puffery again with the local media giving the thumbs up to the DeVrieses' Clear Water Place.  What makes this coverage promotional rather than news is that there is no mention of, literally, the dirt behind the story.  (See "Arsenic is Cool" for details of the latest environmental problem with the filtration plant.)

BLEKE RENEGES, BOOTS BUS DRIVERS

The Grand Rapids Public School system is currently in its worst fiscal crisis as students continue to flee the district for charter and suburban schools.  One of the remedies Bert Bleke, superintendent of the GRPS, has put on the table is privatizing the jobs of the 400 support staff -- the cooks, custodians, and bus drivers.  However, two weeks ago Bleke had promised the support staff that if they could come up with $1.9 million in wage and benefit concessions, he would look at how he would spare their jobs.

The support staff's union (which by the way is separate for the teachers' union) delivered to Bleke what he had requested.  But Bleke appears to have ignored the support staff five-million-dollar concession, because he immediately convened a private meeting last Friday with Kellie Dean of Dean Transportation Inc., a private bussing firm out of Lansing.  Although no agreement with Dean Transportation has been disclosed, it appears that Bleke is intent upon getting rid of the GRPS support staff, because on Saturday the staff's union reported that Bleke rejected their concessions.

Even the teachers offered to pitch in to spare the support staff their jobs by turning down their next raise, but to no avail.

The GRPS support staff is now fired as of June 9th without payment of each employee's accrued vacation and sick days, let alone severance.  Bleke, who swung the ax, will also be losing his job too after next year.  Well, not quite.  He'll be staying on as a paid consultant to advise the new superintendent.  So the school district's taxpayers will be blessed with two superintendents and no bus drivers!

I'm not quite sure how that makes sense.  I don't want to demogogue this, though I think it is raw deal for the working stiffs in the GRPS system to lose their jobs while teachers, principals, and adminstrators get raises.  Then there is the element of fair play.  Why tell the support staff they had a chance to keep their jobs if they made concessions, and then ignore them when they do?  If Bleke wasn't serious about that, then he should have lead on the support staff.

Yet in the end the GRPS must serve the taxpayer, and it is good that Bleke is willing to make significant changes to that end.  But he isn't willing to make any of the radical changes that would reform the school district and restore its viability.  For example, why doesn't he put the teaching contract up for an open bid just like he wants to privatize the support staff jobs?  That would be a tremendous money-saver.  Instead Bleke played it as safe as he could and, like most bureaucrats in a budget fix, balanced the books on the backs of those the public would least notice.

L.A.W. SOLVES CITY BUDGET WOES

Grand Rapids is broke.  The story a few weeks ago was that the City's expenses will exceed revenues by $100 million over the next five years.  Now City Manager Kurt Kimball, the squanderer of all the extra cash that had been flowing into City coffers during the past decade, has upped the figure to $135 million and has come up with only $60 million in budget cuts to offset it.

As it happens there exists a document in the City's files that could help Kimball with his budget woes.  L.A.W. found this document in a Freedom of Information Act request it had made of the City to disclose all public records related to the Berkey & Gay redevelopment project (now under the official moniker of "The Boardwalk", not so officially as "Toxic Towers") located on Monroe Avenue north of downtown.  The document is an application for a building permit the Boardwalk developers submitted to the City in October 2000 near the completion of the project.  On the application the developers stated that they had or were adding $150,000,000 in value to the project site.

One hundred fifty million dollars!*

Presently the City has assessed for tax purposes the completed Boardwalk complex at only one-tenth that amount, about $15 million (i.e., a state equalized value of $7.5 million).  As a lot of homeowners are familiar with, the assessor relies upon the value of improvements reported on a building permit application to jack up the City's tax assessment of a property.  So all that Kimball has to do is direct the City Assessor to do the same to the Boardwalk developers as done to any of us anytime we pull a permit to fix up the house.

That's fifteen to twenty million bucks more in taxes the City could be collecting from the Boardwalk developers over the next five years to split with the county and the schools.  Better than a hole in the head, folks!  Besides, why give Fifth Third Bank, National City Bank, Tom Beckering, and all the other well-heeled developers of the Boardwalk a de facto break on their property taxes when the ordinary property owners in town get nothing?

Click here to tell Mayor Heartwell and the City Commission to get on the ball and instruct Kimball to collect those taxes instead shutting down our pools this summer and firing firemen.

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* I know, dear readers.  One fifty million dollars is a huge sum and is unprecedented in this city for such a project.  But that's what they put on the app. And keep in mind I emphasized that they reported that figure near the end of construction.  That means the figure wasn't an estimate, because by that time the developers had knowledge of how much they had spent already and were likely to spend to wrap things up.

SHINGO PRIZE SHENANIGANS?

The Shingo Prize is awarded annually to businesses and government agencies to recognize outstanding achievements in manufacturing.  It's been called the Nobel Prize for manufacturers.  Maybe.  I've been in manufacturing for twenty years now and never heard of it until recently.  But it's kinda hard to ignore the Shingo Prize this year because its gala award event is being held right here in ol' River City at the DeVos Place convention center.

That's a good thing, because it recognizes the importance of manufacturing to Grand Rapids.  We are in fact one the primary manufacturing centers in North America.  Few other places have our solid mix of large industry, small manufacturers, and job shops of every variety.  It would be a good thing if the City Commission and City staffers understood what a boon this is for our community.  If nothing else manufacturing provides good jobs and a hefty tax base for the City.  Instead, City officials pursue the fool's gold of reinventing downtown as a "Cool City" and bulldozing the rest for Renaissance zones/Smart Zones/TIFAs, white elephants like the convention center, and other non-taxpaying/tax-subsidized boondoggles.

However, the City cannot completely ignore the need for manufacturing.  So it outsources the retention and recruitment of manufacturers to Birgit Klohs's Right Place program.  To this end (though I'm not clear how), the Right Place has contracted with the Shingo Prize's national board to award the prize at the state level and three candidates have applied for the award at the close of the April 1st deadline a couple of weeks ago.  They are Autocam Corporation of Kentwood, Irwin Seating Company of Walker, and Metalworks Inc. of Ludington.

The odd thing about this is that these three companies were part of the committee the Right Place created to administer the award!  Isn't that cozy?  Moreover, Autocam founder and president, John Kennedy*, has a seat on the Right Place's Manufacturers' Council.  Well, I suppose the Shingo Prize board and the Right Place can come up with any rules they want for handing out awards.  But if they want us to take it seriously, they might want to consider not having committee members give themselves the prize.

Just a suggestion.

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* You know John Kennedy ... he was one of the "Young Turks" of a decade or so ago ... Harvard Business School genius who became CFO of Joe Spruit's Autodie, took it public, lost a $140 million in the span of a few years, and rode Autodie almost all the way into bankruptcy until he bailed out with Autocam in tow.

You know, whenever we laud Kennedy's success with Autocam, we never mention where Autocam came from.  We certainly don't wonder how it ended up with all those German screw machines Autodie was storing.  We never ponder how Autocam made Kennedy a multi-millionaire while Autodie's workers lost their pensions, Autodie's shareholders lost their entire investment, and Autodie's small suppliers were left with huge unpaid bills.

But that's another story for another day in River City, folks.

FOWLER'S FOLLY

When I was a kid I loved my Lincoln Logs, my erector set, and my Legos.  I would build, build, build with them.  I remember my first set of Legos came in a large cylindrical container that featured a Lego skyscraper on it.  My childhood quest was to top it -- and I did.  Later on my brother and I would build entire cities for our Matchbox and Hotwheels cars to zip through.  By the time I had to reluctantly follow St. Paul's admonition to put my childish things away, I was quite the toy urban planner.

Maybe you have similar fond memories of building Lego empires.  Keep them in mind as I continue with this article.

A couple of days ago I lampooned Jay Fowler's "wayfinding" sign project.  It boggles the mind that the City blew nearly a million bucks on signs to tell people which newly defined "district" of downtown they are in.  But what can you expect when you let planners like Fowler operate on your dime?

Now let me say that I know Fowler and he is a sober fellow who takes his job seriously.  He is presently the executive director of the Downtown Development Authority having moved over from the City Planning Department.  He is a dedicated public servant.  While Fowler was still in the Planning Department, I had to do a lot of business with him about ten years ago.  I was trying to stop his ill-fated plan to gut one of the best manufacturing districts remaining in the City with a mixed-use commercial zone.  Fowler was not unsympathetic to my concerns, but in the end I lost and he won.  The results were the Toxic Towers dumping scandal and a shriveled tax base.

From this episode I learned a bit about the thinking of Fowler and his colleagues in urban planning.  One of the things that boggled me was Fowler's infatuation with mixed-use zoning.  To me that sounds like a contradiction in terms:  Isn't the whole point of zoning to keep different land use separate from each other?  But Fowler saw it differently, because mixed-use zoning gave government planners a big role to play in the development of such a zone:  Let the planners manage the conflicts and implement their vision of urban harmony.

That makes me think back to the joy I had in building my cities of Legos and Lincoln Logs.  So I understand Fowler.  I also understand how grandiose, profligate, excessive, and wasteful my toy cities would have been, if had free access to Mom's purse or Dad's wallet.  Fowler had access to about a million bucks of our hard-earned tax dollars, so he executed his vision of a downtown divided into little districts and posted 135 signs to tell us where those districts are.

The lesson of Fowler's Folly is not leave cash lying around in the City coffers.  It will get spent -- always with the best of intentions -- even if it means spending it on $6,000 "wayfinding" signs.

KIDS ADDICTED TO LAPTOP GIVEAWAY

As Gov. Granholm works her way through the state's budget crunch, one of things on her chopping block is the "Freedom to Learn" program which equips each public school sixth grader with a wireless laptop computer.  One public school administrator, Jim Bembenek of the Berrien County Intermediate School District, bemoans the prospect of the program's elimination:  "I feel like a drug dealer.  I've given our students these devices and watched them develop and improve and become addicted to the technology."

Addicted?  Sounds like an excellent reason to give the program the ax whether or not it saves taxpayer dollars.  When teaching and learning becomes dependent upon a technology, something is amiss.  There is certainly nothing wrong with teaching children how to use one of the primary technologies of our era.  Personal computers are ubiquitous.  So, maybe they have a place in the ordinary classroom.  But the idea of giving away a laptop computer to each sixth grader was wrongheaded from the start.  If Bembenek is right and the result of this giveaway is that students have wrapped their young lives around these electronic boxes, it is certainly time to cut them loose of them.

No doubt technology can facilitate education, but it cannot replace it.  In the end, teaching and learning is a shared human experience that requires nothing but the love of and the desire for knowledge.  Without this education fails and no machine will fix that.

$6,000 SIGNS FOR CASH-CRUNCHED CITY

As the City of Grand Rapids scrounges for cash the Downtown Development Authority and Parking Services Department spent $827,000 to buy 135 custom-made signs -- oops, I mean "wayfinding" signs -- you know, "signs"! -- to direct visitors to all of the attractions populating the newly minted districts the City has now divided downtown into.

Seeing that downtown Grand Rapids is about a half mile wide by a half mile long, one wonders how many districts it needs to be chopped into for people to "wayfind" their way into.  Even if this needed to be done, one still wonders why the City spent SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS apiece for signs to tell people where to go.  (Maybe to point the way out of the potholes their cars have fallen into?)

Apparently the big deal about our new $6,000 "wayfinding" signs is that they have cast aluminum bases featuring the city seal.  Wow!  Except that the casting was a bit crude and you really can't make out the seal.  Oh.  DDA Director Jay Fowler assures us: "It doesn't quite have the definition that the logo should have, but it is there."  That's a relief.  That is, relief for us, not the seal.

PLANNERS GIVE MOCH FITS

Let me preface this by saying that I have no brief for lawyer-turned-developer Joe Moch.  He got caught faking evidence for a client and would fit right in with the River Rats if he was still practicing law.  Even so, Moch had every right to be torqued as he stormed out of last Thursday's Grand Rapids Planning Commission hearing.

Moch is the developer of a proposed downtown twin-tower high-rise residential project just off Monroe Avenue north of the Interstate 196 corridor.  The project has been in the works for awhile and was originally much more ambitious.  However, economic reality and the Planning Commission trimmed Moch's sails, but now he is ready to roll.

Everything would appear to be in order, except that the planners have taken upon themselves to be designers.  It is not enough for them to evaluate whether a project like Moch's conforms to City ordinances.  These busybody dilettantes have once again ignored the limits of their authority by delving into the aesthetics of Moch's project.  Commissioner Robert Zylstra moaned that Moch's proposed design "feels like I'm going to be walking for two blocks past a mausoleum."  Therefore, Zylstra and his fellow commissioners postponed approval for another month.

Maybe Zylstra's right, but why does his taste replace that of the developer who's taking the risk?  It is one thing for the Planning Commission to mandate changes to a design to make a project conform to objective criteria such as the number of parking spaces or sound barriers; but it is simply obnoxious for planners to use the authority of the government to impose their stylistic preferences upon private parties.

Look, folks, all of this might be tolerable if Zylstra and his cohorts, especially Gabriel Works, actually handled their roles competently.  But again and again they toy with superficial matters while screwing up their real job:  Planning.  Exhibit A of their misfeasance is today's public parking fubar in Monroe North where commissioners led by Works, anxious to accommodate their historic preservation comrades fronting for redevelopment projects like the Boardwalk, abandoned any serious attempt to ensure that the redevelopments along Monroe Avenue supplied sufficient parking for the traffic they would draw into the area.

It's time for the City Commission to tell these dabblers to pack up their finger paints and make room for serious citizens who understand the limited but crucial purpose of the Planning Commission.

PLAZA TOWERS SILENT ON NEW HOTEL

The Towers Residential condominium association voted against taking a position on Amway-founder Rich DeVos's new hotel project.  DeVos's hotel will be located one block north of Plaza Towers, home to the association's 150 residential condos, and will obscure much of the view condo owners on the north side of the building currently have of the Grand River flowing through the city.

One of the condo owners, Bob Sullivan of the Downtown Days Inn, has been particularly vocal in opposition to the new hotel for obvious reasons.  Other condo owners have been concerned that DeVos's hotel has received from the City a special site plan exemption that significantly increases the obstruction of the view.  City ordinance requires all new construction to be setback twenty-five from the floodwall, but the DeVos project received special permission to position the new hotel only seven feet back.  Nevertheless, the condo association has voted to stay silent.

DeVos had once owned, through Amway, the Plaza Towers building but sold it in a murky deal three years ago to Eehoorn L.L.C., a subsidiary of a Dutch real estate holding company.

SHERIFF BOOTS POL'S SON

Kent County Sheriff Larry Stelma fired Deputy Mike Tanis, scion of local politico Art Tanis, for filing a false police report.  Stelma accused the former deputy of lying about the force used to apprehend a suspect near Comstock Park in January.  It appears that Tanis pepper-sprayed the suspect after he was already handcuffed and secured in the rear seat of the patrol car, whereas Tanis had originally reported using pepper spray on the suspect only during the arrest.

Stelma justified his action by making clear that one of deputy's duties is to provide sworn testimony, which must be above reproach.  He told the Advance:  "Testimony is a fundamental part of an officer's job.  It's not a question of if they will ever be called to testify, they will."

On the one hand, discipline like this should quell some of the concerns expressed in the Urban League's recent report questioning the trustworthiness of Grand Rapids area police officers in the treatment of minority residents.  On the other, the antics of the River Rats show that lying to law enforcement and the courts remains a scourge in our judicial system.  That said, let's welcome progress where we find it.

ARSENIC IS COOL

The Creston Neighborhood Association announced last week that the DeVries Companies, the new owner of the Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant of toxic waste dumping fame, are applying to Guv Jen for one of her Cool Cities grants.  The DeVrieses want to gussy up the renovated lobby of the filtration plant (a.k.a. "Clearwater Plaza") on the taxpayers' dime with pictures and other doo-dads recalling the plant's history in providing safe drinking water to the residents of Grand Rapids.  Well, I suppose they need to do something to get us to forget about the twenty thousand tons of arsenic- and lead-laced dirt that the Boardwalk developers dumped at the plant a few years ago.  (You know the Boardwalk gang:  Thomas Beckering, Fifth Third Bank, Dykema Excavators, etc.)  Then again, maybe there'll be nothing to forget.  The DeVrieses have done a good job of pushing all that new dirty dirt out of the filtration plant and onto Monroe Avenue and elsewhere.  So maybe by the time they're done renovating the plant, all that arsenic and lead will be someone's else worry.

FIFTH THIRD STILL ON THE SKIDS

Fifth Third Bancorp of Cincinnati, the 800-hundred-pound gorilla of banking in Grand Rapids is still on the downward slide, in the wake of gobbling up Old Kent Bank four years ago.  After announcing fat bonuses for top executives, Fifth Third revealed that profits for the bank collapsed 5.8% during the past quarter.  The decline has been officially attributed to expenses Fifth Third incurred from its recent purchase of a Florida bank.  However, Fifth Third CEO George Schaefer indicated that this is part of longer term troubles the bank has yet to correct when he admitted to shareholders this week, "Revenue growth continues to be below our expectations.  It's safe to say this won't be turned around overnight."

We know from Fifth Third's botched acquisition of Old Kent that it continues to hemorrhage small business and retail customers with its obnoxious fees on everything and lackluster customer service.  We also know that Fifth Third has has trouble penetrating the Detroit area, the crown jewel of the Michigan market, which its acquisition of Old Kent was supposed to help capture but has failed to so far.  Is this symptomatic of broader problems within the big bank?

Maybe, because Schaefer insists the solution to Fifth Third troubles is to open more branches and hire better people.  Of course, there could be deeper dysfunction in the bank.  Fifth Third was recently investigated and punished by the Federal Reserve for the way it booked the assets it acquired from Old Kent and later was forced to divest itself of its trust division.  All that put a real crimp in Fifth Third's running-on-water strategy of devouring other banks quicker than its structural and management problems could surface.  (Click here and here for related stories.)

Meanwhile, Fifth Third continues to reveal its dread over a potential $30-40 billion in penalties for violations of state environmental laws by its development company 940 Monroe L.L.C., the developer of the Boardwalk project in downtown Grand Rapids, which Fifth Third inherited from Old Kent.  On March 28, 2005, Fifth Third intervened in a motion before the Michigan of Court Appeals to argue on behalf of the developer and its contractors that they should not be held liable for their violations.

One must wonder if other Fifth Third acquisitions are not similarly plagued.

PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS

While the City Commission is busy deciding which hoteliers in downtown G.R. will be the winners and which the losers, Governor Granholm is engaged in the same folly at a much grander scale.  On Tuesday Toyota Motor Corporation announced a deal with Guv Jen to buy 690 acres of state land south of Ann Arbor for $11 million to build the company new North American research and development center in exchange for receiving from the state a $38.9 million tax subsidy.

Guv Jen justified the special hand-out to Toyota because the company's new R&D center will employ 400 people and create another 300 "indirect" jobs in the local community.  The nearly forty million tax subsidy is in the form of credit against the state's convoluted single business tax.  No doubt the SBT, as it is commonly referred to, is a disincentive for businesses to start up or re-locate or grow in Michigan.  If the governer can see benefit of a special reduction of this tax for Toyota, because it will produce jobs and prosperity, why not cut the taxes for all businesses?

Simple answer:  Doing that would take away her power to pick winners and losers.  Whether or not that's a power we should let our elected officials have is one thing.  As a practical matter, do our pols make the right choices?  Ever since the State of Pennsylvania recruited Volkswagen to build a plant there in the late '70s, the practice has been to give big tax breaks to get big companies to build big plants in our backyards.  Guv Jen has followed suit with the Toyota deal.  Bad choice.

Study after study shows that small business is the engine of job growth in this country.  Meanwhile, tax breaks for the big guys seldom repay the taxpayers' "investment" in them.  For example, where's that Volkswagen plant in Pennsylvania now?  Shuttered a long time ago, folks.  So, it's better policy -- heck, it's just plain fair -- to cut business taxes across the board to stimulate growth (if that's the objective) than to select favored companies to receive targeted tax breaks and subsidies.  But sound business tax policies don't garner the headlines like a hand-out to Toyota does when Guv Jen is ready to mug for the cameras.

CITY BALKS AT BILLIONAIRE BAILOUT

At its regular weekly session on Tuesday, the Grand Rapids City Commission postponed approval of an amendment to the Downtown Development Authority's charter that would provide a $5 million taxpayer subsidy to alleged billionaire Rich DeVos's latest business venture, a new Marriot hotel at the corner of Pearl and Campau in downtown.

The City Commission had already given preliminary approval to the amendment by a 6-1 vote.  First Ward Commissioner James Jendrasiak was the lone hold-out, griping that DeVos was rich enough to do the project without taxpayer help.  (Of course, the problem isn't whether DeVos has the money, but rather why should the taxpayers subsidize any business.)  The purpose of Tuesday's session was to rubberstamp that earlier approval, however, the commissioners balked at the intensity of the opposition to it from competing hoteliers.

Although Tuesday's session produced no new information in opposition to the tax subsidy for DeVos, First Ward Commissioner Roy Schmidt moved to postpone a final vote on the matter to consider new questions about it.  Maybe the foolhardiness of subsidizing another hotel downtown when half of the existing rooms are going empty is sinking in with the commissioners.  Then again, maybe they just want time to find a weasely way to justify subsidizing DeVos.

Click here to tell Mayor Heartwell and your commissioners to just say "no" to the new amendment to the DDA's charter.  Or maybe we should be creative and tell our city solons that we'll agree to "invest" (as they like to put it) in DeVos's new business venture in return for an equity stake and a cut of the profits. ;)

CITY PAYS DIRTY BOOKSTORE LEGAL TAB

On Tuesday the Grand Rapids City Commission meekly acquiesced to a federal court order requiring the City to reimburse the Velvet Touch adult bookstore $125,000 for the attorney fees it incurred to stop the City Attorney's office from shutting it down.  Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff and Catherine Mish also racked up a similar sum in legal costs, including the retention of a private attorney out of Tennessee to help them.  Therefore, the Velvet Touch fiasco cost taxpayers a quarter-million dollars without a single benefit to be gained.

And a fiasco it was.  None of this would have happened had the City Commission been on the ball and modernized the zoning ordinance regulating adult businesses or had City officials not reneged on its original finding that the Velvet Touch complied with the existing ordinance.

Back in August 2000 the Velvet Touch looked into moving its store to its present location on 28th Street in Grand Rapids.  The City zoning ordinance would not permit the Velvet Touch to locate there without a variance if it fell under the definition of an adult business.  Under the ordinance at the time, which had been drafted in the '70s, if 5% of a retailer's stock were sexually explicit printed materials, then it was deemed an adult business.  As it happened, only 3% of the Velvet Touch's stock constituted the offending materials.  Much of the remainder consisted of pornographic videos and sex toys, which the archaic ordinance did not address.  So interpreting the ordinance by its plain language, the City board of zoning appeals ruled that the Velvet Touch did not need a variance and could operate at its new location.

An owner of property adjacent to the Velvet Touch challenged the City's decision in Kent County Circuit Court.  Then the Grand Rapids City Commission revised the ordinance restricting the permissible locations of adult businesses.  The commissioners drafted the revision in such a way that there existed almost no place within the city limits where the Velvet Touch would be allowed to operate.  Indeed, they targeted the new ordinance at the Velvet Touch.  When City officials then tried to retroactively apply the new ordinance to the Velvet Touch to shut it down, the Velvet Touch sought protection from the U.S. District Court.

In stepped Ophoff and Mish and everyone's legal bills began to escalate.  The U.S. District Court invalidated the City's new adult business ordinance as unconstitutionally restrictive of businesses engaged in the sale of legal goods.  Ophoff and Mish appealed the decision to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.  They hired an appellate attorney named Scott Bergthold out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to handled the appeal.  Again the City lost.

So, the Velvet Touch continues to operate at its new location and the taxpayers are now on the hook for a quarter-million dollars for this fool's errand.  Had the City Commission been competent enough to draft a modern and constitutionally valid zoning ordinance, or had City officials simply honored their original decision, or had the City Attorney's office had the wits to advise the City Commission they were fighting a losing battle -- none of this would have happened.  Be assured, however, that only you, the taxpayer, will be paying for this fiasco.

END OF AN ERA

This isn't exactly within L.A.W.'s bailiwick, but the end of an era is always worth noting.

I was surprised to learn from the news last night that Rogers Department Store is closing after a half century of business.  It's a shame.  It is the last of the area's homegrown department stores.  Wurzburg's, Steketee's, and Herpolsheimer's all fell long ago, and Rogers carried on.  It was the best of the bunch.  It was the clothing store that defined service.  Also, founders Hy and Greta Berkowitz had the savvy to locate their store on a stretch of 28th Street in suburban Wyoming just as that district was consolidating into a regional shopping destination.

Unfortunately, service apparently lacks the cachet it once commanded among consumers.  Price competition from national specialty chains has stripped Rogers of all but its loyal customers.  Plus, its once bustling location is now a bit downmarket.  The old shopping plaza across the street from Rogers has long passed its zenith as a premier retail location.  It took a long slide into oblivion anchored to the now extinct Montgomery Wards.  The neighborhood has been on an upswing, but only as a draw for locals which isn't enough for a premier clothing store dependent upon a regional customer base.

However, Daniel Hurwitz, president of Rogers and grandson of the founders, assures us that even if the big store on 28th Street is closing for good, Rogers is not.  Plans are to re-open the old store's most popular departments as separate specialty stores or as part of an expansion of Daniel's -- Rogers' high-end clothing retailer located on the opposite end of town.  We wish Hurwitz luck and hope that these reincarnations of Rogers carry on the service that made his grandparents' store an icon.

CITY ATTORNEY DEFENDS TOXIC TOWERS DEVELOPERS

On the taxpayers' dime, Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff has taken up the defense of private developers and contractors before the Michigan Court of Appeals.

On March 21, 2005, Ophoff filed a brief with the appellate court arguing for a dismissal of the hazardous waste citizen suit filed against 900 Monroe L.L.C., 940 Monroe L.L.C. (owned by Fifth Third and National City Banks), Pioneer Incorporated, and Dykema Excavators Inc. -- the developers and lead contractors of the Boardwalk project -- along with the City of Grand Rapids.  (Click here and here for lawsuit details.)  The suit, filed by us, alleged that these parties violated the state's hazardous waste management act when they created an unlicensed landfill by dumping the Boardwalk's contaminated soil into the defunct concrete waters of the nearby Monroe Avenue Water Filtration Plant.  (Click here, here, and here for dumping details.)

Ophoff prepared the brief and signed it on behalf of the City and also the private party defendants.  No agreement exists for the private parties to fund their joint defense by the City Attorney's office.  Nor does any record exist of reimbursement to the City by the private parties for Ophoff's legal services.

It's bad enough that the City went into the tank for these polluters by subsidizing the Boardwalk project (with a cut-rate tax assessment), then selling them a dump for their hazardous waste, quashing any inspection or inquiry that would reveal the dumping, thwarting a public information hearing on the contaminants released by the polluters, and finally destroying the City Commission minutes recording these repugnant decisions -- now you, dear taxpayers, get to pay for the polluters' legal defense of their violations of the law.

Click here and tell Mayor Heartwell and the City Commission that the Boardwalk polluters can pay for their own defense.

THE RIVER RATS

We received some unexpected comments on the most recent installment of our "River of Corruption" series in which we detailed the involvement of eight local attorneys in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal, a.k.a. the River Rats.  No one disagreed that the conduct of these lawyers was abominable.  Instead our respondents were surprised that their deceitful actions were ethically proscribed.  One wag asked me, "Isn't a lawyer a liar by definition?"  It seems, dear readers, that some of you have so low of an opinion of the legal profession that you believe the bar doesn't even bother to set standards for honesty and fair-dealing.

There are in fact standards governing the ethical conduct of attorneys.  In this state those standards are embodied in the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC).  The Michigan Supreme Court is responsible for formulating these standards and disciplining attorneys who do not comply with them.  The Supreme Court has delegated the disciplinary function to the Attorney Grievance Commission (AGC), which is a body composed mostly of attorneys to investigate, prosecute, and discipline their miscreant brethren.  The AGC's record is a mixed bag, as might be expected of a fox guarding the henhouse, but that's another story.  The point here is that, without regard to any failure of the AGC to act (because the final say always rests with the Supreme Court), we tagged each of the River Rats with ethical misconduct that we have found to be in violation of the MRPC.

For example, we cited Dick Wendt for unethically serving two masters to the advantage of one over the other.  While Wendt was representing the City of Grand Rapids in the negotiation of a tax subsidy for the Boardwalk developers, his law firm was representing the developers!  No surprise that City taxpayers ended up with a raw deal.  This is a clear conflict of interest.  Wendt had a duty of loyalty to negotiate (or even refuse to offer) a tax subsidy to the Boardwalk developers that was in the best interest of the residents and taxpayers of the City of Grand Rapids, while at the same time his law firm wanted to obtain the best deal possible for the Boardwalk developers.

So who's Wendt's boss?  The taxpayers or his law firm?  That's a circle he cannot ethically square, which is why MRPC Rule 1.7(b) prohibited Wendt from representing the City in that case.*  Nevertheless, he did so to the disadvantage of City taxpayers when the Boardwalk developers landed a unprecedented $2.5 million tax subsidy for their project.

Another example, we told you that John Ferroli falsely briefed the court in our pending environmental citizen suit against the Boardwalk developers that the facts we alleged were knowingly false.  For Ferroli to ethically make such a charge he had to know with certainty from his own investigation of our claims that what we had alleged was untrue.  Having a difference of opinion is not enough to accuse someone of lying to a court, a very serious charge.  Of course, the videotape, photographic, and scientific soil test evidence is in and has substantiated the factual contentions of our citizen suit, so Ferroli could never have honestly known anything to the contrary sufficient to tar us with making false statements of fact to the court.  False accusations like this are a violation of MRPC Rule 3.3 which forbids a lawyer from knowingly making a false statement of material fact to a court.

So be assured, readers, that we are not complaining about the general nastiness of the River Rats.  We believe their misconduct in the Toxic Towers dumping scandal constitutes specific violations of the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct.  We have already obtained some judicial findings to support our conclusions, and we expect more will come.  With those in hand, we will then pursue the discipline of these miscreants that is appropriate to their misdeeds.  Stay tuned.

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* MRPC Rule 1.7(b) does allow a lawyer to represent a client despite a conflict of interest if that client gives his informed consent to that representation.  (Even consent is not carte blanche for a conflicted lawyer, because he is required to have a reasonable belief that his representation of the client will not be materially limited by the conflict of interest.)  However, we made a Freedom of Information Act request of the City of Grand Rapids to find out if consent were ever given, and the City certified that there was no record of it.  Nor has Wendt produced any proof of consent.