Talk:Washtenaw County, Michigan

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[edit] Maps?

Could someone make a map showing where the townships in Washtenaw County are? It's basically a set of 4 squares north-south, 5 squares east-west, for twenty total, if one ignores the city boundaries. See also here.--Bhuck 09:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Except that it would be misleading to ignore city boundaries as cities are independent of townships. What you'd have would show survey township boundaries, but even these do not always correspond to civil township boundaries (which sometimes follow natural features rather than the survey lines -- though that is not the case in Washtenaw). older ≠ wiser 15:47, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[[1]] Is this what you were looking for?Keeperoftheseal 00:40, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

That would be a very nice addition to the article as an illustration, yes.--Bhuck 10:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Controversy Within The Ranks Of Government"

UPDATE: Anonymous user 71.238.11.109 added the following section of political commentary (indented below). I reverted this (and a couple of other changes), and copied the text here for discussion, but 71.238.11.109 has now restored the original text to the main page. Rather than revert a second time, I tagged the section as NPOV.

Maybe something can be done with this. Aside from the writing style, I don't think this essay is neutral or even factually correct. But due to my personal involvement in the county government, I'm not the best person to rewrite and condense this into NPOV encyclopedic language. Kestenbaum 06:02, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Controversy Within The Ranks Of Government

A somewhat scandelous and confusing ordeal has encompassed the county government in regards to the Sheriff department. Three townships within (August, Salem, and Ypsilanti) are suing the county government and the Sheriff for a controversial increase in service fees for police services. Currently local communities pay approximately $90,000 per year for one Deputy Sheriff officer per 36-38 hours of coverage per week. Projections have been layed out that this will double to approximately $180,000 per year in the next few years. The center of controversy is the fact that the county government is pressuring the small communities to sign extended contracts without any price negotiation or planning.

It should be known that most communities in the area provide their own police services in the $90,000 to $115,000 per officer range.

A recent election "cleaned house" and changed seats of the commissioners that sided with the County's budget changes that started this whole ordeal.

The Sheriff, Dan Minzey, is also suing the Board of Commissioners, the County, and the County Administrator Bob Guenzel.

UPDATE: I am the actual poster of this information; I hope I did not cross any lines or use rhetoric in the posting. I will post links to back up the information.

Note: The preceding comment was added by User:71.238.11.109; I just now moved it to the end of the section so comments can be added. You can sign and date your own comments by using four tildes: ~~~~

I think this is incomplete without any mention of the jail. Washtenaw County has the fewest jail beds per capita of any county in Michigan, and the jail is overcrowded and deteriorating. The commissioners are cutting the road patrol subsidy specifically to raise funds for needed renovations and expansion of the county jail. Since voters rejected raising taxes to fund the jail, cuts had to be made in discretionary spending like road patrol. Kestenbaum 23:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE: I could not agree with you any more that reference should be made to that regarding how this all spawned from the desperate need for a new county jail. I actually thought about that earlier today and did not get enough time until to modify the post. I agree that we need a new jail and a new one now. I don't believe in taxing the life out of the townships though.

Now Larry you have to get something clear here --- you know damn well that charging $180,000 per deputy per year for 36-38hrs of coverage per week is ridiculous. The City of South Lyon has it at $104,000 per year per officer. My point is that it is immoral to "stick it to the townships" to pay for this jail. I am a resident of Salem Township. I know for a fact that Washtenaw County makes more money than we do off of our landfill. Not only do our residents pay a large amount in taxes to the county, WC also robs our golden goose from right under our nose. Why do Salem Township residents have to pay for part of a 14 million dollar homeless shelter? Why are they considering launching a countywide bus system that will charge our residents for something that they will never use? My question here --- why has and why does WC government blow away money on non-essential items and projects instead of maintaining core programs first?

At least hear me out on this --- the County/Township relationship has turned into that of late 18th century colonial America and Mother England. If WC keeps this junk up, expect to see a declaration of independence; probably word-for-word except instead of "King George has..." you will see "Washtenaw County has...".

How to fix the problem? Bob obviously is in the hardest of hard positions to be in right now. I do believe that he is faithfully attempting to make this work without malice but I do believe he approached it in the wrong direction.

 Anonymous user 71.238.11.109 22:06, 7 September 2006 (EDT)