ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.
“Dog and pony show” is a colloquial term which has come to mean a highly promoted, often over-staged performance, presentation, or event designed to sway or convince opinion for political, or less often, commercial ends. — Wikipedia
I was witness to two of these shows this past week in the Dorr Township Hall, Tuesday at a meeting of the Planning Commission and Thursday at a meeting of the Township Board.
Trustee Terri Rios Tuesday read an e-mailed letter from a woman opposed to the recent rezoning for an apartment complex at the corner of 14th Street and 142nd Avenue. The commission had already approved the rezoning and site plan last month.
Then Clerk Debbie Sewers read the very same letter Thursday to colleagues on the Township Board. Both she and Rios would not disclose who wrote it, saying the woman feared some kind of retribution if she were to be identified.
Members of the Planning Commission and Township Board, other than Sewers and Rios, said they would not take the letter very seriously because it was anonymous. The site plan and rezoning were approved by board members as well.
The letter writer outlined a number of reasons for her opposition, most notably the haste in making the decisions and the traffic, impositions on nearby Bysterveld Park, the influx of “those people,” the residential density of the complex and the possible destruction of nearby wetlands.
The woman’s points about traffic should be taken seriously, but many of the other contentions bordered on utter selfishness and classism. The notion that it took only five minutes for Township Board and Planning Commission action is ludicrous, as Treasurer Jim Martin pointed out, because all but a small portion of the parcel was zoned for the project 11 years ago.
As I have indicated here before, something must done with growing traffic problems along 142nd Avenue, and this project seems to exacerbate them. I urge the Michigan Department of Transportation and Allegan County Road Commission to do some serious problem solving pronto.
But in the meantime, staging public commentary from an anonymous source about a project that already has been decided smacks of a dog and pony show. And it even worries me about the possibility the author of the letter was actually Sewers or Rios, or both.
