Locals choose oil change business over medical care and jobs

Let me tell you a story: A free medical clinic that donates over $1 million in help to the local community and operates on grant dollars and funding from the University of Michigan wants to expand. With a larger location, the clinic can double its practice; without a new location, it can’t grow.

A local township has a building it wants to sell. That building would be perfect for the medical clinic and another tenant.

A man comes forward, offering to buy the building the township wants to sell. He’d use the upper level of the building for his own office, freeing up the lower level for the free medical clinic. He would give the clinic a free lease for five years.

The man offered the township a reasonable down payment and a land contract that he would pay in full in two years. He could have offered to buy the building for cash, but he needed some of his funds to remodel the building.

For this to happen, the medical clinic would have to vacate its current building, which it would donate to the township.

A local businessman who employs 20 people in his successful restaurant wants to expand his business and needs a larger location, something the size of the current medical clinic.

This local businessman offers to pay cash at whatever price the building appraises for so he can expand his successful restaurant, hire more workers and remain in the area.

To recap, this township has a building it wants to sell. In order to grow, a successful free medical needs to move into a larger location and a successful local business needs to expand.

Sounds like real-estate musical chairs from heaven, doesn’t it.

What do you think the township did?

If you’re guessing that the township facilitated projects in the best interests of the community, you’d be wrong.

The township board wasn’t interested in any of this. Rather than allowing a free medical clinic and a successful business to expand, the township sold its building to the son of one of its board members for an oil change business.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The township is getting another oil change business, leaving the free medical clinic and restaurant considering their options.

This doesn’t seem the best way to run a township, does it? But that’s the way things work in Michigan, which is 12th in the nation with 2,893 total units of government.

In Livingston County, we have 16 townships, two cities, two villages, six school districts and one county government, in addition to a road commission, EMS service and various fire departments.

We also have a county planning department that has absolutely no power over how things get “planned” at the very local level.

And we have a township that would rather sell a building to the son of one of its members for an oil change business rather than focus on putting together a string of real estate deals that would create more high-quality free medical care and more jobs for the community.

It makes you wonder about whether we need to consider either giving the planning department some power, or whether we need to consolidate our local units of government.

Something’s got to change when our local politicians value more highly an oil change business over medical care and jobs.

* For the record, I am the local businessman looking to expand his business and create more jobs.