Sometimes it makes me want to hit my head against a brick wall

I live in the City of Ypsilanti. For the most part I love it. I love that I can go days without having to use my car. I can shop at the food coop (although I tend to use the coop as a convenience store rather than a grocery store and I stop off there for things like bread and milk). If I meet some friends at the bar like I am going to do tonight, I don’t have to worry about driving home if I have one too many because I can walk home. I don’t attend every festival but sometimes I sit on my front porch and listen to them and think about how cool they are which, imho, counts as appreciating them. I don’t ride the bus very often but I like knowing that if I wanted to, I could catch a bus. In a way this has saved me a lot of money because I have been more willing to keep driving my 10 year old car knowing that if it breaks down for a while, I can get to work and not have to pay $40/day in cab fare.



So now, according to east-cross street, the city is thinking about giving up some very important services such as the bus service and is also thinking about limiting the festivals. Both of those things would be bad things but to also, at the same time, be considering giving a MILLION dollars to a rich fat cat developer in the form of tax breaks kind of disgusts me. Even that wouldn’t be soooo bad but this particular developer happens to have built a particularly UGLY apartment complex near EMU’s campus. I might be more forgiving if it were the Water Street complex (whatever happened to that idea?).



I guess I don’t like the way this city is heading right now. I will suggest that the city consider getting rid of the LAWN ENFORCERS because I don’t know if I want to live in a city that cant fund a bus service but still manages to fund a department responsible for harassing home owners if their “weeds” grow above 10in. (In my case, the city apparently once defined my rose bushes as “weeds”) I certainly don’t want to vote for any city council members that try to get rid of the bus service while keeping the evil lawn people and while giving some rich builders of ugly apartments a million dollar tax break (on top of the tax breaks they have already been given)