(Community Matters 208) Candidate Interviews: Incumbent O'Donnell's Plan for 'Positive Progress' for Ward 3

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Community Matters, our candidate interviews continue.
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We've uh spoken with a number of candidates for Battle Creek City Commission and more to be heard from.
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And if you haven't heard them all, all you have to do is go to Battle Creek Podcast.com or go where you get podcasts and type Community Matters Calhoun County in the search bar and you'll find us.
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Now, I would just put an asterisk on this.
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Not everyone has responded.
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We have invited all of the contested candidates to be with us, and some folks have decided they don't want to, and that's okay.
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But for now, we're turning to Ward 3 and Patrick O'Donnell, the incumbent in Ward 3.
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It's been two years, Patrick.
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Did that go by fast?
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Richard, it went by so fast.
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It but you know what?
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I love serving my community so much, and that's why it went by so fast because of the hard work that we put in at the city commission level to help our citizens in Battle Creek.
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And I'd really like to do this some more to keep enhancing our neighborhoods, enhancing the safety, enhancing our parks.
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Total all positive progress in our city.
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And thank you for inviting me onto your show.
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Well, thank you.
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I have an old boss who would say, probably in response to what you just said, that's the spirit.
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He always said that to us, whether it was the spirit or not.
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But I think what you just said was.
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What is it about Ward 3 that you've been working on or you're most proud of at this point after two years now looking back?
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Well, there is something special.
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A lot of people don't realize there is actual great fiber optic network in Ward 3.
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And it started in Ward 3, and it took me behind the scenes three years to convince Metronet now T Mobile to build in Battle Creek.
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And they called me one day and said, We're gonna do it.
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It was last July.
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They started building and they built in Ward 3 first.
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They didn't do that because of me talking to them, it was just the way the plans were.
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But we allowed that to happen with working with the city and making sure that they had permits and everything that they needed to do their construction properly and take care of the residents.
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I know some of them had problems with their front yards, but they were everything was taken care of.
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Then they offered more internet and the prices went down.
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Myself, I was paying $150 a month to have half a gig, and now people get up to two gigs for a lot less cheaper than that.
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And that's one of the things that we work on behind the scenes.
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I do for my my people at Battle Creek, you can enjoy it.
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So I that's a surprise.
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I don't people realize what some of us commissioners do.
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We talk to other businesses and try to bring them on board to allow these things to make our community great.
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We're a gigabit community now and at reasonable prices.
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Because if you saw, even if you're still with ATT or the other ones, their prices came down to match us.
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So yeah, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to work, isn't it?
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Yeah, competition is supposed to do that, isn't it?
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So, what was the holdup?
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Why was it difficult to get this faster internet?
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It's just that the company before this company that had it before, they were out of Evansville, they worked in a very small community, and so they were very budget-oriented.
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And then they realized that as they expanded their internet network that people wanted it because of the the high speed, and we could deliver it at lower rate.
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But now you got T Mobile, they've sponsored and they bought into this, and they want internet to people's homes so people can have internet for their whole house, so you can stream and watch television, help with your kids' education, talk to people in Australia on the online if you want, and not be buffered.
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So that it's a whole community spirit that T Mobile even offers.
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I'm not doing an ad for T Mobile here, but I'm telling you, they stepped up and said Battle Creek needed it, and this sales and people came up and said we like it, and the people that are still getting installed, they're almost done with the build.
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But can imagine they built they built a whole network in just over a year, feeding the citizens of Battle Creek the internet speeds that they've been looking for and more to come.
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Yeah, so that's what I was getting at, I suppose, is uh run a new line, right?
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Run a new fiber all across the community.
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This is no small project, and I presume it's expensive.
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So this could be what held back this progress in the past.
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Yes, it's interesting.
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I talked with them.
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How do you pick people?
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It's it's the funniest thing.
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One of the things is they count how many pools are in a neighborhood.
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And if people have pools, they said they need internet, and so there's other things that research has put into it, but the the pool thing just was hilarious.
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It's like you really count pools, yeah.
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Plus, how many students are living here, what kind of needs that we got?
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We got big businesses that are here, and they need that high speed, and they've they've come to realize that Battle Creek's not just considered a small town, it's a metropolis, and it's on the grow.
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That's why I want to be a part of this.
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We are working hard to make Battle Creek be on the map for industry.
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We've got we've got great manufacturing out at the fort, we've got great downtown restaurants that people visit.
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What we're ready is going to have some more expansion going on in this town, and I would really want to help support our community in creating this.
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And it's just starting with the internet.
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We have plenty to talk about, but I'm intrigued by the pool thing.
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Uh, people sit by the pool and stream TikTok, or and so there's more demand for internet.
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What's the logic there?
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That's what they said to me.
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They just said that they they look and they count areas.
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Oh, they also check to see if there's other business in here that's serving internet, and that was one of the other held ups.
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And I kept telling them, trust us, we will buy here in Battle Creek.
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They were like, Well, ATT is already there, Comcast is already there, you got big companies there.
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They just weren't delivering the service, and I told them that.
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I said, You you'll understand.
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And when they finally started building, they told me that the buy rate was at 80%.
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We were selling out, they were like, We're we're selling out so fast, Patrick.
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You were right.
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You we we do need to be in the Battle Creek community, but they even brought an ice cream truck to help with their community out at the cereal festival to tell tell them thank you for bringing T Fiber into Battle Creek.
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They're always they've sponsored many local events around here, unlike other other companies.
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They're here to be in the community.
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I'm proud that they decided to pick Battle Creek to be one of their communities, to be a gigabit community.
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Well, ice cream does it for a lot of us, so there you go.
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Let's talk about other things.
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I remember two years ago when we spoke, you talked about wanting to be the commissioner that folks in Ward 3 and maybe outside of it called and said, you know, I need help with this or that.
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Has that happened?
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Oh, it happens all the time, Richard.
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It's amazing that the calls and different things that I get, and I and some of it I keep it private between the resident and myself.
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I don't go out and toot my horn and say, look what I did for these people.
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But one of the more interesting ones was a uh person called and said that there's a noisy fan, and it was a remediation fan for radon gas.
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And hey, stop for a second here.
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Everyone should get their home tested for radon.
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I'm serious.
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Yeah, it is really bad in the area.
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Public health service announcement right there.
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But, anyways, fans have been squeaking, noisy.
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I went out to the person's home.
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They called, I said, I want to see this, I want to hear it.
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They said they've been working on it for two years, trying to get this, they could hear it.
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It's a high-pitched sound.
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And within three days, I called the city manager.
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Within three days, it got taken care of.
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There's funds that we can find people to help them with these types of things if they're having troubles with their homes.
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I try to get them into programs if they qualify for it to get houses painted, yards picked up.
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There's so many other things that people do.
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And I am, I'm your customer service commissioner for real.
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You can call me.
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I've had people from other wards call me.
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We've had sewer problems, and we we go, they go, why did it do this?
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And I'm like, I don't know, I'll get with somebody.
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And they're they're getting the service that they need finally, right to them getting their problems answered within two to three days, which I think is pretty quick for government to get back and get you an answer and get you on a progression to get repaired, kind of thing.
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So, yes, Richard, thanks for mentioning that.
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I don't toot my own horn about that.
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I just want people to have the government that they expect and deserve.
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So, what's the priority now?
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When you think about picking up where you are currently and continuing for another two or I guess maybe four years, is the question now, right?
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What's number one on the list?
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Well, we brought up the four-year thing for a second.
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I just want people to understand where the four-year came.
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We were the only city in Michigan, besides one other small city that had commission terms and two-year terms.
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All the other cities in Michigan, every city, even townships, are at four-year.
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And why is that?
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Because sometimes you get an agenda started and you may get voted out.
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Things change.
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So we need a little bit more time to see these new progress and policies work out for the community.
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So we asked the community if they wanted to do it, wasn't just the commissions.
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We just asked, Do you want to be a four-year community?
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And they said yes.
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So with the next four years, I'm looking at population growth.
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Even the mayor was talking about this.
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We're at just around 50,000 residents in Battle Creek.
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We'd like to up this in the next four years, five years, uh, 10%.
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Not not a huge goal, but 10%.
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That's 5,000 people at 10%.
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That's a thousand people coming to Battle Creek a year.
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We're gonna need to put them places.
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We're working on a housing uh plan, which I just did on the planning commission.
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Got approved that we're gonna take the city commission to help understand and help change the way that we do housing in Battle Creek.
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It's gonna be some people, if you got room in your house, rent the space out.
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Or it's gonna be the big build, like we got downtown with what they call the uh blue light where the former Kmart is.
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We're gonna need that.
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We're gonna need we got grocery stores going downtown.
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We got with uh uproot.
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I I helped with them a lot.
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I I we had to pass a few ordinances to get their thing going, and they've been up for about a year serving the community downtown with the food needs that are that weren't down there at one time.
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And I bought into it, I got a membership because I I believed in that.
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It's looking good down there.
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I've been asking uh candidates about three things.
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First one is data centers, impressions, do something about it, leave it alone.
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What do you think?
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Actually, I've been talking to some of the legislatures here in Michigan, and they're talking about data centers.
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There's a lot of misinformation about data centers that are going out there.
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Some of these are big, some of these are little.
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It just depends on the the size that we're looking at here, but they don't use up a lot of resources that people are talking about.
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The solar panels use up a lot more resources than what we're using in these data centers.
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And with so much information going out there right now, it's needed.
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Like 15 years ago, nobody even knew anything about Netflix, how to watch things at home.
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And now, with all of the streaming that we do and all the data that's being saved, not just spying on us, but just the convenient ones of watching your favorite TV show at any time or movie or going out or streaming to your family.
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Those data centers are really needed to keep that data flowing going.
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So it depends on the community.
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And some of them are doing moratoriums now where they're allowing, you know, let's think about it and how we're gonna do in planning.
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But some of the Michigan legislatures like, I don't know why you'd need a moratorium.
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You've already got the planning there.
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The planning commission's here to help make sure that it fits harmoniously in the community.
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Recently we had uh no vote on a planning issue that was going to be down there at uh Riverside Golf Club because it was not harmonious with the community.
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So my thoughts are is if it fits and it falls within all the rules, we do need them.
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All right, flock cameras.
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Keep them good thing, not a good thing.
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What do you think?
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Well, again, I'm with the community.
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If if we want to get rid of flock cameras and there's a big community support for this, we can get rid of them.
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Some people, they like them.
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Not we're not not that they're getting spied on, but all the positives that have come out of it all over the state of Michigan.
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A gentleman was with dementia recently, was driving around the state of Michigan and didn't know where he was at.
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And if it wasn't for a flock camera, they finally found him in his car, he got lost.
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There's been other things with shootings, and they found the uh the criminals getting away using the technology that we have out there.
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But it's not my call.
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I serve the citizens, and if they all said we tried it and we didn't like it, I'll get rid of it with them.
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But that's where I was standing on that.
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How do how does it a community-to-community basis?
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The people in Detroit, they love them.
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I've been to Detroit, and I don't know if you have you ever seen those little blue lights out on Detroit.
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Yeah, they just added some more people that are on the network camera that are trying to help keep crime down, besides the flock cameras.
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So if that's what a community needs to help keep the crime down, it's a great, it's a great tool.
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But we do not want to invade people's privacy.
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But here's one thing that a lot of people don't understand about flock cameras.
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Flock understands that there's a privacy issue, and over the last month, they've actually changed their software.
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If you've asked for it, to only save the data for five days and get rid of it, and make sure that there is a search warrant looking it up, not just uh, and we know that there's people that are abusing this, they're looking up and stalking people.
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That needs to stop straight up.
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If we find you breaking the law with our with this technology, you're gonna get prosecuted.
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I want you to be prosecuted.
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This is not what it was designed for, it was designed for the community for another tool to help keep safety.
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All right, uh, community oversight board.
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Uh, they had their first decision that was made as a result of that review of the situation involving the juvenile and the Battle Creek police.
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Talk about that.
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Good thing we have a new police chief we're gonna look for.
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All of this is related.
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Give us your thoughts.
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My thoughts are community oversight board, we've brought it back again.
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That's what the citizens were asking for.
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They're like, can we do this?
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And it took a lot of lifting from a lot of people to get this going, and it took a lot of time.
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It wasn't something that was done in six months and thrown together.
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A lot of thought was put into making sure that this was something that was represented to the community.
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And you can see by the city commission, the way we we were acting and talking about it publicly, that we wanted to make sure that if this is what we need, we'll have it.
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And sometimes it is needed because I'm not a policeman.
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Recently I got to go to the fire station and actually learn what it was like to use a hose.
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And thank you, fire stations, for letting me do that because I would never have known how heavy that thing was.
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So it's things like that.
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A lot of people don't know what proper police procedure is, and a lot of training, a lot of training went into those candidates and the people that are on that board to understand what they're what the decisions that they're trying to make.
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So I'm fully supportive of that.
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New police chief really have no comment on that.
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We're currently right now in the looking stage, so we haven't seen all the candidates come in.
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I don't want to say anything to spoil or not spoil.
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I want people to apply.
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If you think you want to be a good police chief for Battle Creek, please apply.
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And I don't know if you're in Florida, if you're in Arizona, if you're anywhere, Montana, if you see this message and you want to be in Battle Creek, one of the best cities, I believe, in the whole United States, because I've lived here all my life.
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Apply.
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All right.
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That's where we'll leave it.
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Patrick O'Donnell is seeking another term as your Ward 3 Commissioner in Battle Creek.
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Thanks for the opportunity.
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Thank you, Richard.
00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:57.440
Hey, look for me.
00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:58.080
I'm around.
00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:00.559
If you guys want to talk to me, anybody in Battle Creek want to talk to me.
00:16:00.559 --> 00:16:01.679
I'm always wearing some fun shirts.
00:16:01.679 --> 00:16:02.960
I got a fun shirt on today.
00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:05.200
I love wearing Hawaiian fun shirts and fun hats.
00:16:05.200 --> 00:16:06.399
Patting the hat.
00:16:06.399 --> 00:16:07.200
But you know what?
00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:08.159
It's Patrick.
00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:09.279
It's positive.
00:16:09.279 --> 00:16:11.919
Patrick, he wants to be your ward three commissioner.
00:16:11.919 --> 00:16:12.879
Thank you, Richard.
00:16:13.039 --> 00:16:14.080
All right, Patrick.
00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:14.960
Take care.