KIMBALL TO CITY COMMISSION: MORE TO CITY EMPLOYEES, LESS TO CITY RESIDENTS

Grand Rapids City Manager Kurt Kimball met with the City Commission at their annual planning retreat on Tuesday.  Kimball told the mayor and commissioners that they are going to have to make more cuts in city services over the next year to cover $5.7 million in increased health benefits to city employees and retirees.  Just one more example that Kimball is not a public servant working for you, folks.  His constituency are the guys and gals on the city payroll, and he's going to take care of them -- at your expense.

Maybe, just maybe, city employees should do with a little less instead of city residents and taxpayers doing with less.  Rather than having us either fork more money over to city employees or suffer further cuts in city services, why can't city employees come up with the seventy bucks a week to pay for increased health benefits?  Of course, they could.  Indeed, they should.  They work for us, not the other way around.  However, the concept is entirely alien to Kimball.  We exist to keep pumping money into his fiefdom.  But I don't think we can expect better from a long-in-the-tooth bureaucratic hack like Kimball who should've been sent off into the sunset a decade ago.

We should expect better from the mayor and the city commissioners.  Yet, the basic assumption that city employees shouldn't take any hits during a budget crisis went unchallenged by them.  Sure, most of them are cattle to be herded into whatever direction the city staff wants them to go in.  Not all, however.  Commissioners Jendrasiak and Tormala routinely speak out and disturb the placid waters of mindless consensus at city commission meetings.  Unfortunately, at the planning retreat challenging the status quo of city employee salaries and benefits was not in the forefront.

So, my fellow denizens of River City, once again you'll get less while the public servants supposedly working for you will get more.

Comments

[Leonard W. Grotenrath Jr.]

Dear Mr. Tingley,

As a frequent reader of your blog, wherein , by the way, I find much that I agree with, permit me nonetheless to dissent from your conclusion concerning Commissioner Tormala.

But first, in the sevice of full disclosure, allow me to divulge upfront that I am, among other things, a city retiree; a former member of the Grand Rapids Independent Employees Union; a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in "politike episteme" (that's how we students of political philosophy pedantically denominate and differentiate our specialty within the broader field of modern political science, viewing that field with its pretentious affectations of being "scientific" as risible); a cultural traditionalist in the sense that Chesterton and Belloc were; and a thirty year-long friend of Commissioner Tormala.

It would appear that the aforementioned associations, some of which you have at one time or another denounced with splenetic vigor as being beyond the pale of what decent and hard-working taxpayers such as yourself should be compelled to tolerate, even in a pluralist democracy, leaves me little chance of persuading you as to the injustice of your rushed and rash judgment regarding Rick's having been compromised because (gasp!) the GRIEU co-sponsored a fund-raiser for him and his family.

You assert as fact that Rick has been (sadly) compromised by this act of charity. Upon what evidence, sir, do you ground this judgment? Yes, yes, I know that you are a blogger and that standards of journalistic integrity (is that an oxymoron?) do not apply as such. Nor do the canons of civility and fair play, though one would hope that common decency is not wholly alien to you. (Indeed, if I thought that it were, I would not be wasting my time with this appeal!). Allow me, then, to offer the following in an effort to temper your judgment and perhaps mitigate its apodictic character.

As you know, Rick is a Democrat. Despite my best efforts over a span of thirty years at trying to convince him that such a mental aberation is susceptible to a cure, I have - alas - failed. The fact that I also failed in this with my fellow union members is likewise a cause of disappointment to me. Nonetheless, it seems to me that given Rick's perspective, which certainly pre-disposes him to view organized labor and its interests as worthy of political representation, I find it difficult to understand how it is that you conclude that he is compromised by accepting help from people who share his political views. If, per impossibile, Rich DeVos or Peter Sechia had contributed to the fund-raiser and Rick suddenly began to cast votes exclusively to advance their corporate interests, one could conclude that he had sold his vote or surrendered his integrity. But such a conclusion reached because he has allegedly received charitable benefices from political allies who share some of HIS views in matters political is, forgive me, silly, and unworthy of you as a normally clear-headed and well-spoken critic of the body-politic!

When you take into account the fact that Rick does not know who gave what or in what amounts your judgment and its soundness is further eroded. I can tell you as one who was present for most of the evening that union participation was much less than we had hoped. While many Democrats of various stripes were in attendance, and while Democrats (duh!) were responsible for organizing the event, there were also numerous Republicans (not office holders or party apparatchiks), ordinary voters of his and other wards who see in Rick an honest public servant whose record and actons as a public office holder transcend partisan insularity and inspire confidence.

I reiterate: you have done him an injustice by suggesting that he has been compromised by this event. Unless and until you can cite evidence (supposition does not count)of his perfidy, I would caution you to be more circumspect when impugning a good man's reputation. As you, yourself, noted implicitly, we do not enjoy a surfeit of such people in city government.

Thanking you for the opportunity to express my point of view and sincerely grateful to you for the time and energy you devote to this enterprise, I am

Appreciatively,
Leonard W. Grotenrath Jr.

P.S. As you may have divined, I do not share many of Rick's political enthusiams nor his party allegiance (or any party's, for that matter). What I see in Rick's underlying political orientation and what draws me to him, is his Catholic and Chestertonian vision. It is what saves him from the otherwise deleterious influence of a Democratic party that has all but abandoned its roots.

[The Editor - Bridget]

Dear Mr. Grotenrath Jr.

I received a note from you yesterday that was done back on 2/1/07. Apparently you tried to send a note to us at a .com address instead of our .org address. I am unsure how the note reached me but, it did.

So, I apologize for the delay in getting back with you.

As to your recent feedback to me that is not posted here, I believe that Bill's reply in the section called "The Cheap Shot Retracted" pretty much says it all for us.

I stand behind his reply to the first article and your comments.

We support those who are moral, ethical, honest and fair in their dealings with the city, local businesses and the residents in this city. As long as they do that, we are with them. If they choose to do wrong, and often willingly, our job at The Local Area Watch is to call them out and their actions once we find out about it.

If, in the rare circumstance our information is off, we are never above an apology or retraction. Our goal is to be tough and straight forward yet, fair. We treat others as we like to be treated (simple as that sounds).

Thanks for being a reader of our local news web site.

Regards,

Bridget