The kindest thing I can say about Jim Markwalder’s letter is that he gets an “E” for effort. Apparently, Markwalder industriously cut and pasted the charter proposal and various federal constitutional amendments into his Office 365 Word program so he could calculate a word count, which he then used to create one of the more vacuous arguments against the charter proposal to date:
There are too many words!
Vote no on the charter proposal because . . . words!
I have faith that Clarkston voters are intelligent enough not to be scared of words. Except for Markwalder, who has clearly not read the charter proposal, presumably because it contains too many words.
Markwalder claims the charter proposal:
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- Micromanages social behaviors
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- Naively tries to legislate kindness
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- Will foster more division than unity
If Markwalder hadn’t disclosed his problem with words, I would wonder what on earth he was talking about. The charter proposal has nothing to do with social niceties, and protecting residents from abuse and putting the elected city council in financial control is not in any way divisive.
When I’ve used the phrase “Make Clarkston Kind,” it’s shorthand for saying that we shouldn’t allow a group of hobbyists with no professional or educational credentials to have the unchecked ability to financially destroy their neighbors because that would be really hard to put on an 18” x 24” yard sign. It would be nice if the HDC commissioners said “please” and “thank you” to people who are bringing applications for work to them for approval, but there’s nothing in the charter proposal that would address their lack of social skills if they don’t.
Perhaps I can help Markwalder out by providing a cut and paste of the bullet points we provided last June that contains less words:
As anyone can plainly see from reading the charter proposal or the bullet points, Markwalder’s concerns are not tethered to reality.
We love questions! Unlike our opponents, we’ll give you honest answers with lots of evidence to back up what we say. Feel free to send questions to: ClarkstonCharterProposal@gmail.com.
(And if you’re tired of HDC abuse and favoritism, then please consider voting yes on the proposed HDC charter amendment on November 5! And because I’ve just said that and even though I haven’t spent any money, I’m going to add the following text though I’m not sure I have to:
Paid for by Susan Bisio, P.O. Box 1303, Clarkston, MI 48347 with regulated funds.)