KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — The Kalamazoo city commission has voted to move forward with the Foundation for Excellence on a 6-1 vote.
It came after City Manager Jim Ritsema presented the memorandum for understanding to a packed house of residents and journalists, making it clear that this was just the first step of many.
He said it will take an enormous amount of work to achieve the long range goal, a trust fund managed by a foundation that can provide the money to underwrite city operations that the state and federal government no longer provides.
The memorandum of understanding lays out a framework for handling the initial $70 million grant that is being provided by philanthropists Bill Johnston and Bill Parfet. It also lays out a timetable for establishing the Foundation for Excellence, which they hope will pick up that gap in the city’s revenue stream in three years after the grant has all been spent.
Mayor Bobby Hopewell said Kalamazoo has always been a small city with a lot of big ideas, from the day when they decided to change the name from Bronson to Kalamazoo, to redo the charter, and establish the nation’s first public high school, and go to the Public Safety Concept and adopt the Kalamazoo Promise. This idea to use a private-public foundation to lower property taxes, fund city operations and pursue aspirational projects is another one of those big ideas.
Hopewell said they are all ideas that some thought were too big, ideas that were risky and work-intensive and innovative. He called this a new day, an exciting day, and that “we do the big here.”
The one “no” vote came from commissioner Matt Milcarek who said he would have liked to seen a lot more of the structure for the foundation that will be created over the next three years written into the memorandum and language that would spell out contingencies and timelines for alternatives, should they fail to raise the money needed.
He also wanted to see the safeguards that will be built into it before he would be prepared to go forward, but he also pledged his support after it passed to do the hard work and give it the scrutiny that will be required to make it work and make it safe.
Twenty-one residents stood to offer their comments, most offering their strong support for moving forward. A few offered warnings that care had to be given to make sure that the foundation would be shielded, independent and perpetual.
Commissioner Shannon Sykes said she was going to vote no when the meeting began, but after hearing the depth and sincerity of the support from the public, she changed her mind.
Commissioner Dave Anderson noted that, for whatever reason, cities have been systematically stripped of their options to raise revenue by the same state and federal governments that have slowly reduced the amount of revenue sharing they provided. He calls this an opportunity to create the “gold standard” for other communities to follow.
Vice Mayor Don Cooney said it’s a real chance to tackle the issue of generational poverty in Kalamazoo, most of which is concentrated in the central city in what is an otherwise well-to-do county and region. He says the Kalamazoo Promise, which provides college tuition to Kalamazoo Public Schools students, offers kids a great opportunity, “but the city’s children also need other supports to be able to fully take advantage of what the scholarship program has to offer.”
Many also thanked Parfet and Johnston for their generous donation. Bill Parfet told WKZO-AM after the meeting that he isn’t fazed by some of the naysayers and critics who say it’s risky business to rely on the stock market for city funding, or question whether the donors can be kept from having undue influence over how the money is spent. He said the debate will just make the documents that create the foundation stronger. He also said his goal is to create something that is around long after he and most of us are gone, helping the city prosper and endure.
The next opportunity for public involvement comes this Thursday, when the next workshop for the Imagine Kalamazoo 2025 project will be held. The ideas that come out of this project will be where some of the money that is designated for aspirational projects from the $70 million dollar grant and the Foundation for Excellence will be spent.
The workshop will begin at 5:30 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Lake Street.
