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Yesterday, while pulling out onto M-59, my Ford van's engine stopped abruptly for no apparent reason. In response to this dilemma, I immediately called Highland Auto Repair. Having used this facility several times previously, I knew my van would be in good hands. Don, the owner, has always treated me with kindness and respect. And more importantly, he takes the time to explain mechanical issues in a logical and coherent way. It is easy to see he takes great pride in his work and reputation.
Attributes of professionalism, honesty, and integrity are often difficult to find. So the next time your vehicle needs fixing, call Highland Auto Repair at (248) 887-2944. It is located on M-59, right across the street from the fire station, at the corner of Porter Rd. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Signed.
C. Materne One very pleased customer. :)
"There is a growing movement in North America to put an end to suburban sprawl and to replace the automobile-based settlement patterns of the past fifty years with a return to more traditional planning principles. This movement stems not only from the realization that sprawl is ecologically and economically unsustainable but also from an awareness of sprawl's many victims: children, utterly dependent on parental transportation if they wish to escape the cul-de-sac; the elderly, warehoused in institutions once they lose their driver's licenses; commuters, stuck in traffic for two or more hours each day; the urban poor, isolated in deteriorating cities without access to jobs or services.
Founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk are at the forefront of this movement, and in Suburban Nation they assess sprawl's costs to society, be they ecological, economic, aesthetic, or social. This book is a lively critical lament, and an entertaining lesson on the distinctions between postwar suburbia - characterized by housing clusters, strip shopping centers, office parks, and parking lots - and the traditional neighborhoods that were built as a matter of course until mid-century. It indicts the design and development industries for the fact that America no longer builds towns. Most important, though, it is a book that also offers us solutions."
INTRODUCTION
As you creep along a highway that was widened just three years ago, you pass that awful new billboard: COMING SOON: NEW HOMES! Already the bulldozers are plowing down pine trees, and a thin layer of mud is oozing onto the roadway. How could this be happening? Over the years, you've seen a lot of forest and farmland replaced by rooftops, but these one hundred acres had been left unscathed, at the whim of a wealthy owner. Now, it is said, the owner has passed on, the children have cashed out, and the property has fallen victim to the incessant pressure of growth.
These one hundred acres, where you hiked and sledded as a child, are now zoned for single-family housing. They have been bought and sold on that premise, and there is a strong demand for new houses. The developer is not about to go away. The anticipated buyers of these new homes, your future neighbors, are respectable professionals, families much like yours, people who could easily be your friends, relatives, or colleagues. These people are welcome to settle this land, to share your suburban dream - over your dead body.
Why, in this country in which growth is considered tantamount to well-being, in which economic health is measured in "housing starts," is the prospect of these particular houses starting near yours so threatening? What has happened to our manner of growth, such that the thought of new growth makes your stomach turn?
It is not just sentimental attachment to an old sledding hill that has you upset. It is the expectation, based upon decades of experience, that what will be built here you will detest. It will be sprawl: cookie-cutter houses, wide, treeless, sidewalk-free roadways, mindlessly curving cul-de-sacs, a streetscape of garage doors - a beige vinyl parody of Leave It to Beaver. Or, worse yet, a pretentious slew of Mc Mansions, complete with the obligatory gatehouse. You will not be welcome there, not that you would ever have reason to visit its monotonous moonscape. Meanwhile, more cars will worsen your congested commute. The future residents will come in search of their American Dream, and in so doing will compromise yours.
You are against growth, because you believe that it will make your life worse. And you are correct in that belief, because, for the past fifty years, we Americans have been building a national landscape that is largely devoid of places worth caring about. Soulless subdivisions, residential "communities" utterly lacking in communal life; strip shopping centers, "big box" chain stores, and artificially festive malls set within barren seas of parking; antiseptic office parks, ghost towns after 6 p.m.; and mile upon mile of clogged collector roads, the only fabric tying our disassociated lives back together - this is growth, and you can find little reason to support it. In fact, so far as your hectic daily schedule allows, you fight it. Once a citizen, you have now become a Nimby (Not In My Backyard), or what professional planners dismissively term a Banana (Build Nothing Anywhere Near Anything). As such, you are hardly expected to be reasonable, or even polite. Still, it would be nice if there were a more constructive role to play - if only there were some third choice available other than bad growth and no growth, the former being difficult to stomach and the latter being difficult to sustain for more than a few years at a time.
Obviously, that third choice is good growth, but is there really such a thing? Do there exist man-made places that are as valuable as the nature they displaced? How about your hometown Main Street? Or Charleston? San Francisco? Few would dispute that man has proved himself capable of producing wonderful places, environments that people cherish no less than the untouched wilderness. They, too, are examples of growth, but they grew in a different way than the sprawl that threatens you now.
The problem is that one cannot easily build Charleston anymore, because it is against the law. Similarly, Boston's Beacon Hill, Nantucket, Santa Fe, Carmel - all of these well-known places, many of which have become tourist destinations, exist in direct violation of current zoning ordinances. Even the classic American main street, with its mixed-use buildings right up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most municipalities. Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well-intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America. At the same time, one of the largest segments of our economy, the homebuilding industry, developed a comprehensive system of land development practices based upon sprawl, practices that have become so ingrained as to be second nature. It is these practices, and the laws that encourage them, which must be overcome if good growth is to become a viable alternative.
As daunting as such a task may seem, it is not impossible. Slowly but surely, often led by reformed Nimbys, cities and towns throughout North America are rewriting their zoning laws and demanding a higher standard of performance from their developers. Encouraged by the success of a few pioneering projects, homebuilders have begun to experiment with a form of development that grows its cities and towns in the traditional manner of the country's most successful older neighborhoods. The question is not whether or not such growth is possible but whether it will come in time to spare our countryside, small towns, and older cities from the march of suburbia.
Whether America grows into a placeless collection of subdivisions, strip centers, and office parks, or a real town with real neighborhoods, will depend on whether its citizens understand the difference between those two alternatives, and whether they can argue effectively for healthy growth. Toward that end, we offer this book. It is a summing up of our experiences, as designers and citizens, over the past two decades all across our land.
Since 1979, when we were first asked by Robert Davis to design Seaside, Florida, we have been intimately involved in the creation and revitalization of villages, towns, and cities from Cape Cod to Los Angeles. Everywhere we've visited, we have observed and studied urban and suburban life: walked the downtowns, cruised the suburbs, enjoyed meals in homes, given lectures in university theaters, corporate boardrooms, and high school cafeterias. Most of all, we have talked to the residents of these places, and we have listened intently. Almost without exception, the message we have heard, a message of deep concern, has been the same: the American Dream just doesn't seem to be coming true anymore. Life at the dawn of the millennium isn't what it should be. It seems that our economic and technological progress has not succeeded in bringing about the good society. A higher standard of living has somehow failed to result in a better quality of life.
And from mayors to average citizens, we have heard expressed a shared belief in a direct casual relationship between the character of the physical environment and the social health of families and the community at large. For all of the household conveniences, cars, and shopping malls, life seems less satisfying to most Americans, particularly in the ubiquitous middle-class suburbs, where a sprawling, repetitive, and forgettable landscape has replaced the original promise of suburban life with a hollow imitation. In an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, our main streets and neighborhoods have been replaced by alien substitutes, similar but not the same. Life once spent enjoying the richness of community has increasingly become life spent alone behind the wheel. Lacking a physical framework conducive to public discourse, our family and communal institutions struggle to persist in our increasingly sub-urban surroundings. And, sadly, suburban growth seems to have also drained much of the vitality from our inner cities, where a careless underclass finds itself with diminishing access to jobs and services.
It doesn't have to be this way. After many successes, a number of failures, and, most important, prolonged collaboration with residents of every part of this country, we believe more strongly than ever in the power of good design to overcome the ills created by bad design, or, more accurately, by design's conspicuous absence.
We live today in cities and suburbs whose form and character we did not choose. They were imposed upon us, by federal policy, local zoning laws, and the demands of the automobile. If these influences are reversed - and they can be - an environment designed around the true needs of individuals, conducive to the formation of community and preservation of the landscape, becomes possible. Unsurprisingly, this environment would not look so different from our old American neighborhoods before they were ravaged by sprawl.
Historically, we have rebuilt our nation every fifty to sixty years, so it is not too late. The choice is ours: either a society of homogeneous pieces, isolated from one another in often fortified enclaves, or a society of diverse and memorable neighborhoods, organized into mutually supportive towns, cities, and regions. This book is a primer on how design can help us untangle the mess we have made and once again build and inhabit places worth caring about."
This 28 acre parcel is located on McKeachie Rd.
White Lake Township is paying $99,000 for this park that was given FREE to the people of Michigan by Mr. Howard B. Bloomer (see his bio: Http://www.rpts.tamu.edu/Pugsley/Bloomer.htm).
Mr. Bloomer gifted this property on Grass Lake to the State of Michigan in 1922. Since this park land is already in White Lake, why does White Lake Township need to purchase it? We already "own" this park land as citizens of Michigan.
If you think this expenditure is a waste of White Lake Twp. funds, please call or write to Mike Kowall, White Lake Township Supervisor at: Charter Township of White Lake, 7525 Highland Rd., White Lake, MI, 48383-2900.
Your attendance at Parks and Recreation Meetings would be greatly appreciated. Below, are the 2009 meeting dates. Also, the Parks and Recreation Master Plan can be seen in its entirety at the Township's website: www.whitelaketwp.com. Minutes from the 2008 meetings are also included.
CHARTER TOWNSHIP OF WHITE LAKE PARKS AND RECREATION COMMITTEE 2009 Meeting Schedule Fourth Tuesday of Each Month, 7:00 p.m. (at the township hall, directly adjacent to the White lake library)
January 27 February 24 March 24 April 28 May 26 June 23 July 28 August 25 September 22 October 27 November 24 December*
*No December meeting due to Christmas Holiday
On March 7, 2007, the Parks and Recreation committee held a public meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the 2007 grant application to the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund through the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for development of a multi-use public recreational trail between Highland Recreation Area and Pontiac Lake State Park. The primary route of the proposed trail was the ITC utility corridor north of M-59/Highland Rd. In a spring 2007 Spinal Column article titled "White Lake Seeks Grant to Build New Trail," Mike Kowall, the township supervisor, said that he planned to use the millage funds "for trails and hiking, biking and horse trails throughout the township."
Connecting parks, creating trail systems, and improving existing parks in the township are exactly the kinds of features needed to make White Lake a more desirable community to live in. Unfortunately, the original trail project has been placed on the backburner. Just this past month, township trustees passed a resolution to use the Parks and Recreation millage money for the purpose of constructing a new pathway along the M-59 corridor. The project is estimated to cost over one million dollars and would be completed in three phases over a three-year period. Though this idea may be a worthwhile goal, it does not fall under the category of Parks and Recreation projects.
The safety factor alone must be considered. Within the city limits of White Lake, in the past two years, there have been approximately eight hundred car-related accidents along and adjacent to the M-59 corridor. Included in these statistics are two bicycle-related injuries, one pedestrian injury, and one pedestrian fatality.
CLASS ACCIDENT DESCRIPTION 2008 2007
3145 Traffic Crashes - Property Damage 138 149 3146 Property Damage -HBD (Had been drinking) 1 6 Traffic Accident Summary 3148 Motor Vehicle - Animal 24 30 White Lake Police Dept. 3150 Property Damage - Hit & Run 8 17 Search Range 01/01/07 thru 12/31/08 3155 Personal Injury 30 47 Highland Road & All Streets 3156 Personal Injury HBD 2 4 3158 Pedestrian - Personal Injury 1 4 3159 Bicycle - Personal Injury 2 1 3160 Personal Injury - Hit & Run 1 5 3168 Fatal Pedestrian 1 0 3170 Private Property - (Parking Lots) 71 70 3171 Private Property - Personal Injury 1 0 3175 Private Property - H & R 77 77 3176 Private Property - Personal Injury 1 0
To supplement the cost of the extensive M-59 pathway project in 2007, White Lake officials hired a lobbying firm, Midwest Strategies, to help procure federal dollars. To date, White Lake Township has paid this firm approximately $81,000 out of the Parks and Recreation millage fund. Don Melcher, the previous chairman of the Parks and Recreation committee, resigned when he found out that township officials had hired a lobbyist using Parks and Recreation millage funds.
The 2006 ballot proposal for the Parks and Recreation Millage reads: Shall the tax limitation on general ad valorem taxes within the Charter Township of White Lake, imposed under Article IX, Section 6 of the Michigan Constitution, be increased for the Township by .3 mills ($0.30 per $1,000 of taxable value) for a period of five years from 2007 through 2011, inclusive, for recreation purposes, including park maintenance, pathway construction, (including acquisition of land and easement for that purpose).
The M-59 pathway corridor improvement is not a Parks and Recreation project. As citizens, we ask that the millage money be used for its original intent. We ask that the White Lake board of trustees give the residents of White Lake a means to exercise and enjoy the outdoors in a safe and calm environment.
I had the opportunity to meet with Kathy Gordinear the Program Director at the Dublin Community Senior Center. Frankly, it is a bit embarassing to admit that until recently, though I was familiar with the name, I had no real knowledge of what the center did and where it was located. It is almost mind boggling to learn about all the various services and activities available to our Seniors over 50 years of age. The Center serves not just White Lake but also Commerce Township and Wolverine Lake.
The Center publishes a newsletter (read it here) detailing programs, events and activities. I would encourage all of you to take the time to not only read the newletter but to also visit the Center.
A couple key programs are the;
Kathy Gordinear, BS - Program Developer
Melinda Norton, BS - Program Specialist
First about the raffle:
Grace Centers of Hope is holding a raffle for a 1966 Ford Mustang.
Tickets are only $20.00 and only 5,000 tickets will be sold, so don't miss your chance to own this classic.
Contact Shannon Grace Clark at (248) 334-2187 to purchase your tickets.
For a pdf file on the raffle click here
Now the Golf Outing:
Grace Centers of Hope is holding its 11th Annual Golf Classic on August 12th 2008.
The outing is being held at Twin Lakes Golf and Swim Club in Oakland Twp. 455 Twin Lakes Drive Oakland Twp - MI 48363 ph: 248-650-4960).
You MUST R.S.V.P. by August 6, 2008.
$175.00 per person includes the following:
In both cases, the money goes to an extremely worthy local charity. Your support is greatly appreciated.
Now a bit about Grace Centers...
We will refrain from any editing of your statements. Statements will be kept available for viewing until the day the elections are held.
So as to eliminate any favoritism - real or imagined - Statements will be arranged alphabetically, first by office and then by name (even though we do have our favorites).
A special link will be maintained on the first page of this publication, providing quick access to Statements.
Printed copies of this invitation have been delivered to the Township Clerk's Office for forwarding to all the candidates.
*(taking an unbiased position in regard to political matters.)
While Jerry and I were outside, we noticed the flag was cast against a dark and dusky sky. It reminded me of the "Star Spangled Banner" where the lyrics say, "the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave, o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave." That brings me back to Jerry. He was so moved about the flag being American made that he actually went back into Quiznos just to get the following information to share with the WLJOL readers.
This is how you can be sure your American Flag is actually made in the United States? Look for the stamp that says "Made in the U.S.A" and the Flag Manufacturer's Association of America' logo and/or seal. The flag in front of Quiznos was made by Annin & Company. They are the oldest and largest flag maker in the world. Their flags and patriotic decorations are all made in the USA from American made materials. Their website is www.annin.com.
After Jerry told me his story, my day seemed a little brighter. Isn't that what its like to have a good neighbor? It was great to meet our new business neighbor in White Lake. I hope you meet him soon too.
