Last night was the final meeting of the current Brandon Board of Trustees– the principled and courageous bunch who decided not to allow Enbridge to run roughshod through their municipality. We chose not to attend the meeting, but to leave them to their peace for once; they’ve surely (understandably) wearied of sitting through our “public comments” month after month. They deserved a quiet final meeting (we hope it was quiet).
But we do want to once again thank the outgoing trustees– Cheryl Gault, David King, and Tom Stowell– as well as Treasurer Tyrone Beltramo and Clerk Jeannie McCreary. Their thoughtfulness, their mettle, their responsible stewardship of the public interest, and their protection of the township’s natural resources have made us wish they were our township trustees. The whole state of Michigan owes them tremendous thanks. We wish them all well.
Trustee Dana DePalma and Supervisor Kathy Thurman (a true leader) will continue on. We trust (and hope) that the new board will follow their lead.
It bears repeating here once more that Enbridge has STILL not answered any of the questions they promised to answer at the “workshop” with this Board more than two months ago. We find this completely outrageous and can’t figure out why it isn’t a major local news story: four Enbridge representatives sat in front of the Board, smiling and insisting (repeatedly) that they just wanted to be good, friendly neighbors, and promising answers that it now appears they never intended to provide. At this point, it’s hard to see their failure to deliver on their promise as anything but a deliberate affront to the Brandon board. Rather, it is Enbridge thumbing its nose at a local municipality. In our view, this may be the starkest illustration we have of the contempt Enbridge has for its stakeholders, the clearest example we’ve seen of how the things they say simply cannot be trusted.