Acme Township Voters Support Incumbents, Back Smart Growth

by: philgoblue

Mon Aug 11, 2008 at 10:05:56 AM EDT

Incumbent Supervisor Wayne Kladder (who was appointed supervisor last year after Bill Kurtz resigned) received 747 voted, easily defeating pro-developer challenger Noelle Knopf (one of the former Board members who were swept out of office in 2004), who finished with 477 votes.

Incumbent Clerk Dorothy Dunville received 787 votes, easily defeating challenger Pam Lewis who received 450 votes.

For Trustee, voters picked four out of a ballot that included six candidates:

* Incumbent Trustee Frank Zarafonitis, owner of the Bay View Inn, was the top vote-getter with 751 votes.
* Incumbent Trustee Paul Scott, a corrections sergeant at the Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Department, received 746 votes.
* Incumbent Trustee Ron Hardin, an engineer, received 743 votes.
* Incumbent Trustee Erick Takayama, owner of Grand Traverse Organic Landscaping, received 691 votes.

Two Trustee candidates who ran as "pro-growth" (re: pro-developer) finished out of the top four and thus were not elected:
* Doug White received 601 votes.
* Tyler Veliquette received 523 votes.

The Treasurer's race was for an open seat, since former Treasurer Bill Boltres stepped down. Candidate Linda Lou Wikle, a township planning commissioner who owns an insurance agency, picked up 640 votes and defeated Nancy Edwardson, who received 501 votes.

Back in July, Kladder had summed up the goals of the current township board for Acme, a township of 4,332 people on the East Arm of the Grand Traverse Bay:

"We can't be all residential and agricultural like Old Mission Peninsula but we can create a village center like Traverse City. If you create a community that people will want to move to the businesses will follow."

Judge Allows Lawsuits by Township Officials Against Meijer in the Acme case

by: philgoblue

Wed Jun 25, 2008 at 22:13:55 PM EDT

The Acme officials agreed in November to release Meijer from litigation over alleged harassment and intimidation. But that was before Meijer acknowledged violating state campaign laws through its involvement in two local elections dealing with its development plans. The Secretary of State of Michigan fined Meijer more than $190,000 in May for those campaign violations.

You may remember that earlier, Meijer and The Village at Grand Traverse sued Carstens and other township officials on three different occasions over zoning disputes related to their development proposals along M-72. And then they spent tens of thousands of dollars to illegally fund a recall campaign against the Acme township officials that opposed their plans.  Then Terri Lynn Land short-circuited the probe of Meijer's War on Acme (something even Mike Cox argued against), which prompted the Traverse City Record-Eagle to write:

Her decision proved what most observers thought all along -- Land values the political and monetary clout Meijer can provide her future political career more than she does the law, more than she does Michigan voters and more than her oath of office. She can take the "for sale" sign down; the deal has been struck.

Any lawsuit certainly could bring new revelations to light ... and that would be a good thing.  Businesses simply cannot be allowed to use their vast economic power to intimidate the public's representatives.