OLIVE TWP., MI (WHTC-AM/FM, Nov. 22, 2024) – It looks as if Sparta’s Village Manager will be getting a bigger municipal government to handle soon.
The Ottawa County Board’s Executive Transition Committee on Thursday agreed to ask James Freed and James Lower back to the Fillmore Street Complex for a second round of interviews. Those two emerged after Tuesday’s sessions in which they, along with bank executive Christopher Estes and Ionia County Administrator Patrick Jordan, answered questions from Commissioner Roger Belknap and four other colleagues.
That second round of interviews was set for Friday morning, but the Holland Sentinel is reporting in Friday’s editions that Freed has withdrawn his name from consideration, saying that his current role as Port Huron’s city manager is too close to home and his family for him to pull up stakes and move across the state.
His statement from Tuesday’s interview with the committee may have been an indication of these sentiments.
Whether that second interview with Lower will be held as scheduled, whether the committee will reopen the process to Estes and Jordan, or whether the panel will recommend Lower to the entire board for consideration at this coming Tuesday evening’s business meeting remained to be seen as of Thursday night.
Ottawa County has not had a permanent administrator since John Gibbs was relieved of his duties on February 29th. Jon Anderson held the position on an interim basis before resigning last month, with Deputy County Administrator Ben Wetmore holding down the post at the present time.
The new administrator will hold the post for one year, until the newly comprised county board that is seated in January decides whether to extend the tenure or not.
The Ottawa Impact Commissioners are disrespecting the voters by trying to ram through an administrator and imprinting on them their vision of what this county should be before they lose their majority. They have excluded from the hiring process the voices of five currently serving commissioners and all of the newly elected ones using the votes of two defeated commissioners. It’s impossible to know who they listen to. One of those votes was wielded by Gretchen Cosby, who was at the board room for a meeting just before the Executive Transition Committee met but she couldn’t even be bothered to stay, even though she was a member of both bodies. At least Roger Belknap stuck around and participated.
This bare majority is perpetrating the same kind of disrespectful action they claimed the previous board took appointing Adeline Hambley, except they are doing it in a much shorter timeframe, with a much narrower majority, with a less qualified contractor and with much less cause to do so. They are hypocritical in the extreme and completely unaware or disregarding the irony of it. They had proven in their campaigns in 2022 to be antagonistic to basic science and even common sense regarding public health and their idea of a public health officer would never have passed the review of the state, the actual source of the power the public health officer wields. They would have created a catastrophe, and did, as their failed lawsuit to fire Hambley demonstrated.
Joe Moss, Sylvia Rhodea, Allison Meidema and Kendra Wenzel are ignorant, arrogant and confidant in the superiority of their righteousness, despite the evidence. This minority faction should stand down this appointment and begin again with their new colleagues in January, but they won’t. They will continue to expose the county to potential lawsuits, a specialty of theirs. They are excellent representatives of the voters who elected them, but that doesn’t make them right, it proves they are gullible and poorly informed. They have been wrong from their first day and I expect they will be until the day they are voted out of office, or until they quit because they can’t have their way.
The attacks on me will likely follow soon. If I was what they claim I am I would attack me too.