Jim Rinck's television commercials from his 2006 bid for the US Congress drew the attention of the La Viremia Expositions museum of Barcelona, Spain. La Viremia Expositions requested permission to use Jim Rinck's Congressional campaign videos in an exhibit of political advertisements from around the world. The exhibit opened in July 2008 and continues through June 2009 in Barcelona Spain. Below are the videos used in the exhibit.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE GRAND RAPIDS BOARD OF EDUCATION?
by- Jim Rinck
People keep telling me that they don't know how I could stand being on the BOE as long as I did. They say that the current BOE is worthless, that the Grand Rapids Public Schools are terminal and that no sane person would want to be on the bridge of that sinking ship. I understand why they say such things.
Being on the BOE became increasingly depressing over time. If you refer to my essay below about the City Commission, and if you simply follow the news, you must know that the City of GR has not been blessed by good leadership in some time. That problem seems to have been magnified on the BOE. Most of its members over the years simply have not been capable of being on a neighborhood board, much less the executive board of a company with a $200 million per year budget. Almost none of its member over the past decade have had advanced degrees, managerial experience or other types of experience that would indicate leadership ability. Many of them have no experience with negotiation processes whatsoever, and, as a result, they are shamelessly manipulated in matters such as labor relations and executive searches. The current board has some members who, over the course of multiple terms, have never voted no on any issue. Some members even appear to take pride in their refusal to do anything else besides what the administration recommends to them. This course of action is completely contrary to any theory of responsible government, and, as you might suspect, is frustrating to anybody who would try to be a responsible public servant. Nevertheless, the GR citizenry, perhaps due to the normally invisible school board elections, continues to tolerate the deterioration of what once was the best public school system in the State of Michigan and one of the best in the nation.
Part of the culture of incompetence of GR public officials is based upon some of the factors mentioned in the article below. Part of it is a long-standing aversion to organized labor which is part and parcel of GR's history. One would think that in light of the disastrous privatization of GRPS's school bus drivers, in which almost every BOE member forgot about or repressed the information about tortious interference with an existing contract (one member did not, to no avail), that avoiding labor trouble (and thus helping to pass a future bond issue) would be a goal in the future. And during that time, as you may recall, the administration presented a financial analysis that was obviously wrong during that episode, but the media and the public never caught on, at least in part because the BOE refused to understand basic accounting principles. However, I have never seen such incompetence in labor negotiations as I have seen in the past year. While some persons may be profiting by this standoff, ask yourself how a system can succeed when it demonizes and demoralizes the same employees upon which it must rely to create positive results? While there is blame on both sides, the current BOE members have, for the most part, followed an administration whose attitudes toward ALL of its employees seem to be contemptuous. (To be fair, previous administrations had similar attitudes.) Given the financial foolery in the past, the teacher's union is right to be suspicious of the BOE's figures, and, in light of the past, one would think that the BOE members would be suspicious as well. Regrettably, almost none are. The rest continue to sing, "All We Like Sheep," from Handel's Messiah.
So, what to do? Vote this Tuesday (May 5), and please vote for Tony Baker (he sits in my old seat and perhaps sometimes channels me through osmosis). Wendy Falb and Kevin Weiss also seem to have the ability to think independently. If you vote for the administration's apparent choices, Smith-Alexander and Lenear, you will just add to the problem. Voting for candidates who are willing to ask questions is a good thing, even though it is contrary to typical GR thinking. That attitude is also why this city, despite some seemingly positive externals, continues to cultivate ongoing cultures of incompetence and mediocrity in most, if not all, of its major institutions.
In all my 14 years on the BOE, I worked with one great superintendent, Jeff Grotzky. Despite being saddled with perhaps the worst BOE in the history of GRPS, he truly achieved results for students. He was not warm and fuzzy, but he was bright. He was run out of town by a coalition of idiots, and the fallout continues to this day. The current BOE is getting close to the depths of the Grotzky board; good citizens should fight that.
AND THE WINNER SHOULD BE ....
by- Jim Rinck
George K. Heartwell. Yes, that is who should be our next City Manager. Stop the search, save the money and make the appointment right now!
Once again, readers may no doubt reaching for the psychiatric help toll-free hotline. Doesn't Jim Rinck know that Grand Rapids has a City Manager of government and that the City Manager, not the Mayor, is the one who runs the City? Of course, I know that. However, having recently participated in an election in which six figure amounts were spent to re-elect our Mayor, I again must ask why does Grand Rapids spend so much money and attention to elect what is essentially a city-wide City Commissioner, only to place virtually all of the municipal power in the hands of an unelected manager?
You can visit the South and find well maintained memorials to the Confederacy. You can travel to Serbia and find groups who are still incensed about some massacre in 1610. Many places have history that still dominates them today. In this town, that seminal event is the 1911 Furniture Workers' Strike. I would refer you to the fine and short and readable book by Jeffrey Kleiman about the strike. That book can be condensed into what has been the ongoing theme in this city's past century: that this town is dominated by its moneyed elite and that workers always lose any serious encounter with them, to the ultimate detriment of the city and region. As Kleiman's book noted, many of the more talented workers saw the future and left town for places where their skills would be justly compensated. Just look at the latest chapter of this struggle in Rockford, where Wolverine World Wide dumped its local workers despite a good profit margin, simply because it could.
The 1911 strike was eventually defeated after a long period of turmoil by a combination of the furniture factory owners and other factors, including the Christian Reformed Church and even the pastor of Fountain Street Church. However, the strike nevertheless produced a great deal of uneasiness with the then powers that be. Those powers were not at all happy that Mayor George Ellis, who then was working under a strong mayor form of government, had openly sided with the workers. Soon thereafter, a movement to be bring so-called good government to Grand Rapids was begun by the city fathers, who eventually prevailed a few years later. While that good government movement was nationwide, it has special meaning in Grand Rapids, where the original 12 wards were reduced to three. Having 12 wards allowed many neighborhoods to influence their commissioner, but having two commissioners in three large wards magnified the influence of the elite and reduced direct public influence, as did the power of an unelected city manager. Today, my understanding is that Grand Rapids is one of the largest, if not the largest, cities in the nation to still use the City Manager form of government. It continues to disenfranchise us and to cost us dearly.
Now, the City is looking to replace the retired Kurt Kimball, who clearly was a competent city manager. In fact, if not for Kimball, who helped to cover up the amazing incompetence of many of our city officials for many years, perhaps the citizens of GR would have figured out that they have been electing persons with no ability, no brainpower and/or raging substance abuse issues for many years. Indeed, had the choice been Kimball's, would this city now have a clerk who was selected solely due to her race and her relatives and who should have been discharged for incompetence after the last election? Would Kimball have disrupted a high level executive search and would he have put the city in potential legal trouble by insisting that all local candidates be finalists (whether qualified or not) and potentially buying this city a lawsuit by rejected non-minority and non-resident candidates? Of course not, and that is precisely the point.
Where is the accountability? Because of the system, there is none. Thus, a Mayor Heartwell can continue to channel the second term of President George W. Bush (both men told us that they had mandates with 51% of the vote) and can bring Grand Rapids a mayoral incompetence which is almost unprecedented, but which voters excuse because "he's such a nice man" and because they think (correctly) that there is nothing much that he can do, thus apparently forgiving the amazing damage that he has already done. Meanwhile, tax dollars are directly to pet projects of the rich and famous (see article regarding the Art Museum), and since there is no accountability in the system, the citizens foot the bill.
Having Mayor Heartwell rise above his level of incompetence would, once and for all, expose the current system for what it is: an anachronism rooted in the past which GR has long since outgrown. Local mayors have even told me that this city truly needs a strong mayor system. While that would mean the dreaded entry of politics into city government, the local Democrats and Republicans have been supporting their respective mayoral and commissioner choices for decades now, despite their alleged nonpartisan character. For once, let Grand Rapidians tell the truth: we are the residents of a large city that needs an effective system of government, we need better leadership and we ourselves need to hold ourselves and our officials accountable for the results of our government. Or you can turn the page.
The Least Green Building in Grand Rapids
by- Jim Rinck
Time off can clear one’s head. You can do things like visit the least green building in Grand Rapids, better known as our new Art Museum. To the powers that be, any crank who would write such claims will be dismissed as a younger version of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino. Unfortunately, for the Grand Rapids taxpayers who have to foot the bill for this massive white elephant into perpetuity, it is the sad truth.
But how could anyone think that the Art Museum, which has been praised nationwide for its green construction techniques, is anything less than a great improvement for our city? The first answer is the eternal principle that the greenest building is the one that you already have. And the Art Museum formerly was housed in a historic building with four floors, some of which were never used to hang art. You will recall that it now sits empty, and, with our current economic distress, the prospects for its reuse are increasing dim. So, ultimately, we have increased our supply of empty downtown buildings in order to build our new green Art Museum, which required in the neighborhood of $75 million dollars in public and private money to complete.
That leads to the second greenery question, that being how much the museum really costs this city? One huge cost is that the museum is non-profit and thus does not pay taxes; since it occupies a prime piece of commercial real estate, that potential loss of revenue will go on forever. That loss is amplified because that parcel was the last potential site upon which to place any significant shopping or other commercial development. While no major retailers could be expected to set up shop in downtown Grand Rapids anytime soon, the fact remains that we have now forever foreclosed them from doing so. If that parcel were to be developed in the future, it would generate property taxes and jobs, and it would be the final piece in the redevelopment of downtown Grand Rapids, as our planners have told us for years. Now, it cannot be done.
The third greenery question is perhaps the most embarrassing. It was raised by a member of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA) who will remain unnamed at this time at the early gestation of this project—“do we have enough art in Grand Rapids to justify a new art museum?” That skunk at the picnic was reassured that there was lots of art in the basement in the old museum which would be on the walls of the new museum. That clearly was a lie. My recent visit revealed a lot of blank wall space, stairs that are artistically correct but are already deteriorating into a possible safety hazard and a really boring gift shop—the old one was far superior. And, as I suspected, very little art of any note.
The dirty secret of the Grand RapidsArt Museum is that it is bereft of virtually any significant art. There is little, if anything, in the permanent collection worth a second viewing. Unlike Muskegon, which is the best small art museum in the country, or the hated city of Detroit, which has one of the top ten collections in the world, or even unlike Kalamazoo, which has a good small art museum, Grand Rapids has suffered from the utter inability of its elite to either buy any good paintings or to have the generosity to donate them to the museum. While our blue-bloods may now be cleaning out their broom closets to make the current museum seem less vacant, anyone can drive 45 minutes and see Edward Hopper, John Stuart Curry and a host of real artists in Muskegon. So, barring a noteworthy exhibit, there is utterly no reason to visit our art museum.
That leads to the need for training for our local elected officials in billionaire/millionaire therapy. Real leaders would have reviewed the proposal for our latest boondoggle and would have suggested that this city needed a real art collection before it could justify the museum. So many in Grand Rapids seem to operate on the premise that we should follow the desires of the rich because they have been blessed by God. Some of them have been blessed with ability, but others, regrettably, seem to have won the lucky sperm competition for wealth. We need to stop genuflecting when the wealthy make proposals and give them the same scrutiny that those mere mortals who actually live in Grand Rapids get when they or their neighborhood associations approach the city government.
You know things are bad when insiders suggest to you that the museum’s attendance numbers are already being padded. And really, unless there is free admission, how many families or even visitors can financially justify a visit? The museum seems to have been designed with catering and lunch traffic in mind, which of course raises the question of city government subsidizing competitions with our hard-pressed downtown merchants. So while the sandwiches may be good and may bring in some people, the ultimate question must be how green can this museum really be? In terms of long green that benefits the bagholders (err, taxpayers) of the City of Grand Rapids, not at all. Just who is running this city and why do those persons still have jobs?