Cliffs Riffs - Stuph n Nonsense

In Support of Increasing Water and Sewer Rates There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding the looming increases in our water and sewer rates. As someone who lives in Lowell and owns a business on Main Street and thereby has three water and sewer bills every month, I can understand why people bristle at the thought of paying more for these services. As someone who just finished five years on the City Council, I can understand the need to raise the rates in order to help fund some very long overdue renovation to our infrastructure.   Julie and I made it through the total renovation on Monroe Street last year. The street was completely dug up between Main Street and the cemetery so that water and sewer pipes could be replaced in addition to repaving the road. It is important to remember that the reason Monroe was done before Washington had to do with a massive amount of rainwater/groundwater coming into the system via cracked and broken pipes which resulted in our water trea...

  Grocery Store Prices – Who is Responsible Lots of people have been talking about the cost of groceries and the impact it has had on the household budgets for most of us regular folks. It has been popular to place the blame on one or more politicians. I am going to join that chorus and in my humble opinion the blame lies squarely on the members of both major political parties. Especially those serving in the houses of Congress that take Corporate money in large amounts. I am not alone in this belief. I have the indirect support of the Federal Trade Commission to back me up. The FTC was founded in 1914 with this as its mission: “ The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. “The FTC does on a national basis what the Attorneys General do on a state by state basis in that they watch out for companies who seek to take unfair advantage ...

 Originally Published in the Lowell Ledger 10.4.23 HR. 4756 - A Bill To Provide Tax Incentives That Support Local Media In July of this year Republican Representative Claudia Tenney (NY 22) introduced a bill to provide tax incentives that will support local newspapers with a great one-two punch. The bill was co-sponsored by Democrat Suzan DelBene (WA 1). HR 4756 goes by the name Community News and Small Business Support Act. Since that time the bill is gaining some traction with support from eight more Representatives, four from each party. The bill is designed to support all kinds of local media including local papers, digital media outlets, radio stations and even TV stations. For the purpose of this article, we will only be considering the importance and impact of small town newspapers. HR 4756 would be a great help to small media outlets and small business at the same time. Before we look into the great possibilities of HR 4756, it is imperative to examine the current situati...

 Originally published in The Lowell Ledger 7.12.23 The Streets of Lowell – USDA Loans, Revenue Sharing, and Marijuana Taxes It is safe to assume that everyone reading this will agree that the streets in Lowell, and most other communities in Michigan, are a mess. Our recent unscientific, purely speculative, hunch based opinion would award Washington street as the most pot-holed stretch of pavement in the City. (My bet is that some other ones might be coming to your mind.) For the sake of this article, how about we pretend that Washington is the worst. Then why the heck is Monroe getting a total make-over before Washington? The USDA provided funding for the Monroe Project. Here are some other questions we can examine today: Why is Lowell borrowing millions of dollars to fix our roads? Does the USDA fund road repairs? What happened to all the money from marijuana sales in Lowell? What is the difference between a storm sewer and a sanitary sewer? And the one that seems to never go away...

  Health Insurance – Celebration Day Originally published in the Lowell Ledger 6.7.23 I am writing this on the first day of June. Not only is it a nice, warm day with lots of sunshine, it also happens to be the first day that my health care coverage switches over to Medicare. For a partner in a mom and pop business this is a day to celebrate. Ask anyone who is self-employed or owns a micro sized business like ours and they will tell you how awfully expensive health care coverage has become. Let me spell it out for you. Julie, my wife and partner in our small business, was eligible for Medicare last April. Prior to that, the cost of coverage for the two of us with Priority Health was $1,428.64 a month. The sticky wicket in that equation was that we had a deductible of $9,500.00. Each. Yes, we were paying $17,143.68 a year for health coverage but if we both had something serious happen in one year, we would have to come up with an additional $19,000.00. Once she switched to Medicar...

 We Need To Consider Taxation of Church Owned Property  Please take a couple minutes to read to the end before you write me off as antireligion or some nut case with an axe to grind against religious institutions. What made perfect sense in the past no longer makes any sense in my opinion. Also, please understand from the get go, that taxing church property will have to be addressed on a national level. The City Council cannot mandate property taxes on all the churches in Lowell.  Once upon a time, way back before the condition of our infrastructure on a local, state and national level was deplorable, it was decided to not tax church property. Back when this decision was made the only “infrastructure” were dirt roads connecting people of one locality to another. There were no paved roads, no sewer systems, no municipal water delivery, no 911 emergency services, and the fire departments consisted of everyone in town showing up with a bucket and hoping for the best. These t...

  In case you haven’t heard, the City of Lowell received $282,267.20 from the State of Michigan for our portion of State collected excise tax from adult use marijuana sales. This represents about nine percent of our annual general fund budget and the unanticipated high dollar amount was rightly labeled “huge” by City Manager Mike Burns. The total amount received has gone into the local streets fund to help pay for much needed road improvements. Please read that last sentence enough times to commit it to memory. As promised by Burns and the City Council, marijuana revenues are being used for our streets. Please indulge me as we look at a bit of pot history in Lowell. In 2017, the Council considered the question of allowing a medical marijuana facility to open here. Since I had benefitted considerably from edible marijuana following my treatment for throat cancer, I addressed the council as an advocate. They denied the application, citing the upcoming vote on Proposition 18-1 which...

My fellow Lowell citizens, please forgive me for presenting this most unpleasant dose of truth to you. If you love a good mystery like I do, then you must appreciate how sometimes the most serendipitous of events can lead the clever person down the path of discovery. Just such an event happened at the last meeting of the Lowell City Council. Being in my usual semi-concious state, something over my left shoulder struck me as out of place. To the best of my knowledge of geology, Lowell is located in America - what on earth was the Canadian flag doing there? I woke my fellow councilmember Jim from his pre-meeting nap and inquired about the maple leaf. Jim helpfully observed that this flag of a foreign power had been in chambers "for a while now", but then he went on to assure me "it keeps moving closer to the center of the room." When I commented to our Mayor about flying the colors of a rival gang, he broke into song. Wha???? Then I realized he was singing the them...

                           I recently read some articles about the fear of public speaking - holy smokes, I had no idea it ranked up there with trips to the dentist and that an overwhelming majority of people of all ages and stripes would pretty much rather do ANYTHING rather than address a group of people from behind a podium. As a member of the City Council, I am constantly encouraging people to come to the meetings and speak their minds on what ever issue or issues they might be passionate about. When I do this, I am completely serious. I will not speak for the others, but for me feedback from the public - especially residents and tax payers of Lowell - is something I depend on. If you know me, you KNOW I have a lot of opinions on a lot of things. :-)  However, my job on the Council is to reflect the will of the people in Lowell and when you come and address us it helps me to know exactly how you feel,...

Fun Fact - you know you have been hanging out with someone for a long time when you start to think alike. Yesterday my wife Julie and I had very similar thoughts about masks and guns even though we were in two different locations. I was home and she was at the store and the thoughts seem to have occurred at a similar time. Anyway, here is my version. There is a lot of division in my favorite Michigan town about two tools - Guns and Masks . They might seem to be vastly different in materials and proper usage, but my point here is to draw your attention the the similarities. How can a face covering of paper or cloth be similar to a tool designed to ignite gun powder and fling projectiles in space at high speed? I believe there are two common threads in these tools and the people who advocate for their use: Control and Fear . Masks Fear : Those of us who advocate for the wearing of masks in places where face to face interaction is going to occur take a lot of guff from people wh...