Bernero vs. Council

hood

In todays LSJ it shows that City Council chose to not apply for grant money to refurbish Frances Park, the 4 'no' votes came from Bernero's 4 opponents on the council. Now, I've been apathetic about the whole Mayor vs. Council thing until now, but the Councils resolve to screw over the mayor at all costs is now costing the city in a number of ways, from fighting in vane for the Lansing Boat Club (rather than taxpayers), to this most recent grant issue. There are people on Council who couldn't care less about the city, they just want to see Bernero crash and burn, likely taking the city down with him. I'm just curious where everyone else stands on this issue.

micro

This basically just infuriated me. I can't believe they voted against this. The biggest reason this makes me mad was that this was going to fix up an area using mostly federal dollars. Come election time, I'm thinking about taking out a half page add against the 4 "No" voters on the council in LSJ.

schurymi

Okay, I acknowledge that a city government isn't a business, but who turns down a 200% gain on investment? $200k to get $400k seems like a pretty straight-forward decision, especially when the city wouldn't have had to spend the $200k unless it got the grant. Maybe the grant money can be applied for next year?

MichMatters

This whole new council has surprised me quite a bit, and I'm sad to say that I'm sorry that I voted for Eric Hewitt over Leeman, now. I voted for him as a check on the mayor's power, but not like this. This guy is a straight-up obstructionist who seems to know very little about the workings of the city.

Up until relatively recently I believed Bernero to be overstepping the authority of the mayors' office, but it seems now to me that it is the council who's going too far. I've come to recognize that the mayor is the first one in a very long time that wants to transform city government to make it work again. While Lansing city government hasn't been anywhere near as unresponsive as that of say Detroit, Flint, or Saginaw, it has been mediocre for quite some time. I must say I've come around to the mayor's view that we need big changes in how we run our city, and that includes finally having the courage to get rid of the luxuries we can no longer afford, and bolstering the things we really need. Roads, police, fire, and sewers may not be 'sexy' issues, but they've been neglected long enough. Couple that with the fact that he's also been able to push city center redevelopment at the same time, and you've got yourself a good mayor, one of the better big city mayors in Michigan, in fact.

That said, after coming off the ultra-conciliatory Benavides administration, Bernero can be a bit clumsy and blunt in how he governs, and at times he does need to be put in check, but this obstructionist view the council is taking is ridiculous.