News & Events
July 2005
Governor Granholm's Special Projects Director, Maxine Berman, recently sat me down at a table with some of Michigan's great regionalists. To my right sat Father John Sarge from the Saginaw-based Ezekiel project. Next to him Bill Rustem of Public Sector Consultants held a tete-a-tete with Paul Hillegonds, recently departed from Detroit Renaissance. On my left, the governor's environmental advisor, Dana Debel, intelligently honed in on common themes with Kentwood mayor Richard Root. From across the table, however, came a voice that resonates with both reason and experience.
"You have got to cede power to get power," opined John Logie who served more than a decade as mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan's second largest city. He ought to know. Logie is one of the original regional collaborators. He helped found the Urban Core Mayors group and launch the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council - a group that boasts a six-county membership working on land use and transportation issues. His call for magnanimity will serve us all well in this new climate of partnership.
This month, the Suburbs Alliance communities will launch a resource-sharing initiative aimed at discovering opportunities for us to share police or fire services, merge community development programs, join an insurance pool or go halves on an expensive but important staff position. The barriers to this kind of cooperation are tremendous - and mostly they are social rather than legal. Sometimes it's a turf issue between two communities; sometimes its tension with unions; sometimes it's a simple lack of political will.
Logie recalls several occasions when his city - the west side's 800-pound gorilla - had to deliberately relinquish control over a process or a resource in order to reach a shared victory for the Grand Rapids region. Giving up power isn't easy, but it is the essence of a good partnership. In southeast Michigan, we've got to take that leap of faith and trust that our cohorts have got our backs, just as we've got theirs. Getting to the big issues - like regional taxation for transportation, the arts or economic development - demands trust and good will.
To be magnanimous is to exhibit true generosity, to be noble minded in one's dealings with others. As we strive to bring more communities into the family of the Michigan Suburbs Alliance and to reap the benefits of regional collaboration, let's remember Logie's exhortation to rise above the fray, that sometimes we get more by giving away what may seem to mean the most.
