Paving roads
April 29, 2013 | 05:42 PM

Keeping skilled road makers are essential to having good roads. In our economic downturn of these past few years, should the employees be layed off or allowed to find work in other towns, states etc.

Keeping them busy even doing what may seem to be non productive task, may be better than always searching for skilled road builders. Also, contractors, sub contractors may be under the same scrutiny.

John W. Hart



John W. Hart
Lake Orion

Tammies Heazlits Neighbor
March 06, 2013 | 10:44 AM

Tammie,
Do yourself and your neighbors a favor and report the neighbor that is burning from "7am til after dark, up to 16 hours straight." Your neighbor is clearly violating township burn policies.
FYI - March 8 thru November 1st (Summer hours)are from 8am to 8pm (12 hours). Winter hours (Nov. 2 thru March 7) are from 8am to 6pm (10 hours). Burning is allowed only on designated days.
As for the 400' ft. policy...I can foresee big problems enforcing a policy that takes away ones burning privileges based solely upon who lives next door.
I've followed the opening burning policy for 28 years. I certainly would respect a neighbors illness and coordinate my burning accordingly.
That being said, I think the 400' rule is a bad policy that pits neighbor against neighbor and won't accomplish a thing. We both know that it's foolish to beleive that a 400' ft. rule is going to stop the wind from carrying smoke to someones house.
The proper solution should have been a designated ONE Saturday per month, 8am-6pm open burn policy, with strict fines for violating this policy.
This type of policy would be easy to enforce and respects the wishes of both non-burners and burners. Both parties should be making concessions, not just the burners.
The new board needs to re-examine this policy and make it fair for all, or it will never hear the end of it!



Michael Powell
Clarkston

finals in college
March 02, 2013 | 02:21 PM

Sounds like Mr Schultz may not have attended college, because it is not uncommon to "test out" of subjects in higher ed, or be excused from finals if previous performance in that class has indicated you have mastery. If this is the practice in Oxford, it is right in line with what students will experience at the next level.

knower
lake orion

Feel free to counter our letters with facts
February 06, 2013 | 07:50 AM

Sarah: Sorry, we didn't realize that exercising our first amendment right to speak out had to be done so only when it is in agreement with your views.
We find it troubling to be publicly accused of bribing the Clarkston News with payment to print our letters to the Editor. We are appalled by the accusation and we find your intent to silence opposing viewpoints questionable.
We took an official "view" of the majority on Nov. 6, 2012. The results? The "view" of the majority in the community was NO to the library millage tax increase. A fact that cannot be denied.
So we must conclude that you are upset that a majority in the community didn't hold the same view when they voted down the tax increase.

The library was guaranteed two elections before a single vote was cast in the first, so you can rest assured in the knowledge that you will get a chance to "send in your donation" to get your letter printed for August 2014, election.
In the meantime, feel free to counter our letters with facts, not false accusations.

Sincerely,
Michael and Lori Powell

Michael Powell
Independence Township

News in brief, new City Manager
January 25, 2013 | 08:15 PM

By my reading, this is a direct violation of City Charter section 4.24 as there has been no official consent of the council for this action. I doubt anyone will care about this either and like most actions of the Council, they will approve it after the fact, if they bother at all.

Cory Johnston
Village of Clarkston

Letters to the Editor
January 24, 2013 | 10:28 PM

On occassion I have strongly disagreed with the Powells and at other times agreed with their opinions. In both cases, I have found their letters to be well researched and well written which I assume are some of the reasons they are published. Many, but not all, of my letters have been published and rumor has it that I have some in with the local paper. I don't think so, they certainly do not pay me anything and in fact I pay them to subscribe to their paper. In the case of the Powells and others, it might be that they submit letters with some content which is probably another good attribute for having them printed. As for the Powells not reflecting the majority of residents, that's what elections are for, not opinion letters. I for one like to read other opinions whether I agree with them or not and it is one of the reasons I subscribe to the Clarkston News.

Cory Johnston
City of the Village of Clarkstn

Independence (Clarkston) cable television
January 22, 2013 | 08:10 PM

I remember Rob Namowicz's show on the local cable channel where he read the Clarkston News with some creative embellishments. I thought it was pretty entertaining and I was even mentioned a few times. So much for my 15 seconds of fame. As for the content of the channel, I enjoy the availability of the Township government meetings but hardly consider them artistic since they are simply recorded. However, it is better than nothing which is what we have in the City of the Village of. I ignore most of the other programming and would love to see more local talent of any kind.

Cory Johnston
Clarkston

Clarkston girls freshman basketball team
January 08, 2013 | 09:28 PM

The Clarkston girls freshman basketball team is undefeated at 8 and 0. There next home game is this Thursday 01/10/13 at 5:00 pm.

Marie Miles
Clarkston

Library Millage
December 04, 2012 | 06:01 PM

While I have great respect for the opinions of Ms. Heazlit and the Powells, I have to agree with Mike Powell on this issue.

In addition to the issues raised in recent letters, city residents were being asked to approve a 1.25 mill increase in their taxes with the promise that the city operating millage would be reduced by .69 mills if the library tax increase was approved. A decision that would be made solely by the City Council, not the residents and taxpayers of the city. Township residents on the other hand were guaranteed the .69 mill reduction which means they were voting for a smaller tax increase than city residents.

Even with that, township residents defeated this tax increase while a majority of city residents were in favor. Perhaps this is why the city has far more representation on the Library Board since they are obviously more supportive than township residents, and seemingly more willing to pay higher taxes. We can obviously all ignore the fact that there is no other legal or moral reason for this disproportionate representation.

Even more interesting is that township residents could have voted higher taxes on city residents than on themselves even if city residents had been overwhelmingly against higher taxes. Hardly the local control our city leaders keep touting as the reason we must be a city and continue to pay higher taxes than our friends in the surrounding township who provide almost all our essential services.

Then we have the undisputable fact that all our elected leaders, and appointed board of library supporters, have unanimously voted in favor of the higher library tax and will no doubt use their positions of power to promote it for the next two years at which time they will try again. This is not informing the public so they can make an educated decision but a few people dictating how the rest of us will spend what little money we have left.

I like a library as much as the next person. I just don't understand why we can't get honest, unbiased information from which we can make a decision and cast a vote. A vote that will mean something instead of being reconsidered, or ignored, whenever it is more convenient for those who supposedly represent all of us.

There is obvioulsy a lot of confusion on this issue, many misstatements and, what appears to be a complete misunderstanding of how property value related taxes are supposed to work. Perhaps this defeat and the next two years will give everyone the opportunity to understand the issues better and make an educated vote the next time.

Cory Johnston
Village of Clarkston

Library Millage
December 01, 2012 | 11:11 AM

I would have to disagree with Tammie Heazlit. The fire millage passed in August of 2012 and not a single complaint was made about that proposals wording.
To the best of my knowledge 30 others have not come forward stating that they voted erroneously.

One man has claimed he voted no based solely on the notion that he thought 0.6% of this money was going to go to the CIA. Six tenths of one percent was enough to get this man to change his Yes vote to No?

Suppose that he really believed that 0.6% of his money was going to the CIA. Shouldn't this part of the proposal have cleared up any questions he had? "The amount disbursed to the Sashabaw Road Corridor Improvement Authority shall be collected solely from properties within the Sashabaw Road Corridor Improvement Authority District."

The Fire millage that was passed in August finished with the exact same verbage... "Shall be collected solely from properties within the Sashabaw Road Corridor Improvement Authority District." It was passed without a single resident complaining about the wording being confusing. Now it's confusing?
The wording is very clear. 100% goes to the library from every property in the township except for CIA properties where 99.4% goes to the library and .6% goes to the CIA.

Considering that state law requires this information to be put on every township tax hike proposal, will ignorance always be a story when township proposals fail?

The agreement should have allowed for the appointment of officers for the first term only. Other district library boards are elected, but not under this library agreement. Why? Why did this agreement keep us from voting for board members and then guaranteed that unelected board another election? The public isn't well served by this agreement or by appointed boards. Appointed boards tend to answer to those that appointed them.

Library board member Kay Robertson failed to identify herself as a Library Trustee in her letter to the editor. Why? She said: "Many chose to not even respond yes or no to the library proposal."

Let's look at the numbers...

Trustees had 58,912 total votes cast. Four votes were allowed per voter. 58,912 divided by four equals approximately 14,728 people voting.

Brown, Palatta and Kittle had 13,052, 13,561, 13,848 votes each.

The library millage proposal had 18,918 votes.

Those numbers tell me that approximately 4000 more voters chose to respond to the library millage then they did to the candidates. The numbers don't lie, more people chose to make their voices heard regarding the library millage, not less.

This is why board members should be elected, not appointed.

Something to think about... A city of 800 residents got two seats on the board of an entity it didn't build (1 per 400 residents) and a township of 36,000 residents that have been supporting that building got 5 seats (one per 7,200 residents) Not very diplomatic of them, eh?

Regards,
Michael Powell


Michael Powell
Clarkston