A Lansing Resident's Take on Bernero

by: HeatherH

Sun Jul 18, 2010 at 13:48:05 PM EDT

I know there have been a lot of posts here already advocating the pros and cons of both Andy Dillon and Virg Bernero.  To be honest, I know little about Dillon, but I have learned quite a bit about Bernero as a resident of Lansing and dealing with him as our Mayor.

Unfortunately, my experiences with him aren't good.  I've never been one to get actively involved in local politics until an issue came up a couple of years ago involving Lansing's munical golf courses.  I live right next to one of them, a very nice course that our community was always proud of.  It was kept up well, was a nice "gateway" to Lansing coming from one of the major roads going into the city, and best of all, the course was self sustaining.  It, barring unforseen expenses, paid for itself.

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Seemingly out of the blue, Bernero decided it was "too costly" for the city to maintain our course, as well as another of the city's 3 courses, and that they needed to close them down.  Our neighborhood fought back, raising questions about how it could be too costly when it had always been said the courses more or less maintained themselves (the city budget had to allocate some money each year for the operation of the courses, but then that money would be put back in the city coffers through the profits from the courses charging their fees to play) 

We asked to meet with the Mayor to discuss what would become of the course if it were to close, as we didn't want it to just sit vacant.  He refused.  We talked to City Council members, and they assured us the courses would remain open and they would make sure the funds to open the courses were part of the budget as usual.  They followed through on their end, and the budget was passed with the usual allocations for all 3 courses.

Bernero responded by ordering his city employees not to open the courses, so we were left in this limbo where the courses all SHOULD have been open as usual, but because of Bernero stomping his feet on the issue, 2 of the 3 remained closed.  We again asked to meet with the Mayor, and again were refused.  The City Council responded by suing the Mayor saying that he had an obligation to let the courses open since money was there and he was acting illegally by not following through on the city's budget allocation.  He fought it, so we then had the city suing itself and wasting all sorts of taxpayer money.

 To make a long story short, to this day, the courses remain closed.  They are completely unkept, the grass is about 4 feet high at the moment, weeds growing everywhere, and look terrible.  Anytime we have friends come in from out of town, they ask what in the world that fenced in area is across the street, and ask if it's a contaminated hazard or something.  I explain that it's supposed to be a golf course, but our Mayor left us with that instead.

To this day I have no idea why Bernero did what he did.  If it was truly a budget issue, I could understand, but it wasn't.  I could maybe even understand it if Bernero had a plan to reuse the 2 sites for something, had a deal in place to sell them to a developer or something, but he didn't.  They just sit there, driving down our property values, and being an eyesore on the community.

So, when I hear other stories about the Mayor being rude, argumentative, and refusing to work with others, I believe them.  It's how he treated my neighbors and I.

I don't know much about Dillon, like I said, but I know that Bernero has no business even thinking about being Governor.  He won't work with the city council now, I can't imagine how poorly he'd work with the state legislature.

Anyway, I just wanted to offer my two cents.  I've read lots of arguements about the two candidates on here, but most of them were focused on one issue or another.  This isn't about an issue, just about the person himself and his track record as Mayor of Lansing.  I don't know if it will change any minds or not, but I felt it was worth saying, and I know I'm not the only one here in Lansing that feels this way.