Merging Chamber of Commerce with Economic Development Corporation

The Iron County Economic Development
Corporation is the creation and the responsibility
of the County Board. The only reason the board
has failed to significantly improve our economic
conditions is because historically the board
members have been more interested in keeping
the county a private playground for the upper
class rather than fostering economic growth
to benefit everyone.

The solution, if the board were really interested,
is as simple as hiring a competent outside
economic developer with a track record and
giving that person free rein.

The entire ploy of merging the EDC and the
Chamber of Commerce that is comprised of
business owners solely interested in the
success of the business they own can only
lead to yet another failure.

There is probably no one in the Chamber of
Commerce who has the time or the ability to
bring significant business to Iron County.
The only advantage to merging the Chamber
with the EDC is simply to create a new excuse
for the County Board’s failure to economically
advance the County. This new excuse will
doubtless hold us back for another few decades
while maintaining the private playground.

Please tell your County Board representative
(you voted them in so you should know who
they are) that you want real progress, not the
political games that have kept us economically
depressed ever since the mines closed. Telling
them emphatically what you want is important!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your children and
grandchildren be able to move back home
because there finally are good jobs for them
here?

Bill Vajk

Rapid Fallout from Is America a Lie - Page 1

OK, is this predictable or what? Looks like the
IRS has opened an investigation of yours truly.
All that's available as income for the past
decade is Social Security and pensions and we
take the standard deduction every year, so
there's *nothing* of interest there. Here's the
entry for the page view today by the IRS.

=================================
Page Views 1 Exit Time: 27 Sep 2016 13:51:06
Browser: IE 11.0 OS: Win7 Resolution: 1536x960

Total Visits: 1 Location: Washington, District
of Columbia, United States
IP Address: Internal Revenue Service
(152.220.54.160)

Label Visitor

Search Referral: www.google.com/#5
(Keywords Unavailable)

Visit Page: Iron County Doings: Iron River
sued in Federal Court

=================================

They were looking up what I wrote about
a federal lawsuit that is several years old. To
me this demonstrates just how desperate the
folks involved in demonstrated corruption at
my federal district court and the defendants,
the justices of the Michigan Supreme Court,
in the underlying case must be. As I wrote
earlier, this nixonian coverup is far worse
than the underlying misbehavior. How much
more evidence of their misdeeds and a
coverup are they going to provide?

Thank you!

The above is the opinion of the
author Bill Vajk

Is America A Lie? -page 1

It isn't enough that Michigan Courts are corrupt,
it turns out that the federal district court is
engaged in a Nixonian coverup that is, as in the
original version, worse than the crime itself. If
we don't have an honest and honorable
independent federal judiciary, then America
itself is a lie and we're no better than any of the
third world despotic dictatorships. Given
corruption in any act of the court, can we trust
that the rest of the system is actually honest?
The "once a liar always a liar" principle applies,
doesn't it

Letter to US Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts
and links to other documents follow below:

William J. Vajk
Iron River  MI  49935
                                                22 September 2016

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
1 First Street N.E.
Washington  D.C.  20543

Dear Chief Justice:

This is a courtesy notification that
appearances are that all is not well in the
District Court Northern Division, Western
District of Michigan. This is not a
complaint about a judge, but what appears
to be corruption devised to prevent a case in
which the defendants are the Justices of
Michigan’s Supreme Court from achieving
adjudication.

To demonstrate the problem, I have
included a copy of the three page docket
for case# 2:16-cv-129 and the first page
of the most recent motion filed with the
Court.

Please take notice that:

1) The Court reframed the case into a
grotesque charicature only superficially
resembling the case actually submitted.
Please see included page of the motion.

2) Prior to the assignment of a new judge
replacing one who retired, the Clerk’s Office
without justifiable reason and unauthorized
by any party to the case or a Judge of Record
renamed the motion to vacate judgment under
FRCivP 60(b)(4) converting it to a
“MOTION for reconsideration.” This illegally
changes the rules under which the motion is
adjudicated. Please see attached Docket items
6, 7, and 9.

3) The motion and supporting papers were
filed on 19 July 2016 with no activity by the
District Court since then, introducing, to date,
an illegal delay of more than 2 months.

4) To all appearances at this time the case is
purposely stalled by actions of the Clerk of the
District Court.

As noted in the opening paragraph of this letter,
this is a courtesy notification and does not request
anything from this Court at this time. The only
purpose of this letter is advisory. I will be writing
to the Chief Judge of the District Court as well
as Judge Quist suspecting that Judge Quist was
not properly advised of his assignment to this case
as it appears to me, because of the events in 1
through 4 above, that the Clerk’s office has
illegally engaged in a political action in lockstep
with Michigan officials. I strongly feel that if the
appearance of any corruption has crept into the
lower court system, the US Supreme Court and
its Chief Justice should be the first to know.

Sincerely,

For the attachments to the above letter please see:

bill-vajk.angelfire.com/Docket-report-160921.html

bill-vajk.angelfire.com/motion-pg1.pdf

The above is the opinion of Bill Vajk

A Change of Emphasis

Having now lived in Iron County for over 12
years, and having driven initiatives to foster
improvement in the local governments and
economy, it has become obvious that this
community fights against any advance that’s
not sport/outdoor related tooth, nail, and claw.
The odds have overwhelmed anyone and
everyone who has actually worked for
improvement, and all such efforts are proven
futile.

In what became the Warsaw Pact nations, right
at the end of World War 2, coalition
governments were formed in an attempt to
satisfy every faction. Invariably the
communists were, by their request, given the
national police to run, while other factions took
over the various other branches of government.

Over time, in the natural course of events, with
communists favored at every turn of by the law
enforcers, all the nations evolved into total
communism. Here in Iron County, and much
of Michigan’s upper peninsula, the solitary
function that was quickly taken over by the local
oligarchy is education. It takes a concerted effort
by only one branch of government to achieve any
particular goal so long as that branch is totally
devoted to the mission. You can see by the results
how effective they were.

So for more than a century what the Upper
Peninsula children learned both at home and
school was a single creed, “Shut up and do as
you’re told.” And to reassure that the lesson
could never be diluted, a second creed took
effect. If you’re not born here, what you think
and say can have no effect, because you’re not
from here, so you cannot possibly appreciate
how things are. When Dan Vosyka, a transplant
to the shore of Ice Lake coming from Illinois
first told me this, I couldn’t believe it. But as
time has gone on, I noticed little things like the
signs on Angeli’s Central Market doors, “Not
just in the community, but part of it.” If, for
example, as a visitor to the UP you don’t know
this dirty little secret, that statement on the door
doesn’t make any sense so why not simply gloss
over it? But once you understand, you begin to
see it literally everywhere. That’s much like
buying a different brand of car or pickup. All
of a sudden you notice how many cars just like
yours inhabit the roads, cars you never noticed
before are there in abundance. They always
were, you just never noticed them before.






I don’t find it odd at all, that if one drives the
few miles it takes to get out of Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula, none of these attributes exist
in the Wisconsin local populations. I haven’t
spent time on the Iron Range in Wisconsin or
Minnesota to discover whether the teachings are
natural to regions formerly controlled by big
money mines and thus are a cultural holdover or
are actually unique to Michigan’s UP, but then I
am not a social scientist so exactly why these
things have become the local morés is not of
interest to this article, but the fact they do
provides a good explanation for the economic
depression unique to this region.

When I meet “important persons” here in Iron
County, within the first few minutes of
conversation I invariably hear, “I was born up
here, at such-n-such location.” Once you notice,
it is, at the risk of repeating myself,
EVERYWHERE! And of course I wasn’t
born here, let alone even in this country, despite
the fact that I am, under the law, a natural born
American citizen. In most of these United
States of America, any citizen with broader
experience than those who are born in the US
and never travel more than 100 miles from
home are valued as people who bring useful
experience to the locality where they now
live. Not so in Iron County!

Moneyed outsiders who have transplanted to
the UP seem to come here for the isolation or,
as is the case of one of the current Iron County
commissioners, because their wife grew up here.
I met a couple who were born here and mostly
grew up in Iron County but now live in New
York City, more precisely in Manhattan. They
told me they bought a house in Iron River and
that they don’t want anything changed here. No
progress of any sort. For them it is a primitive
vacation spot that gets them away from the
pace of advanced civilization and they don’t
give a whit about the effect on the local
population and that most of the children who
grow up here have to leave in order to be able
to earn a middle class living.

So the reasons for the region being economically
depressed some 40 years after the last mine in
Iron County closed are simple enough. Those
who most easily could foster economic
improvement for the general population don’t
because there’s no benefit to them. The rest of
the population refuses to stand up for
themselves by forcing their elected officials to
do anything useful. For example, how many
years has the Iron County Economic
Development Corporation been funded by tax
money, and in all those decades what have they
actually achieved? This combination leaves no
way for us to improve the economic situation
in this region. The people have to want it, and
they’re content to see their children move far
away to build successful lives elsewhere and
to be served by the two nursing homes that
provide good care here in Iron County. And
that’s because they learned early in life to
“shut up and do as you’re told,” a lesson
they never got over.

Earlier in my life I twice found myself living
and working in areas similar to today’s
economic lethargy similar to Michigan’s UP.
The first was Cumming, Georgia. But Cumming
is within a commuting distance of Atlanta, and
you should see it today. It has wildly expanded
and grown. The second was Dover, Delaware.
The entire region south of the Canal on the
Delmarva Peninsula was pretty much destitute.
Once again, it too has bloomed into an economic
powerhouse. But it will take many generations
for this region to outlive the teachers who did
such a good job in holding the economy down
by teaching subservience.

That said, the focus of this little publication is
shifting primarily to a single question with
many reasons for the answers that are created
by the actions of government affecting all of
us, wherever in the USA you happen to live.
That question is, “Is America a lie?” I’ll begin
with the federal case I presently have in court.
That doesn’t mean that nothing about America
is wonderful, but these articles will point out
significant shortfalls in the promise of America.
Those promises aren’t, after all, a statistical
game, but were designed to be universal,
applying equally to everyone. Where they do
not, makes America a lie that can and must be
corrected in spite of oligarchies that fight to
keep things just as they are.

As we progress with this publication, there are
a couple of important things to keep in mind.
Every topic that I will touch has a direct
relationship to someone or some group living
in Iron County. None of it will be remote purely
intellectual discussion, but rather will be very
practically linked to local people and situations.
The second consideration is that this publication
has a strongly international audience in addition
to local readers. Some of the recent visitors are
from: Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine, Canada,
India, Netherlands, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and
Mauritania. Given the internet, we are one world
much more than ever before. What happens here
is of interest around the world.

Bill Vajk

100 years of double taxation

In 1914 when George W. Fuller wrote his paper
Elements to be considered in Fixing Water 
Rates his thesis was already old news in
government circles. By 1876 The Board of Water
Commissioners of Detroit had already been sued
by E. Huff Jones for charging him when water
mains,to which Jones was not connected in any
way, were installed in front of his property.

Actually, the property value on his home had
already been increased to pay in taxes for the
new waterworks that became available to him.
That's how and where such essential
government services that are provided to the
general public are paid for. But since most
people really don't pay attention to government,
simply paying taxes without a second thought,
governments have always schemed to increase
their income. After all, more government
income, higher wages for politicians.

Fuller, in 1914, urged that "readiness to serve"
was an important element of the water bill
because it cost just as much when allocating
costs to a vacant house as it did for an occupied
home that is actually consuming water. He has
a point, the same point as befits a sidewalk on
a dead end street at the edge of town that no
one ever uses. Similarly, that bit of sidewalk
cannot be charged as a user fee to the owners
of property in that block. All the sidewalks are
paid for by everyone in the town. And of
course Fuller ignored the fact that property
taxes are the same whether a house is
occupied or not.

Little by little, for the past 100+ years, the
Michigan judiciary has managed to illegally
redefine the "readiness to serve" charge into a
fee for service when what it is paying for is also
being paid for in property taxes. Let's not forget
that this charge is for a publicly owned resource
that is shared equally by everyone in town, as
well as all visitors to town who actually may
contribute nothing to the tax base, let alone any
"readiness to serve" charges that are imposed.

With the passage of Michigan's "Headlee
Amendment" to the state constitution, limiting
taxes, it has fallen to the courts, as the last
resort, to ignore this problem on behalf of
local governments, thus allowing this double
taxation.

So in their "wisdom" the  Michigan Supreme
Court created a court rule allowing the
unfettered dismissal of lawsuits that challenge
the fee vs tax paradigm.

Having been subject to that particular
miscarriage of justice, I have instituted a federal
lawsuit. You can find a copy of my complaint at:

http://tinyurl.com/zeu94l3

The cheating that goes on with this double
taxation exists in slightly different forms all
over the United States. I attribute the water
problems in Flint Michigan to government
looking at providing essential services as a
revenue source rather than looking at it as a
public service, that forms the underlying
need for governments in the first place.

I think we need to revisit the very basis for
having governments in the first place before
we can actually make realistic progress in
resolving many of our modern day issues.
So many of our governing bodies, and state
judicial departments, have wandered away
from their essential functions, looking after
their private interests rather than the public
good they were created to assure.

Bill Vajk

How close is Iron River to Bankruptcy?

The City of Iron River continues its unabashed
theft of tax money from the property owners.
This time, according to Page 7 of the May 4th
issue of the Iron County Reporter, the city is
reducing the fire hydrant rental fee to $5.

Property taxes include a component that adds to
land value based on availability of utilities such
as water and sewer. The tax money raised that
way is supposed to be transferred into the water
and sewer fund. The mechanism to do that is the
“fire hydrant rental” that until now was officially
$150 per hydrant. But even there the city has
been cheating for years. With 352 hydrants in the
city, the budget allocation was only $30,000, a
shortfall of $22,800 that has been made up by
increased water and sewer fees.

A paper written by George W. Fuller, a sanitary
engineer understanding public utilities, found
that for a town of 5000 people fire protection
contributes costs amounting to 75% of the total
water budget. With Iron River smaller yet, it
appears that the fire protection impact, that is
everything from determining the size of water
pumps, storage capacity, and pipe sizes, is a
greater percentage of the budget. I recently
met with the new city manager, David Thayer,
who asked, "what do you suggest we do, rip
out fire hydrants?" That's asinine, because if
you do that, you still cannot reduce the sizing
of pumps, storage capacity, and pipe sizes, the
significant aspects of the actual costs to the
system.But that's the sort of "political argument"
I've come to expect from local politicians who
seem to have trouble utilizing the God given
brains I experience in discussions with  more
sentient humans.

Adjusted for inflation, Fuller’s analysis
commands $1500 per hydrant per year in
today’s dollars. The city council wants to pay
a total of $1760 for fire protection costs in the
water system where the actual cost, following
Fuller’s guidelines, should be $528,000. The
city is stealing $526,240 out of the taxpayer’s
pocket, while forcing the residents to pay that
amount a second time in the water fees so the
council can waste more money.

Fuller's paper can be found on the internet at
 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1012201

Fuller goes on to say that municipalities
generally use another 10% of the water
budget going to public use consumption.
Some part of that is metered. How’s the rest
being paid by the City? Simple answer, it is
all smoke and mirrors lacking any legitimate
audit. I hate the fraud.

Given that the City of Iron River is willing to
rip off the taxpayers for what amounts to
relatively petty amounts, how far can they be
from having to declare bankruptcy? Why else
would they be going through these
convolutions, unless it is to conceal the failure
of the "ruling elite" of the city, and that means
the complete failure of the consolidation that
was supposed to save three communities from
the failures we now see in their full splendor
before us? Starting in the year 2000, when
consolidation was supposed to modify the
way local government operated, actually
nothing changed, and all the waste continued
less two municipal councils and that overhead.

It was years before the city even got rid of
duplicated machinery, and the insurance costs
for stuff they no longer even used. Instead of
laying off public works employees who
numbered too many for the consolidated
city, they kept them all,and then openly stole
water funds to pay their pensions almost up to
date. There went $150,000, and for what, a
number of people sitting around with no work
to do for years. When did it become legal for
a Michigan municipality to get into the
business of providing welfare benefits?

This is all disgusting beyond words.

Given the experience of the city of Flint, do
we dare invite the state to help straighten out
Iron River's mess?

The above is the Opinion of Bill Vajk with
a significant intermixing of provable facts.

repost from 5/28/2000

The following is a partial repost of an article
I put on the internet on 5/28/2000. Recent events
in Europe, including today's terrorism in
Brussels, made me realize it is time to bring
this information to attention once again although
it isn't exclusively Iron County, Michigan relevant.

=======================================

I hold as responsible for the modern disinterest in the well
being of our fellow human all those who demand that no
value systems be taught in schools because such things
might be seen as government promotion of a religious
viewpoint.

In the meantime churches around the world ring bells at
noon in response to Bulla Oratorium issued by Rome on
29 June 1456 intent on driving the heathens from sacred
European soil, while Uncle Sam spends millions, perhaps
billions, to stop the same continuing process some 500+
years later.

Yet the bells ring relentlessly, with very few understanding
why they ring.

If there is a real danger, it is that "heathen culture" you better
watch out for, not the imagined American or European ones.
They put a million dollar price on the head of an individual
who merely wrote a book about them. They are religious
zealots who proactively believe in giving their life for their
cause and beliefs.

What do we have to counter such?

I think a bunch of you are barking up the wrong tree. I'll be
over here by this other tree, the one with the real threat up it.

=======================================

Bill Vajk

In case you were wondering

In case you were wondering, and even if you weren't,
what's been going on is a lot of study of the legal
system and the preparation of the next pleading in
my lawsuit against the City of Iron River and Iron
County.

A copy of the resulting document can be found
at bill-vajk.angelfire.com/motion-complete.pdf

And so it goes.

Bill Vajk

2015 Government Awards

The selection for awards wasn't easy this time
around. We sought out positive things done by
Iron County local governments and couldn't
find any that exemplified excellence. We
did mull over the shortcomings and were
surprised to discover that it wasn't a city or
village this time, but the Iron County Board
of Commissioners that deserves this year's
Lump of Coal Award.

Almost a year ago I brought the issue of
inadequate, at times, ambulance service here
in Iron County. That was based on a personal
experience. But then, how many times does
it take for inadequate ambulance service
to be deemed a problem?

Actually, just once. This is one of those
essential services that's supposed to be seen
to by local government without failure!

And last year it failed to be timely in our case.

So I wrote a letter published by the Iron County
Reporter. Then I posted an article here. I met
with the responsible Hospital personnel on the
topic, and I met with an Iron County official,
and exchanged email on this topic with a
member of the County Board.

Yet here we are approximately a year later with
absolutely no visible progress. In the United
States, "police power" is defined as, "capacity of
the states to regulate behavior and enforce order
within their territory for the betterment of the
health,  safety, morals, and general welfare of
their inhabitants."

While there are no minimum legal
requirements that states, and their local
municipal extensions, provide any particular
service, there are ethical and moral,
requirements that services be provided. When
I moved here in 2003, the hospital at Iron River
was called the "Iron County Community
Hospital" having been established by the Iron
County Board of Commissioners. Eventually
the county board divested itself of the
responsibility, including the embedded
ambulance service.

But with the failure of the hospital to provide
reliable 24/7/365 service at all times and under
all conditions, the time arrived no later than a
year ago that the Iron County Board needed to
reassert responsibility for managing the
ambulance service. And that is specifically
authorized under state law

In a similar vein, in the past few years it came
to be recognized that the county's nursing
home needed a new pharmacy. With the
number of municipal employees with medical
insurance here in Iron County, it made sense
to remove the drug aspects of the insurance
that the county provides, and to establish a
non-profit pharmacy to provide for all the
municipal employees in Iron County. It sure
would help stretch our tax dollars if
medications were provided at cost with no
profit to outside parties

But the laziness of the members of the Board
of Commissioners to do anything beyond
the bare essentials, for a very nice annual
stipend I hastily add, has prevented any real
progress from being made in Iron County.
In fact, I'd be willing to wager that Board
members, for relatively few hours a month,
earn well above the median wage for full
time employees in Iron County. And for
what??????

I have reason to believe that if any member
of the County Board had taken an essential
personal interest in establishing the
management of an adequate and reliable
ambulance service in Iron County, that could
easily have been achieved in 3 months, and
positively within 6 months without anyone
having to break a sweat.

I think it is time to start naming names:

• Timothy Aho, Chair
• James Brennan, Vice-Chair
• Patti Peretto, Finance Chair
• Ray Coates, Commissioner
• Sharon Leonoff, Commissioner

So county board, enjoy your lump of coal award,
and let's see if you decide to make it 2 for 2 by
doing nothing to improve government services
for the people once again in 2016.

The above are the opinions of:

Bill Vajk

New Year, Same Old Story

One of our experiences as parents (most of us
anyway) is the discovery that children don’t
give much thought to the difference between
“want” and “ought to.” Children are children
mostly because they lack the judgment
required to make rational decisions. Addicts
are adults who never lose that childlike
propensity to decide what they do based on
want while they abandon any semblance of
common sense in arriving at decisions.

A former friend of mine purchased 25
pounds of lobster a while back and ate
nothing but lobster till it was all gone. That
was an addict’s whim with no permanent
detrimental consequences. On the other hand,
we read from time to time of parents whose
children are taken away by the state because
they spent their entire income on their
personal pleasures like alcohol, drugs,
tobacco, and gambling while providing all
too meager rations to their children to the
point where damage is obvious enough for
intervention. So some people never seem to
grow into adulthood, with personal “wants”
getting in the way of rational decision making.

I started moving to Iron County in September
of 2003. In looking at the decisions made by
those charged with managing the City of Iron
River and Iron County I hate to admit that the
two political entities have generally been run
as though by children, or even worse, by
addicts who put their personal wants before
the needs of those they have promised, by
oath of office, to serve.

A few months ago in an Iron River city
council meeting there was some discussion
by unnamed (in the newspaper) citizens
condemning the city council’s propensity to
donate public funds to private not for profit
initiatives. The public had every expectation
that the issue was resolved and that the
practice would stop, until the December 16,
2015 meeting. Here, once again, a decision was
made to donate $3750 to the IronLine sled dog
and fatbike races, The recently hired city
manager was quick enough to display his “yes
man” colors in stating that the races “have
created a community event that preserves our
heritage and promotes our culture for many
generations to come.”  To me, an ordinary
citizen and Iron River taxpayer, that not only
rings false by sounds more like a preacher
man than it sounds like someone charged
with looking after the city’s money and
interests on behalf of the taxpayers.

Lets take the statement one piece at a time.
Iron River’s heritage has no connection to
sled dogs. Railroads were built in the UP early
on. The first railroad in the UP, the Iron
Mountain Railroad, preceded the land grants
and was built by private funds between 1851
and 1857. With the land grant act of 1856,
railroad building took off at an unprecedented
pace. And of course this region was settled in
order to take advantage of the plentiful iron ore
that was discovered in 1846.

You just cannot transport iron ore or timber in
commercial quantities by dog sled, so that
important part of the city manager’s statement
was an abject lie, now committed to history by
the Iron County Reporter’s cover page article
of December 30, 2015 and this publication.

Iron County’s heritage is in iron ore and timber.
This presents us with lie number 2 in the short
statement. And there has been nothing in the
Iron County “culture” since 1846 that has lasted
for generations. This community has never seen
devotion to a “way of life” for more than a
generation or two and just doesn’t carry on
that way.

So with the support of the city manager, the
Iron River city council, in the presence of the
auditor (who knows better) voted as addicts
or children would to enable their “want” as
opposed to doing what is best for the
taxpayers of the city by simply saying “no.”

Here we have a city that within the last few
years was deciding which street lights to shut
off in order to save money. Are those lights
off now so that the money saved can be
misspent on recreational endeavors?

Are you guys completely insane?

You can’t even repair streets that are
beginning to fail in large numbers. Does
Blossom Street ring a bell? I’ve written
before about the alley behind my house at
413 Plum Street, similarly failing. How
many more are right behind these failures?
Have you performed and audit of failing
pavements? Where was that audit during
the meeting of December 16 when you
made the decision to spend money on
entertainment rather than fixing our
essential infrastructure? Is the City
Council's short term memory failing at
something on the order of 15 years old?

So the one adult in the room stood up
and objected. Marilynn Peterson spoke
for all of us who do not attend these
meetings. For her trouble she was
lectured by the city attorney. Is it any
wonder that the citizenry steers clear of
attending the meetings? I suppose that
plays into the hands of these
addicts/children who have been elected a
nd appointed to the positions of trust that
they shortchange, but it is not in the best
interest of the community.

I no can no longer trust statements like
“it is legal” from any aspect of Iron River
 City government. If it were legal, it
would be legal in the same context that
parents can legally spend most of their
income on alcohol, drugs, tobacco, and
gambling, so long as any injury to their
children, their charges, their responsibility,
isn’t obvious.

But it is NOT legal, and the city attorney
knows it isn’t, because the City of Iron River
charter is invalid. Michigan’s Constitution,
article 7 § 22 governs the authority of a city
to enact a charter:

“Under general laws the electors of each city
and village shall have the power and authority
to frame, adopt and amend its charter…”

As it actually happened, the electors of the
new City of Iron River in the year 2000 did
not have the opportunity to vote whether or
not to adopt the city charter. No approval by
the electorate, no legally enacted charter.
I will not argue the case here, but suffice to
say that all laws, including the Michigan
Constitution, must be read as written without
adding anything like unwritten provisions to
them.

In the same article in the Iron County
Reporter cover story in the December 30,
2015 issue, the auditor announced a surplus
(positive balance) of $280, 759 in the
Genesee street improvements fund. Clearly
this over funding of that project is a
classical modus operandi for the city.  

The city council doubtless sees this as
money that can be spent at will on all sorts
of nonsense that suits their “wants.” But what
about the $150,000 that was illegally
transferred from water savings accounts
just a few years ago in order to fund the
under payments to the employee pension
fund?  That should be reimbursed. And what
about the present shortfall to the pension
funding, with the last correction made within
the past few years? Excess funds acquired for
one purpose but used to supplement shortfalls
in revenue that is limited by the Headlee
Amendment are an end run around constitutional
mandates that the City of Iron River has been
playing fiscal Russian Roulette with for some
time. The consolidation of 2000 was designed
to correct fiscal shortfalls, but the “corporate
culture”, that is the mindset of local politicians
who are children/addicts after all, has killed
any possible advantage that the consolidation
promised.

Citizens and taxpayers of the City of Iron
River, do you have any idea what you’ve done
in permitting these children/addicts to manage
your city and money without adult supervision?

If this behavior continues unabated, the city will
completely fail financially. Tearing down buildings
is not a solution. The problems are much larger
than anyone related to city government admits.

Welcome to your New Year! This publication is
only a messenger. We don't make the facts, but
it appears we are the only one willing to publish
it.

The above is the opinion of:

Bill Vajk