At a meeting on Monday, the Hillsdale City Council moved forward on several issues. Among other things, the council approved the Hillsdale Business Association’s street barricade request for its “Light Up Hillsdale” parade, and passed several traffic control orders for local streets.
But the input of four non-councilpersons who attended the meeting accounted for much of its two-hour runtime.
Ed Crouch, a resident of Buena Vista Street whose yard was impacted by the State Street construction project, was the first of these locals to speak. At the last city council meeting, Crouch asked council members to come up with their own ideas concerning a fix to his yard after the council rejected a proposal from city engineers. When Crouch asked at this meeting if they had come up with anything, no councilperson responded.
“I’m just confused because no one gave a good reason to vote against [the engineers’ proposal],” Crouch said. “I’m just looking for some sort of explanation.”
A disruption caused by the State Street construction project also drew Aaron Sawdey to speak to the council. As a homeowner with four vehicles, he said that he was having trouble fitting all his cars in the space allotted for him, since parking on the street is illegal where he lives.
“All I was asking was if I could park on one side of the road,” he said.
Sawdey added that the only traffic on his street each day comes from a school bus.
The council, along with Chief Christoper Gutowski of the Hillsdale City Police, denied his request.
Councilperson Ruth Brown said that she liked the idea of temporary traffic orders allowing parking on the street for extraordinary occasions.
Near the end of the meeting, when it was opened to public comment, two members of the group “Citizens Against the Hillsdale Income Tax” spoke to the council. The proposed income tax, which was voted down in Tuesday’s election, would be used to fund residential street repair and maintenance.
At a previous meeting, Mayor Doug Moon questioned the accuracy of a brochure the group had distributed. Bethany Miller, the first to speak, said that there was one mistake on the leaflet in question, concerning a misunderstanding of a recent city council vote on public employee salaries.
“We discovered one inadvertent and substantive error,” Miller said. “We stand by our assertion that taxes hurt business.”
Moon said that the group was still mischaracterizing the issues of the debate.
“I stand by my assertion that your brochure was full of falsities,” he said.
Jaminda Springer, another representative of the anti-tax group, said that avoiding mistruth was one of her group’s main goals.
“I just can’t say enough that lies and falsities is a dialogue we’ve purposely stayed away from,” she said. “I assert that we’ve tried to be very honest.”
Moon said that he disagreed not just with the group’s claims to honesty but also with its goals.
“It disappoints me that someone who uses roads doesn’t want others to,” Moon said.
jbutler@hillsdale.edu
