The DDA Board meeting for February has been rescheduled to February 24th at 12 Noon at the Governmental Center. The DDA Board Meetings are usually scheduled for the 2nd Wednesday of the month.
The Bridgeport School Board has not posted a schedule for 2016 yet, but the meetings are usually held on the 2nd Monday of the month. The next meeting should be held on February 8th at 6pm at the Bridgeport High School. Some months they have two meetings but I don't know yet when or if they will be held.
The Bridgeport Trustee Meetings are held on the 1st Tuesday of the month. The February meeting will be held this evening at 6pm at the Governmental Center. Here is a schedule for 2016 of the Trustee meetings and the township holidays.
Pat Nelson is the new School Board President, Robert Lange is the new School Board Vice President, Tedi Morris is the new School Board Secretary, Larry Long is again the School Board Treasurer. Finally Carol Selby is now called Superintendent Selby! Mr. Lagalo is the new Bridgeport High School Principal. Congratulations to all of them!!
The meeting started with a moment for silence for Tom Kelly and Michael Gall. There was another member of the Bridgeport Schools community that also passed away recently, Tammy Crandall. My condolences to their families and friends. I have heard many wonderful things about these people and what a loss it is for the Bridgeport community.
The meeting was over one hour long with a lot of business details and discussion. They did set the dates and time for the 2016 board meetings, it will be the second Monday of the month at 6pm. If they post a calendar like they did for 2015 I will share that here on the blog and Facebook. They approved the annual compensation for the school board members. I really have no problem with them receiving $20 per meeting with a limit of $600 per year, but I was impressed with what Tedi Morris said about it. The money doesn't mean anything to her but serving is priceless.
There was a lot of good discussion during the meeting and Superintendent Selby's comments at the end are usually full of good information. If you really want to get to know your school board members, listen to what they say. Attending the meetings is a great way to learn about the members and everything that is going on. If you can't attend then at least listen to the full meeting here on the videos. There will be an election coming in May and hopefully people will take the time to get to know all candidates and make informed decisions.
I believe that when things aren't going well, it is time for a change. Change can be a very good thing! Not everyone likes change though, some like to hang onto the old ways. Resentment to change can often be seen in someones eyes........
It was a short meeting tonight. There were three speakers during the public comment period.
First up was Larry Ford from the Birch Run/Bridgeport Chamber Of Commerce with some updates for the communities. The "Best Of" Awards dinner and ceremony for the Chamber will be held on February 17th at the Candlelight Banquet Center. I attended last year and can tell you it is a very nice event and I look forward to going this year. A Bridgeport resident spoke about how beautiful the flowers were this year and also the holiday lights at the historic bridge. I agree with her 100%. She also talked about having a signal installed at the corner at the corner of Dixie and State/Baker Rd for pedestrians to cross there at the intersection. Another resident spoke to say Thank You to the Bridgeport Police Department for their quick response and recovery of items that were stolen from his business.
During the board member comments Augie Tausend spoke about new meters that Consumers Energy will be installing in the township in 2016. They are called Smart Meters. I have been reading for several years some controversy surrounding the meters. Some of the talk is pretty far out there in left field but some people seem to have normal arguments against them I will try to round up all the pro's and con's involving the discussion. Can't promise to get it done right away though because I have some family obligations right now that take first priority in my life.
Here is a informational brochure that was provided by Consumers. Click on the photo to see a larger image.
The Bridgeport Township Trustee Board Meeting will be held on January 5th at 6pm at the Governmental Center offices.
The DDA Board Meeting should be on January 13th at Noon at the Governmental Center offices.
The Bridgeport School Board has not posted a updated schedule for the 2016 meeting schedule but I believe there is to be a meeting held on January 11th at 6pm at the Bridgeport High School.
I still have some family situations ongoing right now that may keep me from making it to these meetings but I am going to try to go and record them.
I was planning on writing a blog post for this meeting, had a few things to comment on, but I have a family emergency right now so I have not and will not have time to write anything. Just wanted to get it shared here in case anyone was interested in it.....
There was a Township Board of Trustees meeting December 1st which I will be posting the video of. There will be another Township Board meeting held on December 15th. The meetings are held at 6 pm at the Governmental Center offices.
The Downtown Development Authority meeting should be on December 9th at Noon at the Governmental Center offices.
The BOE schedule shows that there will be two Bridgeport School Board Meetings this month, December 14th and December 28th. The meetings are held at 6pm at the Bridgeport High School ** There will also be a special School Board Meeting held on December 7th at 6pm at the high school. The meeting is being held to hold a "closed session". **
Looking forward to Sunday morning, opening day of Firearms Deer Season!! Hopefully the inbred morons that damaged my blind, and probably left the dead raccoon in my blind, won't be bothering me on opening day.
I missed the last school board meeting on October 26th and it sounds like it was a "unpleasant" meeting. When I read about the meeting in the October 28th issue of the Birch Run/Bridgeport Herald I was so upset that I was going to write a blog post about it. I was so angry though that I decided it would be best to wait before writing anything. I had attended the Finance Committee on October 21st where they discussed the problems facing the school district. They have the current deficit problems, the added financial loss of over $600,000.00 due to student enrollment losses, the changes that will be coming when the Michigan State Treasury Dept takes over the monitoring of the schools in deficit. It was a depressing meeting because of the problems they discussed, but at the same time I heard a lot of good discussion and saw that they wanted to work to find a way to deal with these issues and to do so in a timely manner. They knew they had to at least show the state that they were working on a plan to handle the deficit.
If they can't show the state that they are, then what will the consequences be? More state control? An Emergency Manager placed in control of the district? If this district can't show that they are capable of handling this situation and the state starts making the decisions, those decisions will most likely not be pleasant.
So after almost two hours, the Finance Committee came up with some recommendations to look at. One was to start taking bids on the possible outsourcing of jobs in several areas. They needed to put this out for bid now so they had the time to review all the facts and figures. If it wasn't going to provide a significant savings, then they would not go with outsourcing. Two other options they wanted to start looking at was possibly closing Thomas White and negotiating with the union over the five percent wage concession. The recommendation from the committee was not to just do this, but to look at these options now, get all the facts and figures, and have the time to make a decision.
I was shocked when I read that the full board voted this down at the October 26th meeting. I thought "these people can't even make a simple decision", there's no hope!
If anyone would like to hear the discussion at the Finance Committee Meeting, you can view it on youtube or here on the blog. There was no microphones set up for the meeting so the audio is very hard to hear. You can use headphones and turn the volume all the way up. If there are any doubts about what was discussed at the meeting, take the time and make a little effort to listen to it.
There is also another issue in Lansing that may impact the problems Bridgeport is facing. That is how the state will deal with the $700 Million Deficit that the failed Detroit Public School System is facing. The plan proposed by Gov. Snyder involves taking $50 per student away from every other school district in the state for the next 10 years. So to try and save a school district that is probably beyond saving, he wants to make every other district in the state suffer. That would probably mean a loss of around $70,000 to $80,000 per year for Bridgeport. Here is the original news article about his plan - http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2015/10/how_snyders_plan_to_fix_detroi.html
Thankfully it looks like there is not a lot of support in Lansing for this plan, and there is going to be fighting over this plan. But I don't have much faith in Lansing. Didn't the voters say No to Emergency Managers? They're still doing it. Didn't the voters say No to the Bridge to Canada? He is building it anyways. Didn't the voters say No to more taxes for the roads? They did it anyways. If Snyder wants this plan, he will probably get it, one way or another.
Now onto last nights school board meeting.
There were three speakers during the citizen participation segment. Please take the time and watch them! I was not surprised, but was disappointed, by some of the comments made by Sue Rutherford. She talked about some of the options that the MEA has presented to the board and district in the past to help save money, a lot of money, but it sounds like those suggestions were just blown off by the board. And so here we sit. Hopefully this board and district will listen to them this time. UPDATE: I found some information since I originally wrote this blog post about part of the proposal presented by the union to the school district and I talk a little about it in the comment section below.
I will say that I am encouraged that it looks like most of these board members are serious about taking action and want to work with all the members of the district and will listen to their ideas.
The Finance Committee Recommendations were back on last nights agenda and this time the board voted to approve it.
There was a lot of good discussion by everyone at last nights meeting. There was a presentation by Ms. Silvey that I hope everyone will listen to. The closing board member and superintendent comments were Very Good and I hope you take the time to listen to them.
They have set a Special Board Meeting for Monday December 7th. It will be a full board meeting/workshop where the board members, administration, and the various employees groups etc. will present ideas and work together to do what is necessary for the benefit of the district and the future of the children.
