Opponents of the state’s Emergency Manager law are asking State Rep. Wayne Schmidt (R-Traverse City) to explain his disputed claim that Benton Harbor City Commissioners enjoyed lavish perks including city cars.

On Saturday Schmidt said that the Legislature granted Emergency Managers the power to break contracts, fire elected officials and dissolve whole towns because the city commissioners in Benton Harbor got publicly-funded cars.

He said:

“When you use a Benton Harbor example, where up until a year or two ago the commissioners still had cars and these kind of perks, this is what unfortunately caused us to strengthen it a bit more,“ Schmidt said. “It’s tough to say in a four square mile city for city commissioners in a tough time to still be getting … city cars.”

Officials in Benton Harbor have been stripped of all resources and decision making power by the appointed Emergency Manager Joe Harris, who did not return a call seeking comment on Schmidt’s claim.

“That is a totally erroneous, fallacious statement,“ said Commissioner Marcus Muhammad. “I would hope that a state representative would be more diligent in factual research as apposed to flaunting ignorance.”

Commissioners Juanita Henry, Marcus Muhammad and Duane Seats told Michigan Messenger that they never used city cars.

“Rep. Wayne Schmidt, who earns $79,650 a year, plus bennies needs to hear from you,” Reject Emergency Managers Steering Committee member Amy Hardin said on the group’s Facebook page this morning. “Ask him about his statement on Benton Harbor Commissioners.”

Several people indicated that they have contacted Schmidt about his claim.

When horticulturist and retired teaching assistant Emma Kinnard had trouble securing water for the children’s garden she coordinates in Benton Harbor she asked the city’s emergency manager, Joe Harris, for help.

“He told me that water was the least of his concerns,” she said.

Kinnard, who has been covering the expenses of the Fresh Start children’s garden out of her own pocket for four years, said that she figured the city government would offer some help for the project since the garden is part of the local food plan officially endorsed by the Benton Harbor City Commission.

In July, 2009 the city commissioned a study by the Center for Economic Security, a non-profit that helps communities transition into healthy local economies.

In a report delivered to the commission a month later, Center for Economic Security President Chris Bedford reported that in Benton Harbor, once a flourishing agricultural economy, only one percent of the 35 million that city residents spend on food each year goes to local farmers.

Sixty percent of the city residents have no car, he found, and are forced to survive on food from the city’s party stores and mini-marts, which feature mostly sugary, salty and high fat snacks and very few fresh vegetables.

As a result, he said, the city is experiencing an epidemic of nutrition related disease — 43.6 percent overweight, 34.4 percent obese, 18.6 percent diabetes and 42.6 percent hypertension.

Bedford interviewed gardeners in the city and found that many were willing to expand their gardens and offer advice and support to others who wished to start gardens.

He told commissioners that leveraging local resources to expand the city’s gardens from 22 to 100 should be the first step in a plan to provide a healthy diet for city residents, develop community self-sufficiency, create a just local food distribution system and promote local food entrepreneurship.

Food offers a principal opportunity for community economic reinvention, he said, and if 20 percent of Benton Harbor’s food dollars were spent with local farmers it could produce 30 million dollars in new economic activity.

The commission agreed and endorsed the plan in a resolution but that plan has not been carried out.

“My proposal, while warmly received, was not followed up on because of Whirlpool’s opposition and the poverty and dysfunction of the Benton Harbor community,” Bedford said.

Emma Kinnard, who was already gardening with local children on a donated lot near Mercy Hospital, continued the project, buying water from a neighboring property owner and growing okra, sweet corn, tomatoes, swiss chard , kale, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, lettuce and more with teenagers and kids as young as two years old.

The project has supplied vegetables to the seniors center, donated garbage bags full of greens for local families and provided education about nutrition and problem solving skills for kids.

But Kinnard said the model is not sustainable.

“Every time I got a couple pennies together I spent it on the garden.“ she said. “It got to where I was short on my bills.”

The garden needs straw for mulch, cages to hold up the tomato plants and money to cover the water bill, she said.

Since 2010 state-appointed manager Joe Harris has been in charge of Benton Harbor’s finances and in March when Public Act 4 — the Emergency Manager law — granted him complete control over the city’s government he was quick to use that authority to ban the city commission from exercising any authority.

“He is working with the budget and all the other things the corporate world has mandated he take care of,“ said Commissioner Juanita Henry. “He has no interest in food. For the $11,000 a month he makes those are not issues.”

Henry said that people have expressed interest in gardening on some of the empty land in the city and Harris has refused to authorize the use of any space in the city.

Commissioner Marcus Muhammad called the local food plan “the perfect idea at a perfect time” and said that it fits in with a consensus among elected leaders throughout the region that agriculture will be central to building the local economy, which has been devastating by the decline in manufacturing.

“If there was a willingness from stakeholders and local government … this could really embellish and improve the state of Benton Harbor instantly,” he said, but he added that the state, which is now in control of the city, is, in his opinion, only interested in corporatizing and privatizing Benton Harbor.

There are signs that the grassroots movement that is mobilizing against the Emergency Manager law may step in to support the children’s garden and the local food plan that has languished in Benton Harbor.

When June Thaden of Traverse City learned about the difficulties faced by the children’s garden last week she recognized the situation as an opportunity to directly support a community that has been disenfranchised through poverty and the suspension of their local government.

Thaden, who had traveled to Benton Harbor to protest the Emergency Manager law last month, circulated an e-mail with details of the garden situation and within an hour had received messages from about a dozen people wanting to donate money and supplies, she said.

“I can image the people in Benton Harbor are kind of beaten down at this point,” she said. “It is a horrible situation when you take a town that is already down and beat it down further to where they kind of give up hope, which would be terrible.”

On June 18 people from around the state will gather again in Benton Harbor to protest the takeover of the city and as part of the effort this time, people will gather at the Fresh Start children’s garden, deliver supplies, and visit other garden projects around the city.

“We want to provide some assistance, tools and money and to encourage them,“ she said, “to show them that we care and we believe in what they are dong.”

Joe Harris did not return a call for comment.

Benton Harbor Local Food Plan Powerpoint on DVD from Christopher B. Bedford on Vimeo.

The impoverished former industrial town of Benton Harbor has become a flashpoint in the controversy over the new law that allows the governor to appoint Emergency Managers with virtually unlimited authority over local governments.

On Thursday the state-appointed Emergency Manager Joe Harris used the expanded powers granted by the new law to issue an order banning the city commission from taking any action without his written permission.

Benton Harbor City Commissioner Juanita Henry says her constituents are angry and looking for help, but without the power to hold meetings the city commission can’t even provide an official venue for citizens to ask questions and get answers.

“They are using Benton Harbor as a test case,“ Henry said. “If they have disenfranchised the people so badly they just don’t respond to anything, they can do this all over the country.”

Community activist Rev. Edward Pinkney said that many Benton Harbor residents only learned that their city government had been sacked by reading about it in the paper days later.

Though home to the corporate headquarters of appliance giant Whirlpool, the city lost its last manufacturing plant this year, almost half the population lives below the poverty line and the public lakefront has been privatized as part of a luxury golf development backed by the Whirlpool corporation.
(An appeal of the conversion of the city park is underway in federal court.)

Gov. Jennifer Granholm approved a state takeover of Benton Harbor’s finances last year after the city needed help meeting payroll.

Relations have been strained between the elected officials and the Emergency Manager Harris. In January the city commission tried to oust him after criticizing his expenses and his plans to cut the fire department.

“People should be paying attention to what is happening here because Benton Harbor is GROUND ZERO for the future of what is to become of our state under Governor Rick Snyder,“ said Carole Drake, who fought the privatization of Jean Klock Park in state court.

Locals in Benton Harbor said they will work to repeal their state Rep. Al Pscholka, who sponsored the bill, as well as State Sen. John Proos and Gov. Rick Snyder who also approved it.

A group called Heartland Revolution is planning to rally at the Cornerstone Chamber of Commerce and march to City Hall on Wednesday, April 27th to protest the takeover of the city.

The total suspension of power for local officials has brought Benton Harbor’s situation into focus for other Michigan communities, where people now worry that growing budget problems could mean that they will face similar loss of assets and control.

“I have been in touch with people all over the state via e-mail, face to face and Facebook … this is a hot
topic all over the place and our community FB page A Referendum to Reject PA 4 has quickly quadrupled in size in just the last 24 hours as we have reposted the link with our different contacts,“ said Traverse City activist Betsy Coffia. “I think Benton Harbor really shook some folks up.”

Coffia said that repeal advocates are talking with legal experts about how to draft official language for a petition.

According to information from the Secretary of State website, in order to have a referendum on a newly enacted law petitioners must gather signatures from 161,305 people — five percent of the number that voted in the last gubernatorial election.

The signatures must be submitted within 90 days of the end of the legislative session in which the bill was passed. If the group manages to gather enough certified signatures, the Emergency Manager law would be automatically suspended until a repeal vote can be held on the next general election date.

“Education is key as the groundwork is laid for an organized referendum to repeal,” Coffia said. “This motivates me to educate as many people as I can so that we will be fully prepared to sign our name as registered voters repealing this law.”

This drainage ditch near the picnic area in Benton Harbor's Jean Klock park was not part of the plan approved by the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, locals say.

Three years after approving the conversion of the public park to a private golf course, the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund is asking developers to respond to community concerns that the Harbor Shores complex is larger than was originally approved and that contaminated former industrial parcels offered to the community in trade for the lakefront land have not been developed into promised recreational lands.

Harbor Shores Community Redevelopment Inc., the non-profit developer of the project associated with the locally headquartered appliance giant Whirlpool Corp., has said the course will serve as the centerpiece of a luxury residential and commercial development — annual course fees have been set at an introductory rate of $3,500 next year.

The project has received millions in financial support from the state and Gov. Jennifer Granholm has praised it as an example of positive economic development. But the project has also faced protests, civil disobedience and multiple lawsuits because it involves constructing a private golf course on land given to the city for use as a public park in 1917.

Approval to privatize Jean Klock Park was needed from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund because in 1989, the fund gave Benton Harbor a $375,000 grant for dune restoration, parking and other improvements at the park and beach including access roads, utility upgrades, picnic shelters, observation towers and platforms and security fencing.

In 2006, the MNRTF approved a plan, backed by the city of Benton Harbor, to convert 22 acres of the 73 acre park into a private golf course. The conversion proposal included a promise to build recreational trails on a series of former industrial parcels offered in trade for the parkland. The board asked for annual reports from the city.

On Oct. 21, representatives from the Benton Harbor city government and Harbor Shores went before the MNRTF for their first presentation on the status of developments in the park.

Juanita Henry

In her presentation to the MNRTF, Benton Harbor City Commissioner Juanita Henry used maps to describe several areas in the park where the golf project had crossed the boundaries established in the approved conversion proposal. Henry also discussed concerns about the safety of the parcels offered in trade for the park, the difficulties residents now face in accessing the park and the impact of an unapproved drainage ditch that empties near the public picnic area.

A side-by-side comparison of the approved and current development is available on the website of the group Save Jean Klock Park.

One observer present at the meeting, who asked not to be identified, said that the commissioners were upset by the information presented by Henry.

“They said that their trust had been betrayed and that they expected some explanation as to why things had occurred outside the conversion area.”

“They were not happy. They had just sat through the Saugatuck dunes presentation which was all about protecting and preserving the environment … and then we see this exhibit of what kind of devastation had occurred in Jean Klock Park.”

MNRTF members did not return messages seeking comment on the matter.

DNR staff acknowledged that the board had requested that Harbor Shores produce responses to Henry’s concerns.

The Natural Resources Trust Fund which approved the conversion of Jean Klock Park for golf, is expected to authorize millions to help preserve a similar stretch of dunes along Lake Michigan in Saugatuck

Suzanne Dixon of Douglas attended the October MNRTF meeting as a member of the League of Women Voters and the Kalamazoo chapter of Sturgeon for Tomorrow to support a proposal for state funding of acquisition of Lake Michigan dunes near Saugutuck, about 60 miles north of Jean Klock Park.

Dixon came away from the meeting worried about impacts the Jean Klock Park privatization may have for conservation efforts elsewhere.

In an Oct. 28 letter to the Allegan County News, titled “Park-abuse lessons hold import here,” Dixon described the disconnected contaminated parcels Benton Harbor had received in exchange for its parkland.

“This story is an example of the narrow oversight received from our government,” she said. “I saw a resort with golf course, restaurant, hotel and condos cloaked with non-profit status.”

“I appreciate our local area for its rural character and natural features. Visitors to our community come for the same reason. We worked on a master plan as a community with a very high level of participation. The warning is to be proactive in working with government to defend our zoning, restrict building on critical dunes or any other regulated use. We must all be vigilant that rules are adhered to. Don’t be passive; it could happen here.”

Harbor Shores spokeswoman Wendy Dant Chesser did not return a call seeking comment on the meeting.

Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Mary Dettloff said that the Natural Resources Trust Fund is expected to further explore concerns about the golf development during its next meeting at Lansing Community College on Dec. 2.

Legal fight over privatization continues

On Nov. 3, a three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals in Grand Rapids heard arguments from Benton Harbor residents who claim that the privatization of the park violates the terms of the deed that granted it to the public as well as a 2004 consent judgment in which the city of Benton Harbor agreed to preserve the park for public use.

In August 2008, Berrien County Circuit Court Judge Scott Schofield
dismissed this case, ruling that “a golf course is a park purpose” and that the planned Jack Nicklaus course did not conflict with the park deed.

“We think he got it wrong,” said plaintiffs attorney Scott Howard. “The deed restriction doesn’t allow a private entity to build a private golf course in the park.”

A decision is also awaited in a federal case in which plaintiffs argue that federal agencies failed to follow environmental law when they approved construction of the golf course.

Officer Andrew Collins pleaded guilty to participation in a pervasive pattern of police corruption last year and is serving 37 months in federal prison. This month Officer Bernard Hall, Collins’ supervisor, admitted that he allowed, and benefited from, corruption that included stealing seized property from the police department. Hall is expected to be sentenced in December.

Cotter said that he is continuing to review the many cases that involved the two officers who comprised the city’s entire narcotics unit.

“They didn’t engage in misconduct in every single case they did,” Cotter said. “The problem is that everybody who had a case now wants review.”

Although the majority of those who were charged following improper searches and arrests pleaded guilty and formally waived their right to appeal, Cotter said that he is committed to reviewing the cases.

In some instances where those convicted in flawed cases have gone on to be charged with subsequent crimes, and because sentencing guidelines take into account previous convictions, Cotter has found that in some cases sentences need to be adjusted in matters that are not directly related to misbehavior by Benton Harbor police.

“It’s been a journey getting through all these cases,” Cotter said, “but we are getting through them.”

However, the fallout from actions by Collins and Hall is far from over.

Collins and Hall may face civil suits for their role in violating people’s rights, Cotter said. “In terms of civil liability, from the perspective of the county, no one knew the information provided by the police was false so there is governmental immunity.”

As to the liability up the chain of command in the police department and within city government he said he’s “not sure of the depth of the liability.”

David Robinson, a former Detroit police officer turned Southfield attorney, told Michigan Messenger that he is researching cases on behalf of six people who were wrongly arrested by Collins and whose cases have been dismissed as a result of Collins conviction.

“Our intention is to file a federal civil rights cause of action under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the city and supervisors, the chief of police, and any responsible party,” Robinson said.

“Andrew Collins wrongfully arrested them and caused their detention. Not only is he responsible but arguably his employer, the city, was responsible.”

Robinson said that he believes that Collins’ misbehavior had gone on over a significant period of time and that the Benton Harbor Police Department failed to maintain necessary procedures for supervision and failed to adequately respond to complaints by citizens who warned of police abuse.

“Someone was asleep at the switch in terms of administrative responsibility to operate the police department.” Robinson said.

Benton Harbor City Commissioner Juanita Henry said she believes the city is responsible for the misdeeds of its officers and that changes are underway as a result of the recent pleas by Collins and Hall.

One major step, she said, is the departure of Police Chief Al Mingo, who is leaving his job at the end of this month.

Mingo’s departure, Henry said “eliminates 55 percent of the problem.”

“He is the chief. He has authority over the whole police department. It happened on his watch.”

“We are paying for his mistakes because our citizens have been imprisoned.”

Henry said that she anticipates the city will face financial penalties as a result of the corruption in the police department.

“There is some liability that the city is going to have to be responsible for,” she said, “there is going to have to be some accountability.”

“The only thing I can do as a commissioner is to apologize to the citizens who have been impacted by this.”