LSJ Blogs: Derek Melot is Just Asking

Waves and waves of chickens

Lansing is under assault from chickens ... all the budgetary ones coming home to roost at the State Capitol. Lawmakers now are looking at a deficit of up to $1.5 billion in a budget year half over.

Still waiting for defining city issue

So, I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

A story in City Pulse this week repeated a question I’ve raised on this blog before: What is the over-arching message or issue upon which Councilwoman Carol Wood will build her campaign for mayor this year?

Will Auto Owners purchase make city of Lansing 'Blue'?

So, Auto Owners is the new owner of property that includes a Blue Cross office building in Delta Township. The presumption is that this is a sell-leaseback situation. Blue Cross sells its property, leases back its office space and generates some cash.

That would generate cash for the Blues, which has claimed severe financial distress, but will Blue Cross staffers stay in Delta for long?

BCBS subsidiary Accident Fund has well-known plans to relocate to the old Ottawa Station downtown. That move, scheduled to occur in early 2011, would vacate AF’s current HQ on S. Capitol Avenue.

Is that the eventual new home for Blue Cross workers? If so, it could be a mixed blessing for the city of Lansing.

AF is getting huge local tax breaks for the Ottawa project. An argument for all that is the old power plant wasn’t generating taxes anyway. OK.

AF does pay taxes at its S. Capitol location. According to the county Web site, AF’s property in the 200 block of S. Capitol (land and equipment) had a taxable value in 2008 of nearly $12 million.

AF is a for-profit arm of Blue Cross, which is itself a nonprofit firm that operates under PA 350. As such, BCBS is exempt from state and local taxes. So, if Blue Cross became the new owner of the AF building, it would leave the tax rolls.

A Blue Cross move would answer the question of what will occupy AF after 2010, but I doubt the folks at Lansing City Hall are eager to see $12 million leave the tax rolls.

The golden age of film

Like a rerun, the state keeps announcing big commitments from the TV and film industry ... firms drawn to Michigan apparently by the most extreme tax breaks imaginable. But why are these jobs so worthy?

I know I’ve raised this question before, but I still haven’t heard a decent answer.

No. 14 is a challenging drive, first over a car ...

It was the 14th hole at Groesbeck where police found a vehicle that was not a golf cart, according to our news division.

If this guy only tooled about in the 14th fairway, that's a huge break for the course. 14 is a par-3 hole at the far northeast corner of the course, next to Wood Street.

Not the right kind of driver

Lansing man drives into flooded area of golf course. When I saw that headline I immediately thought, "Sycamore isn't a flood-prone golf course anymore, it's a flood-prone driving range." Next, I thought, "Well, maybe the guy plowed into the lake that's formed across the third hole at Waverly, the one that abuts Waverly Road."

I was wrong on both counts.

If torture is so good, why hide it?

This falls outside my usual area, but I have to say that even this cynic is shocked at how blase the American public is about these torture revelations.

A smaller, healthier Lansing

The county treasurer for Flint is suggesting, as are others, that the best future of that long-suffering city will be found through demolition — lots and lots of demolition.

This is a policy idea all Michigan cities, including Lansing, should start studying.

Ramp numbers plentiful; which ones count?

In response to a previous post about the North Capitol ramp, Councilman Eric Hewitt faxed me a page of budget numbers from the city last week. By e-mail, I asked him what exactly he wanted me to see.

He responded, “I just wanted to show you how fluid the numbers are that the administration seems to be producing.” And numbers are, indeed, plentiful on this topic. I’m not sure they’ve changed the story line, however.

What's that music?

Don’t like loud music at night? Don’t move in next to a nightclub.

In so many words, that was the message sent by the Michigan Court of Appeals April 16 in a dispute between the owner of X-Cel nightclub and Capitol Properties, the owner of the building immediately north of the nightclub on Washington Square.