On February 1, 1824, one Arthur Power left his home in Farmington, a tiny community in north central New York. A devout Quaker and a widower, he was headed for the recently opened Michigan Territory, then way out on the frontier.
We don’t know whether he was searching for cheap land or wanting to build a legacy for his children, or both. But we do know he traveled by sleigh, crossing the Niagara River and heading west through Canada. He arrived at Windsor on February 15th.
After crossing the river (hardly an easy task back then) and picking up supplies, he headed north along the Saginaw Road towards what is now Royal Oak. A few miles later, he turned west into deep woods and stopped near what is now the intersection of Eleven Mile and Power Roads. Immediately, he and his party started cutting trees and clearing the land to start a settlement.
In those early days, it was sometimes called Powerville and at other times Quakertown. Eventually, the community took its present name from his old home town of Farmington.
That story has special meaning for me . . . because Arthur Power was my great- great-great-great-great-grandfather. The stories of his journey to Michigan and the founding of Farmington are from the diary kept by his son, Arthur Power.
And in an example of the odd serendipity life sometimes holds, early on in my career as a newspaperman, I wound up owning the Farmington Observer, the community newspaper serving both that city and the community next to it, Farmington Township.
There was a fair amount of bad blood between the neighbors, and in the summer of 1973 I stood in the township hall and watched as the trustees of the township created a new city by adopting the charter of Farmington Hills.
Fast forward to this past December, when around 70 people showed up to consider a consultant’s study that looked at the possibility of merging both communities into one. There will be more meetings and a decision won’t come for some time, but the idea deserves serious, common-sense consideration.
Farmington, with a population of around 11,000, is much smaller than Farmington Hills, which has 85,000 residents. But there is a lot to recommend this marriage: Both communities already share a library, district court and parks and recreation facilities.
Farmington Hills, now Oakland County’s largest city, lacks a downtown, while Farmington’s historic town center needs resources for redevelopment.
The consulting firm hired by Farmington Township, Hooker/De Jong Architects- Engineers of Muskegon, found that a merged city would add $4.5 million to the overall tax base. More importantly, combining the two communities would reduce costs by consolidating duplicated services and reducing redundant overhead costs.
Local communities throughout Michigan have been in the economic pressure cooker in recent years, as state revenue-sharing has been slashed, public employee health care and pension obligations have skyrocketed and restrictions on property tax increases have all taken their toll.
Many towns and townships are looking for ways to achieve economies of scale, leaner government, reduced costs.
Farmington and Farmington Hills are anything but alone in this. Once you start thinking about our entire cash-strapped state, paring costs out of local government units is hardly small beer.
Michigan has no less than 83 counties, 1,242 townships, 274 cities of less than 10,000 population, 259 villages, 553 local school districts, 230 charter schools and 57 intermediate school districts.
How’s that for overlapping governments? As a friend who provided me with these numbers wrote, “Give us a break!”
It’s hard to imagine we really need 553 separate school districts, for example, each with its own administrative overhead and separate business offices.
Districts can save lots of money without getting anywhere near the dreaded word, “consolidation,” which might – gasp! – result in eliminating a high school football team mascot or school colors.
All they need to do is negotiate joint operating agreements to consolidate their business office functions together into intermediate school districts. They’d save pots of money that could be used to better educate kids.
And at least some of our too-many townships might do much the same thing with each other or with nearby communities, combining police or sheriff patrols, jail facilities, parks and recreation, environmental protection programs . . .
The list of possible savings goes on and on. So now is the time for some hard-nosed, unsentimental realism. Michigan is in the midst of a profound budget crisis that affects not only the state, but hits local communities with even more impact, now that revenue sharing is largely gone. The way our local government units are structured and function is a product of a past we can no longer afford to retain.
The preamble to the Charter of the City of Farmington Hills makes the relevant point perfectly: “We recognize that nothing is more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, than to initiate a new order, but the facilities of the past often are inadequate for the present and the future.”
Communities and schools throughout Michigan ought to be following the far-seeing example of the Farmington communities that are considering a merger.
Everything we know about Arthur Power, who was willing to initiate a whole new order when he moved here in 1824, tells me he would have wholeheartedly approved. Matter of fact, this common-sense pioneer would have expected no less.
Phil Power is a longtime observer of politics, economics and education issues in Michigan. He would be pleased to hear from readers at ppower@hcnnet.com. Phil Power is president of the Center for Michigan. However, these opinions and others expressed in Phil Power’s columns are individual opinions and do not in any way represent official policy positions of the Center for Michigan.
