How's Your Tolerance for Government Misbehavior?

About a year ago I found it necessary to sue the
City of Iron River for failure to justify a
Freedom of Information research fee of $38.46.
The City, instead of talking to me to in order
to find mutual grounds for settlement, relied
on the Michigan Municipal League to defend the
suit in court, with an eventual co-pay by the
city of $ 5000. The Municipal League's promise
“to make better cities” didn't happen, nor did
it do the taxpayers any good. So was the City
Council and the administration working for the
taxpayer in that case?

We taxpayers have at least three ongoing issues
with the city. Those are the grass mowing by the
city whenever they think your grass is ugly,
penalizing folks for not using water (the so
called readiness to serve charge), and the
10% per month compounded (that's an actual
rate of about 314% a year) penalty for being
tardy paying the water bill.

In December 2009 I notified each member of
Iron River's City Council and the administration
of my impending lawsuits to resolve these three
ongoing issues before they foreclose my property
in Iron River for my refusal to pay such ridiculous
and illegal charges. Once again they seem to believe
that the correct solution is in defending a lawsuit
they could easily avoid. Once again I have to ask,
who are they working for?

Spending more taxpayer money defending against a
lawsuit than the city gets as income from these
three petty draconian ordinances sure doesn't make
any sense to me. The purpose for writing this
article is to advise taxpayers how Iron River spends
their money. It seems that they're not doing it
to benefit you, the taxpayer. My personal
tolerance for government misbehavior is pretty
low.

How's yours?

Bill Vajk