Town, City, Village or Hamlet?

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...".  What we call ourselves means less than how we treat one another.  Dexter is a pleasant town and there is a tendency to smile and nod your head when you walk past someone in Hackney Hardware - but a town has no legal definition which is why we can call Dexter a town and so can our friends in Mo-town.  Smiling and nodding are more about who you are and how you present yourself than where you are.  I have been smiled at and nodded to in Chicago and I don't know anybody there.

The State of Michigan recognizes two units of municipal government - Villages and Cities.  Villages are considered puppies of townships and cities are independant dogs. Hamlets are wide spots in the road with no form of government and Whitmore Lake is a body of water.  So much for the lesson in geo-nomenclature.

We have a really talented and capable municipal staff.  When they go to Lansing to play the game of government I want them to be able to sit at the big girls' table. We need to live in the future and not in the past.  We are capable of self-determination.  We know that it is important to be at the table when decisions are being made and as a good friend reminded me once, "if you are not at the table then you are on the menu".

The notion that cityhood will cause us to lose our "small town feel" is fertilizer.  I came here almost 40 years ago to be your high schol principal.  I moved on to be your school superintendent and then to represent you in the legislature.  I'll flatter myself and speculate that I might know 300 people in Dexter.  That means that there are more than 3,000 people that don't know me from Adam.  That doesn't mean that I won't smile and nod at them in the hardware store.

It is a fact of evolutionary logic that we will become a city sooner or later.  Let the process continue now and then make a rational vote on the substance of the proposed charter later instead of an emotional vote now in the middle of the stream.  And remember to keep on smiling and nodding regardless of the outcome of the election.