The Positive Voices

In case you missed it, former Mayor John Logie recently made a speech to the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council, saying voters should support a constitutional convention to rewrite the State Constitution. Logie said needed changes to the constitution just can’t be properly accomplished by the usual methods of piecemeal amendment at the ballot box. Among the changes Logie deemed needed were restructuring the entire state tax system, promoting the consolidation of local units of government, changing the method of selecting state Supreme Court justices, and replacing the state House and Senate with a unicameral legislature. “We prefer to get our protein one worm at a time and not open up a whole can of worms,” riposted David Bertram, legislative liaison for the Michigan Townships Association. I side with the townships on this one. Calls for consolidating local units of government make them circle the wagons the fastest, with good reason. They haven’t forgotten the voracious annexation appetites of the cities and likely never will. The Grand Rapids Press’ anonymous editorial voice (1/19) pompously boomed in on Logie’s side, nominating the Kelloggsville School system for immediate consolidation and recommended various legislative plans that would force smaller school systems and local units of government to consolidate. All the plans shared one common trait – the local schools or governments, and their voters, wouldn’t get any choice in the matter, except maybe the small choice of who to get absorbed by. The supposed payoffs to local citizens for such ruthless forced mergers are claimed by Logie and the Press to be saving money, and (Logie) curbing urban sprawl. The irony of Logie’s curbing urban sprawl claim is amusing. Logie’s audience, the Metro Council, was intended from its inception as a way to grab control of state and Federal funding for local transportation away from  IGE local governments. Thus our lo-while the Metro Council directed transportation funding to building M-6, a highway totally unneeded by local communities but desired by special interests, who expected to grow rich off the suburban sprawl that will follow in M-6’s wake. The claim of money to be saved is just as comical. Does anyone really believe that if their school system, small town or township is forcibly merged with another, that their taxes will be lowered, services significantly improved or their children receive a richer educational experience? If so, then why don’t consolidation proponents want to make it conditional on getting voter approval? The example they love to cite is Godwin Heights and Wyoming Park school districts sharing a superintendent But it was Godwin and Wyoming’s own idea and didn’t require new legislation. They didn’t have to get anyone else’s approval. And they pocket the savings without the huge complexities of consolidation. I know next to nothing about the Kelloggsville Schools, except that they are larger than the Godwin Heights school district student population-wise. The demographic profile of Godwin is daunting - high numbers of underprivileged, low-income students, usually a predictor of below-average performance. But Godwin schools have attracted national attention for performing well above state and national averages in educational achievement. And (my favorite item because I was there in Ford Field last Halloween day) their high school marching band walked away with the Flight IV State Championship trophy, second year in a row, again a whopping five points ahead of their nearest challenger. By the criteria of consolidation proponents, Godwin Heights and Kelloggsville districts would be among the first victims to disappear in forced mergers. Who would benefit from this? Nobody I know. Large consolidated school districts, both urban and rural, are notoriously wasteful unresponsive underachievers. The statistical correlation between large size and poor performance is so lopsidedly compelling that some education researchers have concluded that “who governs” is the single most determining factor in the quality of a school district’s education. If the parents are the dominant political force, districts give them what they want. If the bureaucrats hold power because the district is so large that they can divide, isolate and defeat any effort by parents to organize against them, the district becomes successful at denying parents everything they want. We have a fine local example of a large consolidated school district – the Grand Rapids Public Schools, infamous for chasing students, parents and families out of the district. Almost a dozen on my little street alone. Weekday mornings in my City neighborhood, a veritable caravan of minivans and cars, full of schoolchildren, head out to various suburban public and charter schools. If we didn’t have school choice, plus many private and parochial school options, many more families would have abandoned City neighborhoods entirely. I spent several years working with parents and neighborhood groups trying to reform the GRPS. One candidate for the school board we interviewed said right to our faces, ”Parents are stupid.” She is currently President of the School Board. We threw in the towel and enrolled our children in a small school district just outside the City – four elementary schools, two middle schools, one high school - a highly rated, awardwinning system, run by a handful of administrators. You can drive by their administration building (the size of a tiny branch bank) and count the cars in the employee parking – seven, which includes the secretaries and clerks. Their nervous administrators treat parents like gold. A hundred angry parents at a GRPS school board meeting would be a slow night. Here, it would guarantee replacement of the superintendent or the school board, or both. Small size matters a lot when it comes to lo-lages, small towns and larger cities into larger Something wrong with that? Except that it cal units of government. Elected officials and units or huge megalopolises save the state or isn’t as cheap and easy for the developers as a bureaucrats in small school districts, town-state taxpayers any money? Does anybody re-single regional authority with one-size-fits-all ships, small towns and villages have to be very ally believe that if their local government was standards. My heart bleeds borscht for them. responsive and solicitous to their voters and forced to merge into a larger governmental unit The “crazy-quilt” provides folks with a lot parents or kiss their jobs goodbye. Conversely, that their taxes would go down? Do people in of very important side benefits for not much large units of government, regional, state, and larger cities pay lower taxes than residents of cost. We have a wonderfully wide choice of Federal, are very unresponsive and unsolici-small towns, villages and townships? Of course places to live, work and educate our children. tous of local desires and needs. not. And most of those places are very responsive The repeated claims that “Michigan can no Developers and special interests are fond to our wants and needs. Despite Logie and longer afford [insert total number of local gov-of waving regional maps of local governmental the Press, there is no compelling argument to ernments or school systems in the state here]” units and decrying them as “crazy-quilts” of change that.