Category: Politics

  • When Local Government does its Job

    You know, a lot of people whine about local government. And where I live we whine about living in a village where I have to pay 40% more municipal taxes than my neighbors just 150 yards to the north.

    But today is exactly why I love the Village of Romeo. For the past two weeks we’ve had an issue with our waste water backing up in to the basement. It wasn’t a major issue but it was starting to get annoying and a little worse. Each time we did laundry or something significant using water, a little would end up on the floor. 

    So today I stopped into the Village offices to report the problem. See, there is a major project going on in my block where they are putting in new water and gas lines. And I inquired as to whether it was possible that the digging they had done could have disturbed something in my sewer line. Literally within 15 minutes 2 guys were at my house looking around. Within 30 minutes they had a camera device running down my sewer line and determined that there was indeed a clog right about where they had been digging. And right now, less than 1 hour later, they are doing just about everything they can to clear the clog.

    Here’s the thing. It’s likely that this was caused by their digging. But it could have also just been a coincidence. They didn’t blame anyone, they didn’t suppose it wasn’t their fault. These two guys just got to work.

    This is why you live in a great place like Romeo. Sure… it’s not cheapest to live here. But it is great to have these services available when needed.

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    Update:     The guys have left. At one point I think there were 10 trucks and 20 people here working on our problem. They have completely installed a new sewer line and blown/sucked out every bit of goo all over our house.  While they did indeed discover that one of the contractors had broken our sewer line they did fix it quickly, were extremely apologetics and professional. In fact, our plumbing is in better condition now than it was before. What’s more, it didn’t cost us a dime and they offered to pay for any costs we did incur. (We didn’t have any that I know of.) And as a bonus, I get to keep a front-end loader. They said I could sell it too if I wanted to. First person here with $15,000 gets to keep it. As is, no keys or pink slip.

  • Crazy Bond Proposal

    Romeo_smHere in Romeo, there is a proposal to bond $93 million to build a new high school as well as a fair number of other projects. It’s a lot of money and the politics that it has brought about are quite interesting.

    I’m an optimist. I like to see what is happening in the Detroit area as a "market refinding" time as the auto industry continues to struggle to contain their costs. I feel it is merely a matter of time until the Detroit area finds a new source of industry to subsidy (backfill) the continued decline of Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler. Unlike a lot of my neighbors I don’t think that these companies will leave Detroit. But I think in order to stay, they will make some drastic moves, maybe even eliminating more local job…  which trickles down to effect the many support businesses in and around Romeo today. I think that during this market correction, those people buying and investing in our area will benefit the most. Such as, people purchasing homes cheaply now will benefit by a bounce to come.

    But I’m not happy about this current bond issuance. I have a few reasons I will be voting against it later this month:

    (more…)

  • the mountaintop

    MlkThe man could preach you know? [Check it out] I have often been amazed at how few people have ever heard Martin Luther King, Jr. preach a sermon. Yes, he was one of the great oritors of the 20th Century… but he was also one of the most profound preachers I have ever read.

    Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire.

    I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle.

    Was not Jesus an extremist for love — (Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 1963)