Monday, the 14-----board of appeals today: told by the 3 people on the board that the assessor told them the state did away with all agriculture designations and that taxes on now residential unimproved would be the same anyway. of course, i believed that so came home to call the man who farms dad's north fields who also has farmland in atlas (his still is ag--he checked tax sheets) and he said he'd heard of someone who went in recently to get his no longer ag back to ag. when i returned to the township office the assessor was talking to the board and then to me: naturally it was a computer problem for me and at least 10 others, and i believed that too. according to her ALL the ag in the township disappeared--do you see anything wrong with this story? all except mr jelinek's? anyway, a new sheet was run with the 100% ag back on. i know the state, township and davison schools need $ and i would have been glad to pay more if that had been the case. and do you believe that?
15th-----one of the appeals people also applied for the trustee replacement. 12 people did. the 4 council people came up with their list of those to interview. surprise that ammon was among them--he accused of intentionally destroying the computer or hard drive when he lost supervisor election and replaced by a woman. horrors. actually i was told the trustee resigning had the computer/drive at his house and destroyed it. and that all the council knew. now why was this never pursued? it was discussed at a meeting either dec or jan following elections when the lawyer was present. it is obvious the remaining 3 want ammon. he is the supervisor who told me (karas suggested i ask him) that ag land from dad could never remain ag. odd that the lapeer conservation group was able to send me in the right direction and that the lawyer was able to submit papers and get it transferred.
Master Gardener meeting last night the 17th with Peter Bray from East MI Environmental Action Council. he suggested beans and peas for adding nitrogen to the soil and cutting the plants off at the end of the growing season to leave nitrogen rich roots in soil. he does use some cover crops too; also he uses beds not row planting. to someone's question about seed he said monsanto's roundup ready beans since 95 or 96 when introduced have now 10 weeds showing resistance, 3 in Mi. (if i got them right, horseweed, ragweed, and giant ragweed) for Bt corn, planting suggestions say 20% non resistant corn should be planted with the Bt so borer can be 20% happy. cute
On monday march 14 i attended the breakfast w/speaker series our 51st district rep puts on to raise $ for his scholarships for schools in his district. but not for davison though since a davison school building is not in his area. i busily took notes as fast as possible. rep scott said in intro remarks that the state is going to create jobs but not in lansing; "you in your community". the weight is on small businesses, it can't be labor intensive, you get to decide where to put $ and what to do to control your destiny, where to invest. the "Idea should be to take away rules" we will be doing that. the speaker was the MI speaker of the house, bolger. pretty good audience and some good questions. see if you see direct answers:
1. the superintendent of grand blanc schools deb hancock asked about the idea that if a school has an equity fund in place, even after cutting expenditures, getting worker concessions, etc, they will have to use all but 15% for new year budget and that 85% will be included as part of their state aid.
answer="the state's desire is to make difficult decisions this year to make things better from
now on, we need jobs to get healthy" (davison schools, may have 5.9 million shortfall, plans
include taking 2.4 million from the districts fund equity to balance the expected state
reductions. see the davison index mar 17)
2. someone named Jones asked about the poor conditions of the roads. he had spoken with the county which gets the same amount of $ as 14 years ago. what can the cities and townships expect?
answer=mi has 19 cents/gallon tax. cars get better mileage and people are buying less gas. what we need is a way to make those people who are using roads but not buying gas pay for the roads.
3. question about medical marijuana law from swartz creek mayor
answer=they will be working on it, he doesn't want to waste time on it but will
4. A man who works with a crisis group on pregnancy asked about the rumor that non profit
organizations were going to be taxed.
answer=no there isn't a plan, bolger thinks, to tax non profits but to lower their tax credits. (notice flint is thinking about charging for some services non profits presently do not pay for)
5. Bonnie who works with the paralyzed vets organization asked if they were ever going to get legislated 7% of contracts going to vets; now getting less than 1/2 % (i don't know anything about this)
6. Grand Blanc councilwoman asked what is the legislature doing about the fact that after serving only 6 years they get life time health care for selves and family. then she asked about brownfield grants being eliminated.
answer=working on that, maybe employers should pay 80% and employee 20%, we are paying for parking. as for brownfields, they may belong in the tax field or a policy committee (no real answer there)
7. A teacher i believe said if 100,000 public employees paid 20% of health care, that should be a lot of money.
answer="all the $ going into the state is taken from someone." maybe there are better health plans than the MEA's (messa i believe is non profit, others may not be not MESSA is used by many school districts now. retirees get other plans most bcbs i think) and "if all state employees took a 401K and no pension the whole budget would be ok".
8. asked by 1 audience member about what the legislature has done to take cuts--they now pay for their parking places. they cut their office budgets by 10%. bolger i believe said he did it by getting rid of the office manager. pay cut supposedly to start may 1
monday: was running errands in davison and ended at kroger where a bright red flint garbage truck pulled in to the north, did a u turn to be heading back out and stopped. out comes an employee with 2 garbage bags. at first i thought maybe he was throwing them in the container by the store but he went in. i watched him and he watched me. i assume they were cans. being a pessimistic and skeptical person i wondered first why was a flint truck there and why cans. could be ones they picked out of garbage of course and maybe flint takes the garbage to the dump north of davison rd. lunch time so they were "free"? 1:51pm truck 4950.
if i weren't planning on going to an anniversary party april 9th, the lowe's webcast pm gardening would be interesting. lowes.com/webcast on april 9 9am pst.
from the winter 2011 ACLU Rights Review: "Michigan law requires that children as young as 14 charged with certain felonies must be tried as adults and if convicted, sentenced, without judicial discretion, to life without parole. The US is the only country in the world that sentences youth to life without parole, and Michigan incarcerates the second highest number of people serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed when they were 17 years old or younger. Currently there are 350 individuals serving mandatory life sentences in Michigan without parole who did not commit murder, but were present or committed a felony when a homicide was committed by others." p 7
ben and i did aldi's on the 24th and even though it is low cost, low service, this was the first time i was told to take my receipt off the register. very odd. well, thinking positively, maybe the cashier didn't want to have germs from his hand on the receipt. must be it. and we were charged with 9 condensed milk instead of 8; on the positive the pepperoni pizza there is good, mama cozi's or something similar. would be nice if WHERE the items come from appeared on all packages and cans. holland i might trust but this packed for stuff is not acceptable, nor distributed by. i once checked on line at the aldi site and found nothing. could try again. . .
