In terms of ridiculous and petty things that an elected body in Livingston County has ever done, the Howell City Council just jumped to the front of the line. And that’s saying a lot.
What they did this week wasn’t just outrageous. It wasn’t just petty. It was flat-out dumb.
What they did this week is that they voted 4-2 to ask Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to remove a member of the Howell Carnegie District Library Board for doing an impression of someone.
That’s right. The Howell City Council feels that doing an impression of someone is now such a horrendously awful offense that the governor herself needs to put aside whatever else she might be doing so that she can come to Howell and kick this horrible guy off the library board!
HELP US, GOVERNOR WHITMER! HELP US!
We have a guy on our library board who’s doing offensive impressions of people! Forget the economy and schools and crime and whatever other lesser things you might be spending your time on!
FOR GOD’S SAKE, GOVERNOR! WE HAVE A GUY IN HOWELL WHO’S DOING IMPRESSIONS OF PEOPLE! HELP US!
In case you think I’m exaggerating this, well, I’m not. This is exactly what’s happening. The Howell City Council is asking Gov. Whitmer to kick a guy off the library board for doing impressions.
Here are the details.
The absolutely wonderful Howell Carnegie District Library is governed by a seven-member board. Three of the members are appointed by the Howell City Council and four are appointed by the Howell Public Schools District.
These are volunteer positions and they receive no pay. The law also says that even though the city council and school district appoint the members, only the governor can remove them.
The person at the center of all this is one of the library board members who was appointed by the city, a guy named Anthony Kandt. He’s the bad impressionist.
Back on Oct. 10, the library board was discussing what to do with a parcel of land that the library owns in the city (which is a whole mess of its own). During the discussion, Anthony Kandt read aloud an email that was written by Councilmember Jan Lobur, advising the library board what they should do with the land.
Kandt and Lobur don’t agree on the land issue, and when he read Lobur’s email, Kandt supposedly did an impression of what he thought Lobur’s tone of voice was when she was writing the email. The impression apparently included raising the tone of his voice so that he would sound like a woman.
Now, whether or not Anthony Kandt crossed the line with his impression of Jan Lobur is a matter of opinion. The Howell City Council thought he most certainly did, so it voted last month that he was “unfit to represent the city on a local board or commission.”
OK, fine. Slap him on the wrist and move on. All the guy did was read an email with a snotty tone in his voice. Spending one minute of the Howell City Council’s time on this issue was one minute too much, but whatever.
After stewing it over for a couple more weeks, though, the council decided to REALLY show the world just how ridiculous and petty it could be. At Monday night’s meeting, the council voted 4-2 to refer the matter to Gov. Whitmer, asking her to exercise her power and remove him from office.
The four members voting to boot Kandt off the library board were Erin Britten, Alex Clos, Jacob Schlitter and Luke Wilson. Voting against the motion were Mayor Bob Ellis and Nikolas Hertrich. Jan Lobur, of course, abstained.
Now, I don’t know if this matter has made it to Gov. Whitmer’s desk yet, but when it does, I’m assuming the conversation will go something like this:
GOV. WHITMER: “OK, what’s next?”
GOV. WHITMER’S AIDE: “We have a situation in Howell. A library board member there did an impression of someone and now the city council wants you to kick him off the board.”
GOV. WHITMER: “Are you (expletive deleted) kidding me?”
No, Governor. We aren’t (expletive deleted) kidding you. The Howell City Council would like for you to take your attention off whatever issues of lesser importance you’re working on and focus on the REALLY important crisis facing the State of Michigan: a guy in Howell who reads emails in a snotty tone of voice. And if you’d like to call your friend President Biden and get him in on this, too, that would be great.
So, what needs to happen next is this: nothing.
The governor needs to ignore this and Anthony Kandt needs to stop reading emails with a snotty tone of voice and the Howell City Council needs to work on more important things, like – for example – ripping out all those teeny-tiny roundabouts.
They’re a far bigger problem than a guy on the library board who thinks he’s Rich Little.
