Green Cruise for 2015

Yesterday was the Ferndale Green Cruise, the environmentally friendly answer to the Dream Cruise.  The Detroit News has the story in Green Cruisers celebrate pedal power, fight pollution.

Just one week away from the largest one-day car cruise in the world, some Metro Detroiters embarked Saturday on a different kind of cruise.

Bicyclists from across the region are rolling down Woodward — and plenty of other roads during the 11th annual Sierra Club Green Cruise.

The event celebrates the various forms of human-powered transit that can help to cut down the use of fossil fuels. It also illustrates the growing popularity of bicycling in Metro Detroit and spotlights efforts to reduce air and water pollution.

“The purpose of the ride is to raise awareness about the fight against climate pollution,” said Jerry Hasspacher, Green Cruise chairman. “We want to cut down the emission of greenhouses gases.”

C&G Newspapers explain more about the event in Ferndale’s Green Cruise promotes bicycling, walking.

“Part of the reason the Green Cruise was originally started and continues to be one week ahead of the Dream Cruise is, certainly, to be looked at as an anti-Dream Cruise,” Co-Chair Tom Dusky said. “This is an alternative to those people who celebrate vintage car travel the following week with providing several bike rides all around the area.”

The Green Cruise was organized for the first time by Royal Oak resident Shirley Bavonese when she became frustrated with the noise and pollution of the Dream Cruise. Along with her children and friends, Bavonese started riding her bike up and down the street, and the next year, the Green Cruise began with the backing of the Sierra Club.
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“A lot of this has to do with your health and the health of the planet, really,” he said. “The world has really gotten overpopulated now, and the stresses pollution and mankind put on the planet is now beginning to be quite noticeable, with the effects of global warming and the weather patterns, that changing your mode of transportation is a fairly easy change to do, and it makes for a much healthier you.”

So far, there seems to be no video of this year's event, but the Detroit News has a slideshow of the Sierra Club's Green Cruise.  When a video becomes available, I'll post it.  It will be as close as I get to attending, as I missed the event again.  I blame Donald Trump.

Stay tuned for a preview of Dream Cruise as the other half of Entertainment Sunday.

An update on library access for Bloomfield Hills

Just after I posted yesterday's library news, C&G Newspapers reported on another situation I covered in my first post about the plight of local libraries. Here is what I wrote then as a commentary on the Detroit Free Press article on the subject:

What about Bloomfield Hills and Troy, the poster children of cities in Metro Detroit who either have lost access to other cities' libraries or whose own libraries are in danger of closing?

Bloomfield Hills, which never had a library of its own, city officials are negotiating with the directors of Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham to give Bloomfield Hills residents full borrowing privileges.

Birmingham would be a better match for Bloomfield Hills than Troy, which the city had been using.

I've already written about Troy's situtation, twice, and I'm sure I'll write more about it between now and August, when the city's residents vote on the millage proposal to keep the library open. It's Bloomfield Hills' turn.

The Bloomfield Hills City Commission decided to raise the city’s tax rate from 9.05 to 9.85 mills May 10 in order to obtain a balanced budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year, officials said.

Remember, the issues with the libraries are part of a general fiscal crisis for government. The usual solution has been austerity--cutting services and laying off employees, not raising revenue. That Bloomfield Hills has decited to raise revenue is a sign that trends might be moving in the other direction. Now, what about the community's library access?

At the same meeting, the commission agreed upon a counter offer to submit to Baldwin Public Library, with which the city has been in negotiations for library service. The counter offer would levy 0.3 mills for three years for library services — but only with the approval of voters come November.

The 0.3 mills would bring in around $220,000 a year, officials say, which equates to just less than $150 per household.

Those numbers are important. The 0.3 mills turns out to be the minimum level that qualifies for state library funding. The $150/household would be lower than the $200 the residents have been paying for access to Troy's library. That arrangement has the Bloomfield Hills residents buying cards and then Bloomfield Hills reimbursing them. Since Troy's library is still open, Bloomfield Hills residents can still use their library, which gives Bloomfield Hills time to negociate. They'll need it.

Baldwin recently turned down a $166,000 offer from Bloomfield Hills for library service. That was a counter to Baldwin’s initial request of roughly $380,500 a year for three years from the city for library services.

The library had not accepted the recent counter offer at press time, so official ballot language — which would have to be approved by August — had not been decided.

Stay tuned to see how this "maybe" turns out.

More metro Detroit library news for May 2011

While I was celebrating some good news for Troy's library in yesterday's post, other libraries were making less auspicious headlines. From the Detroit Free Press comes the following story.

Macomb Co. libraries take a hit in plan
BY CHRISTINA HALL
May 17, 2011

Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel gave his organization plan to county commissioners Monday, detailing $2.5 million in cuts annually, including more than $900,000 to the county library.

As I wrote, not a good headline. Since the devil is in the details, let's take a close-up look at Old Scratch.

Hackel's plan calls for transferring the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, which employs four people, to the Clinton-Macomb District Library, saving the county nearly $200,000 a year.

At least that's not closing a library (and this particular facility would be a very bad one to close), just having someone else take care of it. Still, I wonder what the Clinton-Macomb District Library thinks of this and what it will do to their budget. That's something for a follow-up post.

What else?

It also calls for phasing out, by the end of the year, the Reference and Research Center, which provides reference books, magazines, newspapers and online databases, saving the county $716,000.

That's not good. This closes off a major source for research in the state's third most populous county. Unfortunately, I don't know of any constituencies outside of librarians and scholars who would rally to keep it open.

Speaking of programs who have advocates in the community, here's one that survived the budget axe.

Nearly $34,000 to Macomb Literacy Partners would continue in the plan, but a more suitable location for the program would be explored.

Basic literacy has a big constituency, even if it's only parents with young children, so I'm not surprised this program will continue. Besides, it constitutes only a small portion of the budget.

There are all kinds of other budget-saving and austerity measures in the revised budget, so I recommend you read the article at the link. However, I want to point out one set in particular that has nothing to do with libraries, but everything to do with sustainability, before I move on.An additional $100,000 in savings would come from eliminating seven of the county's 38 boards, including the Water Quality Board, Historical Commission and county Economic Development Corp.

However, Hackel said he is considering advisory councils for some of the eliminated boards, such as water quality, a big issue for him and the commissioners.
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[County Commission Chairwoman Kathy] Vosburg said she doesn't believe anyone will see a group being the watchdog for water quality going away, "and the board will make sure that function of being that watchdog will not go away."

The bad news is that local governance for sustainbility--water quality, historical commission, and economic development (the sustainability triad, environment, society, and economy, strikes again!)--has been demoted. The good news is that the really important ones will continue in less expensive forms.

Now, some good library news from earlier this month that I missed.

Royal Oak Review via C&G News: Voters approve operating millage for Clawson library
By Jeremy Carroll
May 3, 2011

Voters approved a 0.33-mill tax increase to fund operations at Blair Memorial Library and to allow the facility to be fully self-sufficient.

The vote came two years after voters passed a 0.5-mill increase to expand the building, which opened again in 2010 after a period of reconstruction.
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A total of 54.8 percent of the 2,425 voters approved the measure during the May 3 election.
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The 0.33-mill request will raise just over $100,000, the amount the library would have needed from the city to remain open the minimum number of hours to receive state aid.
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A total of 25.6 percent of registered voters in the city cast their ballot in the election, higher than Clerk Machele Kukuk expected.

That's all good news, and may it foreshadow an equally good result in neighboring Troy this coming August.