Polygon, the Dancing Bear

Occasional notes on politics, history, technology, architecture,
and the life of a county clerk

2002:
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August / September / October
November / December

2003:
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April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2004:
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April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2005:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2006:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2007:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2008:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July

Current entries

Thursday, May 26, 2005, 3:14 pm

From the Clerk-Register: More letters to my staff.

Monday, May 9:

On Friday, April 29, just over a week ago, Washtenaw County held its annual Employee Recognition Breakfast. Among those honored were Sherry Deeds of Court Services for 25 years of service, and Linda Clark, of the Deeds office, for 20 years of service. Congratulations to both!

During the event, [Deputy County Administrator] Frank Cambria spoke for all of us when he praised the many honorees for their dedication, for the institutional memory they make possible, and for the positive organizational culture each of them has helped to create in our county government.

This dedication and longevity make Washtenaw County very different from most other workplaces.

Fifteen years ago, I came out of graduate school into the 1990 recession. I ended up working for several months on the loading dock at the Lord & Taylor department store in Briarwood Mall. When I wasn't unloading trucks, I did a lot of cleaning and vacuuming and emptying trash bins around the store.

I think Lord & Taylor is one of the more enlightened retail operations around, and working there taught me a lot about customer service. But one incident from my time working there came to mind during that recognition breakfast.

It was a small retirement party for a woman who had worked at Lord & Taylor for years — in the dress department, I think. The store had been there for ten years, and thousands of people had worked there, but remarkably, it was the very first time anyone had retired. No one else had ever kept working there long enough.

I think that kind of turnover is a lot more typical of American workplaces than the long dedication we have seen in the County. And it's not because our jobs here are easy. We work with the public every day. We face and overcome challenges day after day.

The difference, perhaps, is that what we do here is critically important for this community and for every individual whose life touches Washtenaw County. Lord & Taylor's Briarwood store is gone now, and its space has been gutted and completely redone twice since I worked there. But Washtenaw County is here to stay.

We had our first consolidated school board election last Tuesday, and all things considered, it went well. The voter turnout was well above the average of turnout that school board elections have drawn for the last several years. Many thanks to everyone who went beyond their ordinary work (and workload) to make the election a success. The Board of Canvassers is working right now on certifying the results.

Our Court Services office is coping this morning with the changeover from the old Fulcrum computer system to the new eNACT system. The new system will be more intuitive for our customers and occasional users, but it may take some getting used to for those who were accustomed to Fulcrum. The people who use this system are likely to be even more stressed than usual, so please be especially kind and tolerant with them.

Let's have a great week!

Monday, May 23:

The Onion (which gleefully dubs itself "America's Finest News Source") reported recently that, as a follow-up to the successful 50 State Quarters program, the U.S. Mint will now issue a commemorative penny for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. The plan is to issue five new county pennies every year for the next 629 years, starting with the penny for Kent County, Delaware.

Washtenaw County is singled out for special mention:

"I hope they get the old stone water tower just right," Ypsilanti, MI resident Gina Dalton said. "It's the most well-known landmark in Washtenaw County, so it's definitely what they should use."

While Fore [U.S. Mint director] agreed that Ypsilanti's historic water tower-completed in 1890, boasting an 85-foot-tall base made of Joliet limestone, and standing at the important intersection of Route 17 and West Cross Street-is a good suggestion, she cautioned Washtenaw County residents that their penny is scheduled for release in 2315.

"We're encouraging counties, especially those beyond the first 50 or so, to think creatively to find a truly unique representative icon for their penny," Fore said. "Water towers-along with mountains, covered bridges, and lighthouses-will be among the first images to get snapped up. We'll need to see some shoe factories and cell-phone towers, too."

It's all a joke, of course, but it raises the question of what could possibly serve as an image or symbol of our diverse and many-faceted county. We don't have an instantly recognizable county courthouse any longer to serve as a unifying piece of architecture. No doubt people in various parts of the county would dispute whether the Ypsilanti water tower, UM's Burton Tower, or the Chelsea clock tower would be the best symbol of the entire county. Maybe the artistic zigzag cell phone tower on US-23 at Domino's Farms?

About thirty years ago in another county, the commissioners decided to create a new county seal. A committee was appointed, and did what committees usually do. One member wanted the seal to reflect manufacturing and industry. Another wanted the seal to recognize farmers and agriculture. Still another wanted the seal to symbolize higher education. A fourth member thought the seal should reference state government.

So, they divided the seal into quadrants, and each member picked a symbol: a mortar board for education, a corn plant for agriculture, some cogs for industry, and the capitol dome for state government, each poorly drawn and sealed up in a separate part of the circle. It looks awful.

Here in Washtenaw County, the designer of our county seal was considerably more clever. The oil lamp in the center symbolizes education, and the two flames stand for UM and EMU. The border around the lamp represents industry (the cog teeth on the upper half) and agriculture (sheaves of wheat on the lower half). It's one composition instead of four - but it's still a collection of nods to economic interests rather than a unified symbol.

Perhaps this is inevitable given the geography. Counties in the Midwest encompass arbitrary rectangles of territory, with no concern for whether all the people living in each rectangle would have anything in common - let alone the land and farms and rivers and economic activity.

Cities and villages incorporate, annex territory, and structure themselves by the vote of their people. But communities don't get to choose which county to belong to, or which county offices to elect: those decisions were made a century and a half ago, with only a few details left to local choice.

We have much to be proud of in Washtenaw County; our people and landscape and resources and economy are the envy of the whole state. But the only clearly unifying element within our rectangle of geography is the county government. Few people outside county government and politics think of our county, or any county, as a unified whole that "belongs" together. That realization should make us humble in our service to our neighbors and constituents.

Let's have a great week!

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

Monday, May 2, 2005, 9:22 pm

Legalize Busking! Local musicians report that busking (performing, usually music, on city sidewalks) has been interpreted as illegal panhandling by Ann Arbor police. Local accordionist Shaun Williams spoke at city council this evening to urge that this policy be changed.

Among the links in that item, I was startled to see, was a strongly worded 1981 East Lansing City Council resolution which resulted from my own efforts to legalize street musicians almost a quarter century ago.

WHEREAS, it is the intent of the East Lansing City Council to encourage within the central business district and other public places a free exchange of social, cultural and entertainment opportunities between members of the public,

NOW, THEREFOR [sic] it is resolved as follows:

1. Street musicians, mimes, dancers and theater groups shall be permitted to perform for the public upon the public streets and within the public places of the City of East Lansing, and shall be permitted to solicit and accept voluntary contributions from members of the public who wish to reward such activity.

2. For purposes of this Resolution street musicians are defined as follows: a composer, conductor, or performer of vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony.

3. The above permitted activities shall not be considered "begging" in connection with the City enforcement of its Disorderly Conduct Code being section 9.102(5), nor shall they be considered a "trade or business" for which a license might be required under Chapter 71 of the City Code.
4. Street musicians and other performers shall at all times comply with all other provisions of the East Lansing City Code, specifically including the City Noise Ordinance and Code provisions prohibiting the obstruction of sidewalks and public passage.

Oddly enough, part of the argument in East Lansing at that time was that street musicians were legal in Ann Arbor. Now the shoe appears to be on the other foot. Contact your city council members to urge adoption of something like the above.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum — Comments

Monday, May 2, 2005, 8:35 pm

From the Clerk-Register: Latest letters to my staff.

Tuesday, April 26:

Last Friday and Saturday, I met with many of the county clerks from around the state, to discuss election consolidation and other issues. Apparently implementation of the new election law (changing dates and responsibilities for school board elections) is being actively resisted by some school districts around the state; a lawsuit in Calhoun County led to a restraining order on election preparations. Fortunately, that was overruled by the Court of Appeals.

More controversy is expected when the local and county clerks submit bills to the school districts for the school board elections. Faced with charges of thousands of tangible dollars for election costs, some school administrators may forget the considerable savings in staff time and legal fees, and focus on the added cost of bringing school elections into line with all other elections. Moreover, almost every school district opted to continue annual elections, declining to cut their election expenses in half or more by shifting to odd year elections.

The amounts of money at issue, however, are not large in the context of school or county budgets. You wouldn't think that this would inspire a storm of litigation. But some schools don't like losing control over the election process, or fear what larger voter turnouts might bring to school elections. And the savings in legal fees mean that the law firms which advise school districts are losing revenue.

I am hopeful that we in this county can overcome these challenges, and continue to have a very positive and constructive relationship with our local schools. Once the new election system has been in place for a while, people will wonder why we did it any other way.

Enjoy the last of the snow, and have a great week!

Monday, May 2:

Tomorrow is Election Day for school boards throughout the county (except South Lyon). This will be the first May school election under the new election consolidation law.

From an election administration standpoint, this is a far more demanding election situation than the one we faced in February. For one thing, we have many more ballot styles to provide, listing the candidates who are running in each school district. Because the election is nonpartisan, the order of names must be rotated from one precinct to the next. Voters accustomed to school precincts must be notified that this election will be held in regular city and township precincts. Many of those precincts are split by school district boundaries, and so have to provide more than one different kind of ballot for voters in the different areas.

And given that some of the local clerks declined to take on full responsibility for the school election, we in the County Clerk's election office are obliged to step into the township clerk's role on the front lines of the election: to hire and pay election inspectors, to arrange polling locations, to transport voting equipment, to process absentee ballots, and so on.

Perhaps it was inevitable that something would go wrong. You may have read in Tuesday's paper that a polling place change notice intended for about 600 voters in one Pittsfield Township precinct was mailed instead to 21,000 other Pittsfield voters. Fortunately, there was time to send a correcting postcard, and (since it wasn't our mistake) we will not have to pay for the erroneous mailing. I hope and expect it will turn out to be one small ripple in an otherwise smooth election.

The media and most of the public pays little attention to the Clerk-Register's office when things are going well. But we are not alone in being taken for granted.

Consider the fabulous network of wells and reservoirs and pipes which provide abundant clean, clear, soft water to our communities, and carry away and treat our wastewater. We only read about it in the newspaper when dioxane contamination forced the city to close the Montgomery Street well. But the careful and dedicated work necessary to develop and maintain this system must be enormous; hundreds of people in Washtenaw County alone must spend their entire working lives devoted to it. We rely on them without ever thinking of them.

And that's just one of many such vital and under-appreciated functions. My father-in-law was a telephone engineer; he worked all his days on an even more complex system. Fire fighters, mail carriers, computer operators, farmers, and on and on, are all in the same boat. And these folks are not just our friends and relatives: they are also our customers, the same people we serve at our counters, our courtrooms, and our polling places.

They may not take much notice of what we do, but each and every one of them has some important role in our community, state, and country. To treat each customer with courtesy and respect goes at least a little way to express our appreciation.

Let's have an uneventful election, and a great week!

An excerpt from the Ann Arbor News story mentioned above (since it will disappear shortly from their web site):

Notices misinform voters

Thousands of registered voters in Pittsfield Township erroneously received notices over the weekend that their polling place for the May 3 school elections had changed, Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds Larry Kestenbaum said Monday....

The error, reported to Kestenbaum's office by several citizens Monday morning, could further confuse voters who are adjusting to a new voting system being implemented for the first time statewide with just a week left before the election, he said.

"We've got a lot of damage control to do in terms of letting people know where to go in a situation where there is already some confusion because of the changes in election law," Kestenbaum said....

Kestenbaum said he ultimately takes responsibility for the error, but indicated the county will contest the costs of the initial mailing because the printer assured county staff that it had the correct lists of whom to notify...
Liz Margolis, spokeswoman for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, said the district was not aware of the problem Monday afternoon, yet was confident the county would fix it in time to minimize any impact on the election.

She said she anticipated some problems implementing the new system.

"An amazing amount of coordination went into this between the schools and the county, and I don't think it would be realistic to think there were not going to be glitches the first time around," Margolis said.

....Posted by Lawrence Kestenbaum.

2002:
May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December

2003:
January / February / March
April / May / June / July
August / September / October
November / December