KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – Kalamazoo Mayor Dave Anderson isn’t on the November ballot, but he is running a personal campaign to defeat an item up for a vote, that he is calling a scam.
The proposal was put there by a group he says was funded by dark money, to embed a health advisory committee in the Kalamazoo City Charter.
The city has no authority in the health care field.
That is the purview of Kalamazoo County and the health department.
Anderson says all this will just put an additional burden on city staff, what he calls an unfunded mandate.
“By collecting data that we don’t have by asking our city team to staff a board to recruit for that board in perpetuity! Do you really want to commit the city of Kalamazoo to undertake a task in which we have no expertise and no authority?”
He says the only function of the group will be to create a report that they can’t do anything with, and spend precious city tax dollars to compile.
“We may have to make a decision about that, what we’re gonna give up. Are we gonna give up paving a few streets that we’ve heard about, are we gonna give up some other function?”
He says he has tried to get information on Berrien Forward, the group backing the initiative, checking tax returns, campaign filing reports, and run into nothing but dead ends.
“I’m one voice talking about this, but it’s millions of dollars that I’m talking against and do we know where that millions of dollars is coming from? Never gonna know.”
Absentee voting has already begun.
Anderson says supporting healthcare may sound like a good idea, but not in this context.
He is urging city voters to vote no on the proposal.
Comments