If you recall, and some of you may not as this blog continues to grow in readership by the month. When I started this blog it was to help us get information out. You have found (and will continue to find) speling errors and gramma errors. It is not that I due this on purpose (all the time), but I promised myself to only spend 10 to 15 (yes I realize if I were a professional writer I should spell out numbers) minutes a day getting something out that informs the public.
This has been more of an on going conversation (yes I enjoy you thoughts and comments that you have emailed me). This is not a public relations machine that is well oiled and proof read five times. Sometimes it is just random thoughts.
It might be about code enforcement. It might be about something in my personal life (yup, managers are people too). Might be about my management philosophy. Or, it might be in response to an event or issue. And yes, sometimes a combination of all the above.
Today I think is a combination of two or three things. Response to 2 letters to the editor. Response to some questions I have received. Telling our story, and a little of our philosophy.
Here is a letter to the editor that I sent to the Davison Index this week. Pictures added to show some of the public space needs.
Guest Article/Letter to the Editor
There has been a lot of talk of
change of late. That is not all bad. In fact there have been recent letters
to 
the editors, comments at public meetings, and private
conversations that have
sparked even more interest in municipal projects.
Some of these
comments have already been asked an answered. People
should be aware that the
Davison City Council does ask a lot of questions.
Sometimes the general public
doesn’t always find out and I don’t think
people should only get their
information from one place. As much as the
Index would like report everything,
they have deadlines, limited resources,
and limited space to cover all the
things that go on.
We encourage people to come to our
meetings. I
have a very liberal open door policy that some of our residence
takes advantage
of. Our mind set at city hall is an informed public makes
for better community
decisions. And who knows you may come up with something we haven’t.
It is interesting, one of the comments that from the USDA
people who are working with us for Federal Funding on the municipal
center project is they were impressed with how open our process has been to the general public. They were impressed that we invited the general public to the selection process to obtain the architectural consultants. Many people took part in 
these very interactive meetings. We are not done with the
openness
either.
Some issues that have been raised have been
addressed. When
I first arrived in Davison the City Council wanted me to
look at options for
adding on to city hall because they knew we were out of space. We did look at building in our court yard area. We also looked at adding second stories to both the municipal building and the library. Both these options were shot down by
three independent professionals who we had look at our buildings (for the same reasons pointed out in the recent FTC&H report).
We also looked at adding a building in our parking lot, but we are already 
short of parking. Suggestions were looked at of buying some neighboring houses and to close down another street to expand our “Municipal Campus”. Removing more property from our tax roll didn’t make
good financial sense.
There are some comments floating out there on the city not maintaining the buildings. Where this is not the reason for a new building there has been some deferred maintenance. But we should not confuse maintenance issues with the current buildings out living there usefulness. Could the city have replaced the entire wood fascia ten years ago? Yes. Could the city patch the existing roof structures to attempt to keep rain water out? We have. Could the city attempted to become ADA compliant? We did make an effort.
That being said, this list of things that have to be done to bring our structures up to compliance and functional as a public building
make this building obsolete. Comparing our city hall to the Michigan State capital is nice, but is like comparing apples to rocks. They are not even in the same food group. The capital building was built to stand the test of time; we would like to build a municipal center that would also stand the test of time.
Wants and needs are things that have to be watched in any
endeavor and we have been doing that. There have been plenty of wants that have been dropped because they were not needs.
The comments about only more work to do if you create work. Could not be further from reality. I am very proud of city council and our staff for the efficiency we have accomplished in the past five years. We have found ways to save the tax payers almost five million dollars by things like re-bidding contracts, adjusting insurance policies and practices, consolidating services and looking at how and why we do
things. As manager of the City of Davison there is plenty of work to do with out the municipal center project.
Some of those processes even had us talking with Davison Township about consolidation. Very interesting discussions, but this process can get very ugly quick (just look at the Grand Blanc experience). We have offered to share facilities with Davison Township, or just their police department as a part of our process. All these discussion have been
polite and cordial and we have a great relationship with Davison Township. We do a lot of joint ventures with the township and schools that save all the community tax dollars. But Townships and Cities are different forms of government and would take an entire different discussion to discuss the challenges of a merger.
There were some interesting comments recently about our Fire Authority and what we are looking at. A letter to the editor had
some good points (again, some that have been discussed at the Authority). Some people think this study that was done was
just about a second station, but we could have done that without a study. The Fire Authority has been looking at an additional station on and off for thirty years. As recent as last year the Authority could not come to a consensus on a Richfield Township sub-station.
First let’s start by stating that we have one station that services 72 square miles. Our department does a great job servicing that area, but that area is quite large for one station.
The study’s purpose was two fold and to have someone from the outside look at us. This was to be done by someone independent and not politically attached to a person or cause. The first area was to find out if we a re doing things right, and if so, what? The second thing we were looking at was how to we continue to improve and what do we need to improve on.
In the first area, we do a lot right and you can be proud of the men
and women of our Fire Department. We provide great fire suppression for a low cost. We have dedicated and motivated fire personnel and well maintained equipment. We also have started some great educational endeavors and better inspection programs.
In the second area of the study we do have some areas to improve on. Yes, they did recommend new fire stations. That is not a typographical error. Two new buildings. The existing building has been a great building, but does not fit today’s fire vehicles. Some people might not know that we can not buy standard vehicles. The garage heights are not high enough. Today they build fire trucks taller; they have found that doing so gives the trucks more water capacity. When we buy a truck we have to customize the truck to be lower profile. So in essence we are paying more (customizing a standard platform) to get less (less water capacity).
The actual fire department building location is okay, but not the best. On most fire runs there are three turns just to get the fire trucks going in the direction of the fire run.
The insurance issue that is brought up is more complicated than I
have seen laid out. The main thrust of any insurance rate dropping has to do with the area’s ISO rating. This is a standardized rating that takes many things into consideration. The rating varies from one to ten; a ten rating being the highest (and most costly for insurance) and a one rating being the best rating (and correspondingly lower insurance rate).
We have a variance of ratings in our community. In the city we are a five. We have all paved roads, plenty of water and have a fire station within five miles. There are other factors, but I hope you can get the idea.
In both Townships you can see they don’t have as good of rating for the
entire townships. Water, paved roads, distance from a fire station, etc…
all play a part of the rating system.
This is where the Fire Authority is studying our options. Just building a
building does not help everyone. We want to improve on the great Fire
Department we have. We are not ready to say we should build a new station in six months, nor put an arbitrary date of say three
years. What we are doing is taking steps to find out how to make the community a safer place to live, work, and raise a family.
One of the things I find interesting in my career is there a lot of people from all walks of life who say “Pete, it is obvious, just do ABC.” What they don’t realize is that there is someone just as passionate saying “Pete, it is obvious, just do XYZ.”
This is why we have representative government. Every city council I have worked for has wondered aloud “How do we get more public to our meetings?”
We, in the city of Davison encourage public participation so much
that we have two sections of our agenda for public comments. We also have a workshop format for our second monthly meeting where the public interacts with the city council. We probably average six to a dozen people at every meeting. There have been some standing room only meetings, but that is normally when there is a hot issue on the table.
There are some people who think we should put our meetings on cable TV. D-TV (channel 19) does a professional job on other things. Might be a good idea, oh wait that could mean updates to our city council chambers.
Much like building a great sports team, if you just take what people give
you, you don’t really control your own destiny. We believe we have to go out
and recruit for the future, not just ake what comes.
This is one of why we have spent so much time on infrastructure items that the
city has control of. Best water treatment plant in the state, I&I solutions, Streetscape plans, Design Standards, relooking at how we do our zoning,
mixing up and shaking up how city hall operates, etc, etc, etc…
Early on in my tenure we brought some developers to town to invest and build in our community. They liked our community, good schools, good location, good labor market…But to a one, they all asked when are you going to invest in yourselves?
Your municipal center is tired, obsolete and uninspiring, your downtown is drab an uninviting, your corporate center is hard to find.
We have World class companies like Veit and Coles too. Pioneer Cabinetry and Fenco are companies that a lot of communities will fight you for.
Well, we have taken many steps. The city council has worked with the LDFA to acquire property for growth and development. The Planning Commission has been
working on designs standards and how we zone. The entire community worked on Blue Prints for Downtown and Streetscape designs for Main Street, Flint
Street, and State Street.
We could just wait for Genesee County, or the State of Michigan to turn the economy around or we can grab our own future and lead Genesee County with the new jobs and development.
You might be able to tell where I stand on this. It looks like my 15 to 20 miutes is up.
and staff.
