The Positive Voices

I have been doing a lot of reading concerning the financial situation of the City of Grand Rapids. The word that keeps appearing is “reinvent.” A word with interesting meaning and a bit troublesome to me when it is followed by another word called government thus creating the recently popular phrase “reinvent government.” To reinvent is to invent something again, or bring something back into existence, use, or popularity after a period of neglect or obscurity. Under this definition there seems to be nothing new or improved just the same idea with a different wrapper. Yet another definition of the same word means to create a new version of something, to change radically the appearance, form, or presentation of something or somebody. This is the problem with the term reinvent government. The last time that government truly reinvented itself was done by starting a war. It was called the Revolutionary War and then the Civil War. The people are the government. This city government is not a separate entity from the people or a corporation as some Grand Rapids thinkers would like it to be. A democratic government does not make threats or dictate to its citizen unless it wants to be “reinvented.” The citizens of Grand Rapids made the extraordinary choice to increase taxes in a time when every penny counts. Passing the new tax increase was supposed to be the major “tool” for the City Manager to slow down the economic spiral of the city. Yet again the city pools were threatened to be closed in an attempt to manipulate the citizens into making more radical changes to city government. If only the veil of privacy would truly be removed to show the real purpose of ideas like the street lighting tax, the proposed sale of city property on Market Street, the increase funding for temporary staff, reducing parks and recreation, more privatization of city services, and the reduction of regular employees. City Manager Greg Sundstrom stated that city government needs to be transparent. This is not good enough. A window is transparent. I can see thru it but yet I cannot control what is behind it for there is still a wall. I believe the word reinvent should be used as an idiom such as “Government need not reinvent the wheel every time it tries to improve its appearance.” Mr. Joseph F. Casalini, Jr. -Lowell, Michigan