Slam dunks: Wollenweber wins; Macomb move loses
'Tis the season for making predictions, so here are mine:
The Tigers will win the AL Central, the University of Michigan will win the Big Ten football title - and I'll go broke buyng tickets for the World Series, Michigan season seats and the BCS Championship game.
My other predictions are a pair of slam dunks. Mark Wollenweber, who's working on either his third or fourth pension - I'm not sure which - will be appointed full-time City Manager in Grosse Pointe Shores on Aug. 21. And GP Shores will not be tacked onto Macomb County until Kwame Kilpatrick is elevated to sainthood by the Vatican.
Mark Wollenweber is the odds-on favorite to become permanent city manager in the Shores because he's the smartest choice.
And I'm not just backing him because he's a dyed in the wool Maize and Blue fan. Or that he's a major money-raiser for the University of Detroit athletic programs.
I worked with the guy for four years when he was city manager in Grosse Pointe Woods and I was a council member there. Prior to that, I covered Macomb County politics as a Detroit News columnist when he and Ted Wahby ran St. Clair Shores like a business.
Mark and I had our run-ins, but when we disagreed, well, we agree to disagree. He knows his stuff, particularly in this little corner of Wayne County. With pensions already locked in, he works cheap. And he doesn't have to smooch too many egotists' dupas to get the job done.
As for Grosse Pointe Shores moving into Macomb County, well, I have no specific knowledge that they won't. But for 28 years my family and I have resided in Grosse Pointe Woods, just over a tall fence from the Shores' glitz and grandeur. And I can tell you from personal experience that the Shores has about as much in common with Macomb County as it does with Hamtramck or Highland Park.
Incidentally, when visitors ask who erected the tall wooden fence at the east end of my deadend street, along the line that defines the boundry between Grosse Pointe Woods and Grosse Pointe Shores, I jokingly tell 'em that I did - "to keep the riff raff out of my neighborhood."
As for 2012 sports pricing, U-M football has really gone way over the top. Some season ticket holders who had enough "points" earned by many years of paying through the nose for seat "licenses" were allowed to buy tickets for the showdown with defending National Champion Alabama in the Cowboy Classic at Arlington, TX, on Sept. 1.
The price per seat: $250, $175 or $125. Of course, that made U-M's $75 home games against Air Force, U. of Massachusetts, Illinois, Northwestern and Iowa look like a steal. Oh ya. I almost forgot.
Tickets for the traditional rivalry game vs. Michigan State at Ann Arbor on Oct. 20 are $95 each.
Recession? What recession?
Katie
1:30 pm on Monday, August 13, 2012
Is it true that Wollenweber reportedly threw a party recently with city employees, etc. as guests and also did not remove himself from council/committee discussions related to hiring/candidates for the City Manager position? He might know his stuff but the Shores doesn't need another czar.
Pete Waldmeir, GP Woods
3:33 pm on Monday, August 13, 2012
Katie: Wollenweber and his wife have a lakefront home in Burchville, just north of Port Huron on Lake Huron. Each year for the last millennium or so he has invited a couple of hundred of his closest personal friends (that's an old joke, Katie) to come up on the Saturday that the Mackinac Race starts to watch the boats sail by, heading north. Like the rest of us normal folks, people come and bring food and adult beverages (if they choose), have a dog or a burger and a cool one and mingle. Some may be city employees. Is there a law against the boss (which he's been for several weeks on an interim basis) socializing with the people he works with when they're off the clock? If there was, the jails would be full of CEOs and middle managers. As for Mark taking part in hiring discussions, hey, he's the city manager - interim or not. The taxpayers are paying him for his input on important decisions. He doesn't get a vote for city manager or anything else to do with his job. If the council wanted him excluded, they could have excluded him.