Dated: October 21, 1999
Published by: Milan News-Leader
Author: TByron Pilbeam
Aretta Schils
Byron Pilbeam
To the Editor:
I remember a radio address by one of our great leaders at the start of WorId War II when
he stated, "The hand that held the dagger plunged it into the back of its
neighbor."
That could be said about what happened at the Milan Township meeting last week. The three
people who held the power stuck a knife in the back of their neighbors, voters and tax
payers.
How three people could, coldly sit there and ignore the wishes of hundreds of people who
they are supposed to represent is beyond comprehension.
How could they utterly ignore all the evidence of what a terrible impact the railroad
project would have on the community?
It would have been more appropriate if the railroad representatives had been sitting on
the stage with the three board members sitting on their laps like Charlie McCarthy.
They are obviously puppets of the Ann Arbor Railroad. Or perhaps they should be
compared to the three monkeys in the old fable, "see no evil, hear no evil and speak
no evil' about the railroad project.
From day one they completely ignored every piece of evidence about how wrong this project
is for Milan Township.
They hired a law firm to represent them in negotiations with the railroad, but that same
firm represented the Ann Arbor Railroad! That's like hiring the fox to guard the chicken
coop.
Mrs. Jaworski said she voted for it because they might be sued if they didn't approve the
project. Who would she rather have suing her; the railroad or her neighbors and voters?
Mr. Rock voted for it because he thought we had to "move forward."
Letting a noisy, air polluting cancer of a railroad switch yard into the township is not
exactly a move forward. I remember when Milan was a dirty smelly foundry and
railroad switching yard town back in the 1930's. After WWII, Milan picked itself up
and became beautiful community. Mr Rock would have you think going back to that is
moving forward.
John Bruckner said the railroad was going to help Milan Township get water, but they
offered $700,000. That would be just enough to get water to their project. Who
is going to pay the other $7 million it would cost the township? John said,
"the poor old people out in Azalia couldn't afford to drill new wells."
Which costs more, four or five thousand to drill a well or the $10-15,000 it will cost
each resident to get 'water piped in from another town? All of the great things the
Ann Arbor Railroad have promised are just "promises', there is not nothing written
down and legally signed.
Isn't it strange that the three board members are so confident of the decision they were
going to make that they had two police cars there to protect them. That really shows
you believe your decision was the right and popular one that the voters and taxpayers
support. Those three serve no one but the railroad and themselves.
Byron Pilbeam
TOP
Aretta Schils
To the editor,
The Milan Township Board has caused the citizens to take the next step in the AAR
Properties saga. With a simple NO, a lot of needless energy and money could have
been saved on the project. This is definitely not the last step! Is it not over and a
"done deal" as we've heard from day one?
Over and over, the main reason for saying yes was because of the money. They
accepted the "deal" the railroad offered without even finding the costs to the
township of having such a facility - costs incurred by extra policing, extra road work,
extra fire and emergency, loss of tax monies from surrounding property values going down,
monitoring costs above the minimums that the railroad wants done, court costs for
non-compliances and so on and so on. Isn't that kinda like starting to build a house
with X amount of money and finding it so expensive that all you could build was the
basement?
They missed a golden opportunity by not imposing fines for non-compliance. The reasons
given were that the railroad would just consider these costs of operating and stay out of
compliance. They should have taken clues from the law enforcement agencies and added a
point system in addition to the fines for all infractions just as they do with traffic
tickets and points on your license. After so many points, your license is taken away
just as they could have taken the operating license away from the railroad after so many
infractions.
There was a letter in Sunday's Monroe paper about all the train congestion in Fostoria
Ohio. Well folks, part of the congestion is that Fostoria also has a distribution
facility that helps cause the train traffic. But that facility isn't nearly as large
as the proposed facility here. Are they going to be writing newspaper articles about
Milan's train woes in the future?
And what about the closing of US23 this week with traffic backed up to US12. What if
there had been hundreds of car haulers added into the traffic mix. The traffic may
have been backed up half way to the Mackinaw Bridge. Or worse yet, all those car
haulers would have been coming thru downtown Milan.
So you're asking yourself about now "Just what can I do to help keep this out of my
neighborhood?" The next step is a referendum where every registered voter in Milan
Township gets a chance to voice their opinion by voting at the polls. If you're not
a registered voter but want a say-so on this subject, then get down to the Secretary of
State and get registered. In the next 30 days, most likely someone will be knocking on
your door to ask for your signature on a petition that will lead to an election. And
if you want to help collect signatures, please call me or anyone in the Milan Area
Concerned Citizens.
They told MCATS that they couldn't stop a toxic waste dump but to date, we don't have one
in our area. Let's work together to keep the distribution center out also. There are just
too many neighborhood friendly developments waiting for a place to live to let this
monster rule our lives.
Aretta Schils
TOP