The Hastily-Produced Guide To November's City Election

     I'm not even supposed to be here today.

     ...or so I thought.

     Typically, city elections in Lapeer are fairly quiet affairs. (Countywide races? Those are a whole different animal.) Nobody typically campaigns on much of substance; usually campaign literature spends more time talking about the family of a candidate than spelling out any concrete plans on what they wish to accomplish while in office. But this year is a bit different. Maybe it's the fact that there is no elected incumbent in the mayoral race, or that multiple commissioners have chosen not to run for re-election, or because medical marijuana has stirred up quite a bit of local interest from those who normally don't much pay attention to city politics, but there seems a bit more... excitement this time around. But no more substance than normal. That's where we come in.

• Mayor. Longtime mayor Bill Sprague retired earlier this year, and given the choice between longtime commissioner and mayor pro-tem Debbie Marquardt and Glenn Alverson, the majority of commissioners (Dan Osentoski, A. Wayne Bennett, and Josh Atwood) selected the man who'd never held elected office in Lapeer, almost certainly because his own conservative political views line up with theirs. Not that such partisan nonsense should be making its way into city government, but sadly it does. And lest you think the mayoral position is that of a ceremonial figurehead... well, you're right. Kinda. For the most part, the mayor serves to break any ties that might come up in commission meetings, but can also make appointments to various boards, so it's certainly helpful to consider the people a candidate associates with as well; you may end up finding them in a position of influence in their own right. The candidates:
  
       Glenn Alverson. The man in the office currently, by virtue of having a few well-placed friends on the commission. Hasn't done much of campaigning of his own, save for a few posts on his Facebook that give the appearance of taking credit for things he had nothing to do with, campaign literature espousing vague sentiments like "traditional values," whatever that might mean, and a video that lists things Lapeer has and doesn't give a single reason to vote for him. Of course, those who have attended commission meetings in recent months can attest to why he might avoid specifics of his tenure so far; watching commission meetings in which he routinely addresses commissioners by the wrong names, and has to be basically led through meetings by the city manager and clerk, one gets the impression that he's still in a bit over his head. Endorsed by state senator Kevin Daley and his father-in-law, former mayor Chuck Treece, for what it's worth. One flyer of his lists the Downtown Development Authority among his qualifications, a position to which he was appointed solely because he was appointed mayor, and has done the bare minimum of showing up to a few meetings. [The DDA, for what it's worth, does not endorse candidates.]
  
  Of course, the idea that one should be praised for simply showing up and being a warm body in a seat seems to be particularly popular among his most vocal and ardent supporters.
  
  
  
  
  The person above scoffing at the idea of candidates doing the door-to-door thing and instead suggesting their constituents should bend the knee to them is Jeanette Osentoski, whose husband Dan happens to sit on the city commission and just happened to vote for Alverson's appointment. And if you should find yourself supporting a different candidate, as outgoing mayor Bill Sprague did? Well, prepare to be blasted in the local fish wrap as "showing your ugly side," and "dividing the community" by somebody who's well-versed at doing both of those things.
  
       Deb Marquardt. You want experience in office? Well, as a 15-year city commissioner, Marquardt has plenty of that. Endorsed by the last elected mayor, Bill Sprague, as well as city commission candidate Eric Cattane, and outgoing city commissioner Catherine Bostick. In addition to her tenure as a commissioner and four years as mayor pro-tem, she's also served as president of Holiday Depot for the last six years, spent years working for the Human Development Commission, and has served on the Lapeer Center Building Board, Suncrest Auxiliary, Emergency Needs Coalition, Lapeer Parks and Recreation Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Downtown Development Authority. Of anybody running or currently in an elected office in Lapeer, Marquardt has the most relevant experience, and more of the institutional memory than all of them. My hesitation here? Institutional memory doesn't mean much when the person who best knows how to affect change hasn't shown a great deal of willingness to do so when they actually had the power to do so.
  
       Bernard Jocuns. Yes, the "pot lawyer." Yes, he hosted a show on Solid State Radio, and if you think that in itself would be any kind of reason for an endorsement on the part of your not-so-humble correspondent, then you clearly have never tried to explain to a lawyer why he can't prank call people live on the air. And yes, of course, there's Food Stamp-Gate from a decade prior. But I've already seen the guy sending FOIA requests to the city asking about unnecessary and unneeded expenses. He's also, to date, the only mayoral candidate that has seen fit to personally stop by the home and downtown Lapeer business of yours truly and engage about what he'd like to see out of city government. Yes, he is fully on board with legalized adult-use marijuana sales in Lapeer, which tends to get him mocked by the older crowd and certain discussion topic group admins, but he's also the only candidate to acknowledge that it's also the best way to increase the tax base and get much-needed road work done without a straight-up tax increase. He's also been involved in the city as, among other things, a patron of the arts, sponsoring shows put on by both Stone's Throw Theatre and the Center For The Arts, in addition to his support of Lapeer's local autism resource center, the Forever Friends Network. If you're looking to move beyond the status quo, look no further.
  
  
• City Commission. Deb Marquardt is, of course, vacating her post to run for mayor. Catherine Bostick and A. Wayne Bennett are stepping down as well, leaving four people to fill four vacancies, meaning that everyone running is guaranteed a seat.. The only incumbent running again is Josh Atwood, while Jeff Pattison, Eric Cattane, and Tony Stroh are the newcomers. Of those three, Pattison hasn't put much out there, apart from his 30+ spent working for various governments in Oakland County as a property tax assessor. Since moving back to Lapeer from Portland, Stroh has been heavily involved in downtown as the proprietor of Stone's Throw Theatre, and lifelong resident Cattane has been involved in several charitable undertakings as part of the Lapeer Kiwanis club. Even though these are already settled races, it should still be said that this blog enthusiastically endorses both Stroh and Cattane, and believes that both are exactly the kind of new blood city government desperately needs. Full disclosure: Cattane is a longtime friend of mine, and Stone's Throw is a sponsor, of sorts, of Solid State.
  
  
  That's about all the major races to be decided in Lapeer, save for school millages where applicable. But as ever, keep in mind that if you're going to try and win friends and influence people, this...
  
  
  
  
  

  ...is probably not the best way to go about it.

Can Hockey In Lapeer County Be Saved?

     The future of hockey in Lapeer County may be in doubt.

     And it didn't have to be that way.

     Out of seemingly nowhere Monday, the website of Lapeer's County Press dropped a major bombshell: after nearly 20 years, the rink and accompanying bar Louie's Sports Tavern will be shutting down for good at the end of April. The unnamed author of the article went on to cite "social media, online gaming and other sedentary activities" as reasons the owners couldn't make the hockey arena viable.

     Now, when one considers that County Press and Lapeer Area View owner Rick Burrough is also co-owner of the Polar Palace and Louie's, it makes a bit more sense why they would be first to announce this news, before even the venue itself.

     Of course, as one would expect given that the paper and the arena share a common co-owner, the article conveniently glosses over the fact that the experience on the restaurant side has always has been lackluster at best. Your not-so-humble correspondent can personally attest to multiple issues over the years with consistency and quality of the food served, a promotion the venue failed to deliver on altogether when it didn't get quite the response it hoped for, and any number of nights where, even when the place was at half or less capacity, you might wait twenty to thirty minutes for a server to acknowledge your existence, and up to an hour just for appetizers.

     This is where one might hope that the place could yet get a new lease on life. That with proper management running the show, both the bar and the arena could thrive again.

     Enter Drake MacKenzie, a self-described "local boy" who is as much a true believer in Flint and Lapeer as viable hockey markets as anyone you'll find. And he's putting his money where his mouth is.

     A Lapeer native, MacKenzie is the commissioner of the upstart Interstate Hockey League, a 12-team low-level minor hockey league scheduled to launch this fall. One of those twelve teams, the Lapeer Nepessings, was slated to play at the Polar Palace starting in November. He'd just agreed to a lease the week prior which would have committed the Nepessings to two years of playing their games at the arena and resulted in sorely needed upgrades being made to the rink. 

     MacKenzie, 24, admittedly seems an unlikely person to represent the potential future of hockey in Lapeer County. He is, by his own admission, loud and abrasive, and his propensity to chirp at opposing players, teams, even leagues, has not diminished any as he's moved from the ice to the front office. It's fair to say he's not exactly universally liked. As he sits in the Solid State Radio studio the day the announcement came down, he shows me texts and messages he's received from players in the rival Federal Hockey League mocking the news of his hometown arena's closure. But none of that seems to have deterred him from his vision of Lapeer as a hockey hotbed. "This is a great sports town, a great community."

     So when the announcement came that his hometown would be losing its home ice, MacKenzie sprung into action, spending most of Monday afternoon in contact with management and ownership of the venue, hoping to save hockey in Lapeer County. He says there is an offer on the table from his group to lease the building, and potentially purchase it outright within a year or two.

     But Rick Burrough wants no part of that. "He wants to sell to a company for a warehouse," MacKenzie laments.
 
     Of course, the loss of the county's only hockey arena has ramifications that reach far beyond the loss of a professional hockey team, a fact not lost on MacKenzie.
 
      "The thing that is sad, is that this is the death sentence for Lapeer High School hockey. That is the death sentence, probably, for Alliance," the hockey team consisting of players from Almont, North Branch, Dryden, Lakeville, Imlay City, and Goodrich, towns that no longer have enough players to fill out hockey teams of their own. "Lapeer's girls program went to the states this year, their youth program. For a second or third-year program, they've made tremendous strides. There had to be forty girls out there, which is something you would have never seen. What happens to them?"

     Certainly the Polar Palace holds a special significance to MacKenzie. "I scored my first goal there. My dad laid down the first sheet of ice there. I learned to skate there. I think I had my first date there! That place is my home away from home, and just to throw it away because (of) poor management is heartbreaking."
 
     And the idea that Facebook and video games are to blame for the potential demise of hockey in Lapeer? "That’s a quitters attitude."

     "Get kids excited to play. You can’t just open the doors to the place and hope people show up. When’s the last time they had a community outreach? Never. Did they ever contact sponsors? No. Why does Oxford High School drive an extra 20 miles to Troy? Why doesn’t Davison play here? Why has there never been another pro team? Or why has there never been a junior team? Why do we run both sheets of ice every year except for the last two?"

     The options to save the Polar Palace seem somewhat limited. Barring some sort of community-based fundraising effort, the odds are rather slim of keeping it open as a hockey venue. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the co-owner of the arena also happens to own both local newspapers in town, and as such, isn't entirely insulated from public pressure as long as he still owns a business that is very much dependent on local advertising and community support.

     Regardless of what decision they ultimately make, however, MacKenzie still sounds as optimistic as ever about the future of hockey here, and as committed as ever to making it work.

     "This is my home. I'm not going anywhere."