the Tongue Family made great use of a day that was out of sight!

The weather this evening was absolutely marvelous.

The Smiles were easy to come by.

One of the more fortunate fishermen.. I don’t even own my own boat, and get to use one owned by my father. I think most boat owners would understand the advantage.

The weather was excellent, a cool breeze blowing off shore, and the pan fish were biting at every cast.  In fact the smallest ones were ravenous to be sure, and the occasional “hooked too bad” non keeper  found its way into the belly of a seagull or duck that always seemed to be close at hand.  Indeed, the ducks at one point grew to such great numbers at our little spot off the rocks at clinch, that we had to be cautious with our casts.

Times like this find me ever so thankful that I am here in one of the nicest spots on earth, in Grand Traverse County Michigan.

Sure am Lucky to be here.

Grapes for Ice wine are something that in the last 10 years has only been harvested 5 times on the peninsula.  It has become a sought after as a very sweet wine as the sugars are more concentrated because of the freezing process.

The Grey Hare Inn of Old Mission Peninsula, is one of many growing spots on the peninsula which grows grapes for ice wine.  It is where this picture was taken.  For more pictures in a very large zip file, Click HERE

I stopped out to catch a few old friends, and meet with a few newer ones as well.  It was a well spent day, as I was able to be taking a few pictures and talking with a few folks who were willing to put up with me long enough.  Life is good on the Peninsula, and the annual pig roast confirms it to some extent.

These shots are only a couple of about 40 pictures taken.  If you would like to see some of the better shots (in my opinion) including a shot of a stickbug on the wall, the zipped file holding them can be downloaded by clicking HERE.

By the way..  The zipped file above is a little over 80 MB, and may take a little while to download.  They are 4000×3000 pixel formats, so each is quite large.  I hope you like them.

Still on the Hill.

We grabbed a couple of Subway sandwiches, and headed out to Bowers Harbor park and laid out a blanket for an evening of Arkansas folk song, and stories that worked well for both the adults and the kids who were there.

My wife Candy, has a special place in her heart for Arkansas with a number of memories revived by the performance, and my own personal tastes in music adapt well to the smooth harmonies and odd string combination of the fiddle, banjo, and even a couple of other odd instruments they brought along with them.  Something in the woodsy and sometimes inspirational music speaks to the soul.

I was glad to have the opportunity.  I am glad the Peninsula Community Library is a part of the tour sequence of these traveling story tellers of song..

I was able to  get some high definition video with good sound quality, that will be available after it is processed.  I will post it up here within a couple of days.

As I had written before, the responsible management of the PCL resulted in a threatened loss of revenue sharing from the TADL system.  PCL, with an interest in ongoing service in the event of an emergency, had been building a capitol fund which triggered a reduction in the shared amount.  This often happens to departments which live within their means, and generally results in inefficient bureaucracies.

For those of you looking further into this issue can find the story which was originally posted here:

http://jasongillman.com/2010/06/20/here-we-go-again/

I understand all parties are quite happy with the new agreement, and I will update this post as soon as I have the complete details on the settled amount.

Perhaps this isn’t something you have seen in the papers yet..  The 2010-11 Budget has been expanded from being an approved $950,000 deficit, to an approximately $1.7 million deficit.

There is less than $8 million left in reserves.  At this rate, our county has about 4 years before becoming insolvent.

To be sure, there is now an attempt to find new solutions.  But how did we get to this point?  And how can we prevent this from getting worse?

To start with.. we can:

• Do Cost/Benefit analysis to determine whether county programs or actions being proposed actually result in savings or efficiencies and a lower burden on taxpayers.
• Explore privatization of certain county functions.  Private firms tend to be more flexible and creative than the entrenched bureaucracy of governments. It can translate into real savings to the taxpayers.
• Offer Incentives to county employees that produce or suggest significant savings ideas without a loss of service over the previous years for their departments.  No one knows better where the waste is, than our county workers.
• Fight unfunded mandates and directives from state government which create cost for the county and its taxpayers.  Working with our representatives we can avoid being “directed” towards deficits.

There are more solutions than these alone.  Perhaps its time to start the discussion.

You can.. with Jason Gillman.

Become involved, voice your concerns, your suggestions, and be sure to  VOTE Aug 03.