City residents are clamoring about the potential closure or reduced services of the Troy Public Library in upcoming months. The library and all of its supporters reinforce the need for the library by stating it is a community resource, good for kids and great for seniors to congregate and a valuable necessity. The question is, is it really?
Let’s compare Troy’s library to other adjoining communities that could adequately support Troy residents should the library face reduced services or elimination. Bloomfield Township spent the better part of the last 8 years renovating and updating their library system ...
<< MORE >>This troubling budget and economic time call for drastic measures. As most Troy residents often see, the Troy Police cruising the Interstate stopping speeders, assisting disabled vehicles and handling accidents accounting for at a conservative estimate 10% of daily call volume. What residents also fail to realize is that the Interstate police function that Troy often provides is not mandatory simply because I-75 runs through Troy.
Did you know that departments like Madison Heights, Pittsfield Township and Detroit do not routinely handle any calls for service related to the Interstate. Yes, that is right they ...
<< MORE >>Recently the Troy Police administration is doing everything it can to garner good press and show that their “boys in blue” are a required necessity and not worth looking at for downsizing or outsourcing. While doing this aggressive campaign of getting every good deed and criminal capture plastered all over newspapers especially the regional papers, they may also have helped to accomplish the very thing they are fighting against.
The police department is utilizing its undercover and in some cases combined agency units bringing to light a very interesting point. The police are trying to avoid cuts and / or outsourcing to the Sheriff or a regionalized new police entity of several Oakland County police departments to save huge budget and legacy dollars. While making these combined arrests, the police are proving that consolidation and regionalization could work. In the past several weeks you have seen joint efforts between Troy, Sterling Heights, Auburn Hills, Royal Oak and others. These moral victories the police are capitalizing on also serve to reinforce that integration of some of these agencies into a regionalized police agency is entirely possible, economically in the best interest of residents and could provide just as complete of police service as the residents have been used to in the past. The aspect that Troy Council is worried about is that they will lose local control and would have a more limited role in the day to day puppeteering of the police department and its inner workings.
A regionalized police agency with or without the integration or utilization of the Sheriff just makes plain financial sense.
Recently California has evaluated legalizing marijuana completely similar to alcohol. The preliminary plan would charge sales tax, a hefty licensing fee for stores selling it. The state projects it could raise HUNDREDS of Millions of dollars. The state’s voters were recently polled and 56% of voters said they would support the proposal.
The question we pose is should Michigan pose a similar law, tax the marijuana sales under the sales tax law and an added premium tax similar to the liquor tax to be put into a future ...
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