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| Q: How do you define sprawl? |
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| A: Sprawl connotates all the negative things of growth. Some people here have said sprawl is good. It's simply our term for the economic wave that's coming out here to the rural area. We look at that, and I guess I interpret that, as some of the negative aspects of leapfrog development, unplanned growth. Results, of course, are probably easier to see than as the individual sprawl occurs, but those results would be water and sewer lines that you can't extend any farther without huge investments to redo them all the way in, traffic congestion, people visiting, coming back to the place they grew up and saying, Jeez, this used to be a nice field. What happened? Now it's industrial or residential, or I used to play in that field and it's not there anymore. Negative aspects of growth: You're driving way too much, you're paying way too much for water and sewer, and all those natural spaces we used to see, jeez. Granted, I didn't own them, but now nobody can use them. So that's how I define sprawl; leapfrog development; very unplanned, very chaotic. |
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| Q: Sprawl seems to be entering the social consciousness; we're all becoming more aware of it and the issues surrounding it. What do you think it is that's propelling that and why at this point? |
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| A: I think it's - We came out of the eighties - some people might say the excesses of the eighties - we've come out of that. We've settled down a little bit. Some of us who consider ourselves somewhat kind of the middle boomers, I think, are looking back now - spent a lot of time in the workforce - now looking back saying, I'm interested in quality of life issues. A lot of people moving back perhaps to where they grew up, looking for a little calmer lifestyle. They don't want to spend all of that time driving in a car. They've got kids who are playing soccer or rocket football or baseball, and it's just tougher to get kids to those activities. Plus, there's so many more people, so many more cars on the road that I think now there's an appreciation of, Gee, it wasn't so bad back then. Not that that's the good old days; certainly, from an economic standpoint we're better off. But people just looking back and saying, You know, I just want to calm down a little bit. I think there's some appreciation for that. |
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| Q:Where do you think sprawl is taking us? |
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| A: I think where it's leading us is into places we don't necessarily want to be in terms of a society. We don't want to spend a lot of time driving. We don't want to spend a lot more money building roads that as soon as you build them they're at capacity or over capacity. I think we don't want to lose some of those natural spaces that we have. I think that's where that's leading us, and it's slowly and sort of insidious that you get to a place and you say, Oh God, we should have known better. Why did we do this? We look around the areas and we say, We don't want this traffic corridor to be like that one, but then you look back ten years and you say, Gee, we did the same thing, and now we've got two of these things or three of them or five of them or ten of them in a metro area. You say, We can do better than that. What's with us? |
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| Q: Talk a little bit about when and how the Metro Council was formed and what the thinking was at the time that it was created. |
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A: Yeah, I think Grand Rapids here has a fairly good history of cooperation. I know back in the early Sixties and Seventies there was an association called AGRAG, the Association of Grand Rapids Area Governments. Generally, the cities, the city of Grand Rapids in the core area there, together they talked and met once a month, for lunch generally; talked about some common problems; no real organization.
Back sometime in the mid to late Eighties some of the mayors said, You know, some of the townships are growing here, and we probably need some additional input from them. About that same time the City of Grand Rapids built another pipeline to Lake Michigan, twenty-some miles off the coast here. In the City of Wyoming another supplier, which basically Wyoming became a city because of annexation issues back in the Fifties and early Sixties, they ran a pipeline off there. Some of the industries and commercial people in town said, Hey, wait a minute. Why do you want to build two? Can't we build one? So at least Grand Rapids and Wyoming got together at that point, examined the issues of building one joint pipeline, decided they couldn't do that, but at least they put a committee together--a water planning committee.
Well, they immediately said, We ought to do the same thing with sewer, because they each had a big sewer plant. From there kind of the impetus started. There was some transportation planning issues that went on at the same time, and finally about the late Eighties somebody said, You know, instead of individual agencies looking at all this stuff, why don't we develop one agency that can handle all of it, whether it's water, sewer, transportation, land use, maybe the bus system, maybe incineration, who knows what. So they spent the last couple of years of the 1980's putting this organization together. They looked around at the state statutes and said, None of those really apply. So they worked with our state senator and state legislator at the time--one of the key senators and legislators in each case--and put a new Act together, state statute, the Metro Council Act, adopted in 1989. Then Metro Council formed in October of 1990. From there it's grown, and again, some people have said it's another layer of government. Why do we need it? There's some confusion about can we tax, can we not tax, where do we fit in the governmental structure.
So we've been around ten years and it moved along and kind of gelled. It started with 11 or 12 members. We're up to 31 members now, member organizations. We represent about 650,000 people, 1,000 square miles give or take a few, and I think has grown in stature to become a real consolidated consortium, a forum for inter-governmental cooperation. Done very well, I think. |
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| Q: When Metro Council was formed, was "sprawl" the word that was used? And if you would, move us forward to today and talk about how central sprawl has become to the way that you look at Metro Council. |
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A: I don't know that sprawl was an issue back then in the early days of Metro Council. Although, in the early nineties, '92 - '93, there was an awareness that the metro area was growing. Therefore, some organization of a regional nature ought to take a look at that. There was a big project in '93 - '94 called the Blueprint Project, the Metropolitan Development Blueprint. It kind of laid out a vision for the metro area generally within Kent County, but bleeding a little into Ottawa, too. Basically said, If we don't do things different, the business-as-usual approach, there'll be some negative consequences - utilities, transportation, clean air and so.
Today, it's a major portion of what we do. Again, there's disagreement on the definition of sprawl, and there's some in the outlying area who say, Hey, wait a minute. You've had yours and now you're not gonna let us have ours? The Metro Council is not anti-growth. Any efforts we're doing here is not anti-growth. Personally, I think growth is very good. But again, some controls, some pattern growth and where should growth occur, I think, is probably the impetus now. But we've got a lot of activities that all tie into what some might say is an anti-sprawl agenda. It's certainly not anti-growth. It's a pro-growth, anti-efficient growth pattern, whether it's our water and sewer planning group, whether it's our storm water activities, whether it's our sub-regional planning groups to break down the metro area into smaller kind of more cohesive groups, whether it's our transportation planning efforts--We're the Metropolitan Planning Organization for this area. All of the federal funds and the allocation of the dollars flow through us. Whether it's our City Township Cooperation Committee which deals with annexation issues and kind of border issues--All those point to the same common theme of we gotta work together. We gotta do a better job of planning and organizing the growth that's gonna come that we want to continue to occur. So we want to encourage that. |
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| Q: Talk a little bit about Metro Council's clout or lack of it in accomplishing things. |
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A: Metro Council's clout - sometimes people think we have a lot more than we do. Sometimes people minimize the Metro Council. I think with 31 member communities in this metro area who've all come together for whatever reason, I think that says a lot about itself anyway. The Metro Council by statute really has no authority. Again, we don't provide any operational support. We don't have a police department or fire. We don't pick up garbage. We don't do that stuff. So while the citizens may not see the Metro Council is affecting their lives, I think the Metro Council itself from a peer pressure standpoint and some of the things we've gotten people to agree to, I think, has been very, very substantive in the area.
Issues of cities and townships getting together to deal with annexation. A lot of attorneys have earned a lot of money, and there's been a lot of hard feelings over the years of cities annexing property from townships. We've brought a group together called the City-Township Cooperation Committee on a voluntary effort and said, Let's try to solve this, and came up with a series of policy statements we should plan together. We got them to unanimously agree that annexation should be by mutual consent only. Some people on the city side think that's heresy, but conversely, townships you cannot detach unless it's mutual. You can't file those actions. We found a lot of developers kind of playing both sides to see where they would get a better deal, but I think resolution there brought cities and townships together on a lot of things.
I think we're a regional forum for discussion. Whether it's water and sewer issues, whether it's transportation issues, the forum itself provides a nice setup for people to agree. So that's generally where we get authority from. We get the media asking, What's the Metro Council's opinion? We get legislators calling us from the floor saying, What's the Metro Council position on this? It's interesting to note that in the original blueprint, that metropolitan development blueprint we talked about, there was a call for state action. We need state legislation to help us have authority in the area of planning; to have authority in a variety of things. We have chosen not to rely on the state changing legislation. We have brought the members together. They have voluntarily agreed to make some of these changes in spite of state law. If state law changes to our benefit, we think that's a positive, but at this time, what holds us together and what provides some glue is the fact that people are here willingly, they want to cooperate. When they are in a room and meeting, they know they have to reach some agreement to come out because we'll all be the losers.
So from a clout standpoint, it's been voluntary, it's probably been better than having forced on them here's the state statute and you must agree. People are there because they want to be, and I think that's probably been more beneficial than a state legislative change for us. It's been more readily accepted. |
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| Q: Do you see a further benefit for Grand Rapids in a tax-base sharing structure? |
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A: You know, City-Township Group - I'll go back a little bit - we had an issue. One of the principles was there should be tax base sharing. Well, it came right down to the final drafts of that and some people just couldn't handle the term "tax base sharing." So we called it "regional financial equity;" probably more broad than just a tax base sharing. There's some issues in state legislation that doesn't allow you to share tax base. You can share the tax revenue, but there's some other issues there.
I don't know that the metro area here will ever in my lifetime be ready for a straight tax base sharing concept. I think there's things that we can do together that would allow us to share some revenue or to fund regional issues regionally. A good example might be Grand Rapids ran the zoo, and about ten years ago or so - it's a regional facility - the county, a more regional organization, took that over. That's one concept. There's some other issues in terms of affordable housing and some of those activities where in our sub-regional groups we're looking at those from four or five or six different municipalities. Some might say, We will take more than our share of affordable housing if you will do this for us. So it might not be a straight dollar transfer, but it could be. We will allow you, in essence, to have a regional mall. We'll take affordable housing, but we need some of that revenue to help us pay for some of the affordable housing or transit or a bus line or who knows what. We think some of that will occur more on a sub-regional basis than everybody in the middle throwing money into the pot.
I think for tax base sharing to work here if we were to do that I think there's got to be a group that identifies projects ahead of time, not only a formula, but we will spend the money on these things that will be common to everybody. I think a straight dollar transfer from one jurisdiction to another without some strings on that, I don't think that would sell. But if we all agree that we will all put into a regional pot and we will provide for transit, improved bus system, we will provide for affordable housing, we will provide for job training, we will provide for regional issues like the zoo or major parks or the airport. I think that would be better accepted than simply, I have to give you money this year and you have to give me money next year based on tax base to use whatever you want. So I don't think that system would work very well. |
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| Q: You mentioned there's been a pretty good connection between communities here, but elaborate a little bit more on what you credit that to and how that came about. |
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| A: Well, I think one of the things we have done as a Metro Council is bought a lot of breakfasts and bought a lot of lunches, and it's amazing if you talk to the various players now who have been around a while and can look back at the Eighties, for example. The cities, the mayors, the city managers very seldom talked with the township supervisor and board members. They just didn't run in the same circles, and socially they may still not. But we provided a forum for them to get together and work together. Not that their all the best friends, but they know each other and they've been in a forum now for ten years or more where they can now trust each other as well. So I think from a cooperation standpoint, that's been a big part of how we have been successful. Just keep people coming together. We find that, again, cities and townships in Michigan haven't always gotten along, and there's places in the state where there's real horror stories. There's been some around here. But I think by forcing people to get together - here's a committee. Make sure you're there. Whether it's a purchasing committee, whether it's an internet committee, whether it's hooking everybody up to our list serve and the e-mail system--That just provides a forum for people to interact over and over and over, and pretty soon they get to know each other. I've trusted you on this and you've trusted me on that. We've built a good history over the past ten years for bringing all of those people together. So a lot mistrust is gone, provides a real good forum, people are free to say what they want without getting too up tight and reading too much into it because now they know the people. |
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| Q: What happened to downtown Grand Rapids when it did sort of empty out prior to the current re-surges? What made it go flat? Was it a bad economy? |
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A: Being a lifelong Grand Rapids resident other than a couple of years in different places, I would think the availability of cheap land, I think the availability of school systems play a huge part in that in terms of suburban school districts. I think the industries locating there, cheap utilities and cheap land was part of that. There were probably ethnic issues involved--I don't think anyone would deny that--in terms of people moving away, and the area was growing anyway. In the area now we think over the last five years at least and into the next ten, we need 5,000 new residential units every year. Well, with growth like that we have to go somewhere and obviously Grand Rapids itself was filled up. So where are they gonna go? So residents and jobs, not only were moving from the city out, they were being created outside.
So I think from the downtown standpoint, very much a retail sector up until the Eighties--I think the economy didn't help during the Eighties. Michigan went through some tough times. And I think as retailers moved out and residents moved out, whey focus on downtown? I think Grand Rapids, back in the early Nineties and so on, did some really nice things, and then the private sector really stepped up and said, We're gonna help improve some of the things down here. So new business relocations, banks, offices, some new towers--turned into a real commercial sports hub in terms of the new arena and the hockey team and the basketball and so on. So it's been kind of a sports resurgence as well in the downtown. Now with the new convention center occurring, downtown is a pretty thriving place. I can give Grand Rapids and the planners there a lot of credit, as well as the private sector. Probably would not have happened without the involvement of the private sector. |
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| Q: What happened there in terms of businesses when the downturn came? Did the businesses stay? Did they leave? What happened? |
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| A: My impression is that the businesses generally stayed. Grand Rapids is an income tax, so as the growth occurred around still a lot of jobs were retained inside the city. So they were able to share some tax base because of the income tax. Some, by the way, say that is a tax base sharing. You're taking money from the suburbs and transferring it to the city. Some might argue yes and some might argue no, but there's a wealth transfer there back into the city. They were able to hang in there pretty good with that, I think. |
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| Q: How does the issue of limited funds affect the infrastructure, and how has the Council gone about dealing with that? |
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A: Limited funds is certainly an issue. When dealing with infrastructure, whether it's roads, water or sewer, there's never enough money. We are obviously reliant on some sense of the State of Michigan for transportation dollars. They collect the gas tax, they transfer it back. Cities can't have their own sales tax, they can't have their own gasoline tax and they can't have their own license fees. So somewhat we're dependent upon the state for that.
In the early nineties-late eighties, I'm not sure what happened, but the state we didn't think kept up their fair share of the bargain in terms of providing enough money. In terms of some state share revenues back through sales taxes that they collect for general fund money other than transportation, we don't necessarily think that they kept up with their fair share of the bargain as well.
So there was a real dollar crunch, I think, that occurred. Maintenance wasn't kept up. It became more costly to extend water and sewer lines. The infrastructure got a little ragged at times. From the mid-Nineties on we've seen a resurgence of some of that. Of course, Michigan's economy has helped. There's been more sales tax, there's been additional funding coming from the federal government to the state and that trickled down to us for transportation improvements. So that has certainly helped in terms of financing some of the infrastructure costs. A lot of it has gone to the developers. As they have built, obviously, they've had to pay. I think there's a theory that the new growth ought to pay for new growth.
We see some of that difficulty in the school districts. Most of the suburban districts have new school buildings. Obviously, the central Grand Rapids district is closing buildings and trying to pass mileages to rehab the buildings they have. There's some equities there. But overall, I think the Grand Rapids water and sewer systems along with Wyoming--They provide about a third of the metro area with water and sewer--I think their water and sewer systems are in pretty good shape. We've seen, again, the resurgence in the transportation money. So the transportation system is in pretty good shape. The community recently passed a mileage for increased transit. So I think the transit system, the bus system itself, will have a resurgence here again in the next several years, but it's been a tough go. |
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| Q: When you look down the road is there enough money - is there enough of projected revenue to handle projected infrastructure in this area, and how are you dealing with that? |
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A: From a transportation standpoint, no; there won't be enough money. We'll have to raise local mileages, the gas tax again will have to be raised from the state level - we will not build enough roads or be able to improve enough roads to probably provide what we would all consider somewhat acceptable levels of service. Congestion will continue to occur, we'll have issues in term so the S-curve had to be rebuilt downtown, a major section of 131. Hundred million-dollar project. You never probably can save enough money for that.
I think from a water and sewer standpoint, the rates are costing more all the time anyway. I think those are somewhat self-supporting, and they have to be from a state statute standpoint. So I think, granted, water and sewer service will be there, but it's gonna cost more. That may, however, from a national standpoint, spur alternative sources of whether it's transportation--I see stuff on the new fuel cell coming out to 80 miles a gallon. There's some new innovative issues coming out with sewage treatment; not necessarily composting toilets, but some other chemical action that would greatly reduce the cost and still provide adequate levels of sewage treatment to protect the environment. |
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| Q: Would you really consider doing an urban-growth boundary, or what would be an alternative? |
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A: I think back around '96 - '97 people were enamored with urban-growth boundaries. A crew went out to Portland a couple of times. They came back, they were all gung-ho. Had a debate on pro and con urban-growth boundary. While some of the literature from Metro Council says we supported urban-growth boundary, I'm not sure we're ready to enact one. There are issues in terms of what you do inside versus what you do outside. Why I think several of us or a group could draw a line on a map and say, This is the urban-growth boundary, and we could regulate what's inside there, again, on a voluntary nature, I don't think there's consensus on the outside of that circle to regulate what can or can't go out there. I think, again, you need 5,000 residential units a year. They have to go somewhere. Inside the circle that we would draw might hold that for a couple of years, but again, there's not consensus on the outer ring. It's voluntary.
A township board today might say, we're gonna restrict it to current existing land uses we have, but the next township board may not. So urban-growth boundary--Yeah, good in theory, but I'm not sure we could put that into effect here or even want to at this point. What we're more interested in is having consistent growth, not leapfrogging out. So utility systems can probably play a part in that, transportation systems can play a part, cooperative zoning with our member communities can play a part of that and we think we can have steady concentric kind of growth, avoid the sprawl and some of the negative connotations of that. We think we can do that without an urban-growth boundary per se. |
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| Q: What is the view within the Council generally, and your own view, of sustainable growth in the urban projects that they're touted very often as sort of alternatives in where things can move to? |
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A: There's some skepticism probably to the term new urbanism. Anything with an "ism" at the end probably conjures up some fears in people. What we're doing is we're translating what those new urbanism concepts are onto the paper to show local planning commissions what this really means. It's not anything too drastic. It's just the few minor changes here and there; a little higher density, a little different road design, a little different protection of natural areas. You can still fit as many people probably in a little smaller area and save some green space around. Save the cost of infrastructure. You can save some long-term life cycle costs in terms of maintaining some of these utility systems.
So again, we're translating that new urbanism into what we think works here. One size doesn't fit all. I think West Michigan here had kind of an attitude of we don't have to invent everything. We can do it ourselves. Maybe that's the Dutch heritage here. But I think there's a sense of, Yeah, we'll design what's best for us here. Getting a consensus on what's best is tough, but I think we've done a pretty good job on that. I think our planning staff here at the Metro Council has been very instrumental in making new urbanism non-threatening in terms of, Look, here's the good parts. What you've heard around or whatever--It's not some communist plot to take over and put everybody in high rises. It's a nice quality of life system of building and developing and growing that we can adopt here with no real stress on anybody. The benefits are so great that why would we want to continue the way we are? |
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| Q: What is the relationship between urban and rural communities in Grand Rapids and people joining the Metro Council? |
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A: Metro Council has been interesting in terms of if you look at the number and where the location of our members are, you'll see some very urban centers, City of Grand Rapids--You'll see some very rural townships, and some real large and real small. Why would they want to join an organization like this? We've noticed the fact and heard from several rural townships, for example, that - hey, wait a minute. We see a connection here between an urban area and us.
While Grand Rapids wants to refocus on some redevelopment and kind of maintain themselves as the center, we see some rural areas saying, We don't want growth. We like the farmland style we have, the quiet, the low density, but we see some growth coming. Why don't we team up with each other and help each other out? So the rural areas can say, Look, we want growth back there. We will do whatever we can. We will lobby the state legislature to give you renaissance zones and tax credits for people reinvesting in the city. Grand Rapids, on the other hand, you can help us by not extending utilities out this way and providing those incentives for people to redevelop.
So we got a real nice connection there of small rural agricultural areas with some real intense urbanization. Big and small, we can benefit off each other for whether it's legislation or purchasing or whatever, but that growth issue has really been a real connection and pulled everybody together. What's in it for me? I can help the big guy. The big guys are saying, We can help the little guys, and some real light bulbs have gone off in that area and made us more successful as well. |
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| Q: In some ways, it sounds as though what you're talking about is an urban growth boundary without it being imposed, but it being sort of devised among like minds. |
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| A: I think so, and again, I think that's the voluntary nature of the Metro Council. We don't have a state statute that says, You shall have an urban growth boundary, and then people fight over where it's gonna be. It's been natural, it's been friendly, it's a little fuzzy perhaps, but I think it's there. No doubt. |
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| Q: A lot of experts say that Grand Rapids gets credit for doing something that successful cities around the country or successful regions around the country have done, but it does not exist anywhere else in Michigan and we know that that's true. What is your own view of that? |
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A: I don't know if I view us, but the community would certainly view us as different. In a negative sense we hear, We don't want to be like the other side of the state. We don't want to be like that other big city of the state. We'll do what we have to do to avoid that. I think the West Michigan area is somewhat cohesive. A lot of the same backgrounds. As kind of a sidelight, there was a fellow who did a doctoral thesis. He was employed at Grand Valley State University, and he looked at other metro areas around the country, Denver, Portland and some of the others. From a demographic standpoint, a lot of those other major areas had 70-80% of people who were first generation. Very few people were 2nd-3rd-4th-5th generation. In the Grand Rapids area his study showed that it was exactly the opposite. There is about 70% of all the people here who are 2nd-3rd-4th-5th or longer generation here with only 10-20-30% of those people who were 1st generation.
So I think people here have tended to identify with where they grew up, they know the area, they know a lot of people, 70-year-old people still remember the high school that they went to and they still have reunions and all that kind of stuff. So from a demographic standpoint there's a better probably identity with this as our home. So I think that has helped from our perspective in terms of people understanding, working together--Grant it, there's cities and township issue, but they all have a common history I think, more so than perhaps other metropolitan areas. Probably more so than the east side of the state. I think on this side, maybe the single party, they tend to be conservative. You might say, generally, it's a Republican area.
On the other side of the state, the central city of Detroit is quite highly Democratic, the suburbs are highly partisan Republican. We haven't seen that over here. So I think that probably has helped out to some extent. There haven't been bitter partisan rivalries back and forth, and everybody's been willing to kinda throw in and say, Yeah, we've gotta help ourself out here. We're not gonna wait for the federal government, we're not gonna wait for the state government; we're gonna do it ourself. I think that common mentality, sense of community, has really helped. I think that's different here than other parts of the state. If you go north, a lot of people moving in influx back and forth now. This metro area has been pretty steady in terms of common heritage and common beliefs and willingness to chip in and do our part. |
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| Q: Is there better employment as a result of this coordination and transportation systems that exist and this cooperation back and forth? We see boundaries in other cities clearly that are set up by political division. |
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A: I think the results of that will be seen in the next 5 to 10 years. I think, again, as the area continues to grow - Metro Council's played a big part in that - in a sense that we're all in this together. I think that's why there's 31 members of the Metro Council now, rather than when it started with only 10 or 14 of the potential amount. I think people see that they're part of a bigger picture. They're part of a region. We need to help each other out. I think there's a sense of that, and I think that has allowed us to avoid some of those real divisions. I mean, here's the line of one city and here's the divide line of another or a county or whatever. And I think that's helped.
The business communities play a big part of that in terms of attracting employees and providing opportunities for people all around the metro area. Granted, I'm sure this has played a part in where people have located, but I think the governments realize we're in this together. We need to provide transit services, the bus mileage for example, to get people from one area where they live to where the jobs might be; second shift, new employees and so on. I think the government's played a big role in that saying, We're in this thing together and we gotta cooperate. |
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| Q: America's existed on the idea that this land will never run out. It goes back to Horace Greeley and the "Go West, young man! And Westward, Ho!" There seems to be sort of a slightly different view of it in Grand Rapids. How do you see that sort of American view that the land is unending, and what are the consequences if we don't? |
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| A: Looking ahead, for this area particularly, I think there will be a sense of, hey, we are running out. We better protect what we have. I think we see a sense of that now with a lot of the redevelopment that's occurring inside the city of Grand Rapids, for example. There are some who are probably oblivious to the fact that we keep chewing up farmland at a rate, and we're chewing up those nice spaces that they remember as a kid; that they used to be able to drive when 20,000 cars were on the road and now there's 80,000 cars on the road. But I think there's a sense here that, Hey, we got a pretty thing here, and we ought to preserve it. So I think from an inter-governmental relationship, I think a public/private sector relationship, people are paying attention to preserving what we have. Let's make sure the quality is there. Let's make sure we're not gonna go overboard building stuff that we can't afford to maintain. Go west--We're going to the west, we're going to the east and we're going everywhere. Grand Rapids is a pretty nice place to live, work, raise your family, retire--Granted, the weather might not be the greatest. But I think we're doing some steps now that if we look back 50 years from now or a hundred years from now, Yeah, those folks back at the beginning of that 21st century; they did some pretty nice things for us. They weren't perfect in any way, but they had good hearts, they had good intentions and they did some things that really set the stage for us to enjoy what we have now. |
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