President's Corner

When COWL was founded, it felt very obvious that the average person would be supportive of developing land in their neighborhood with respect for the ecospace that was here before. After all, people love to have nice views, clean fragrant air, diverse small birds, and the wonderous sights of living creatures we see on TV. They pay rather a lot for the privilege, when their income supports it. In Waterford, the lakes dominate as the natural feature. Living directly on the shore often has a premium worth many years of pure labor.
The vision was, during this time of the founding (COVID lockdowns - when everyone was working from home or not working), that these neighbors who were informed about proposed losses of public ecospace would unite and drive pressure at our town hall to protect the land. The board could have purchased Williams Hatchery from the Oakland County Road Commission at 75% off, and our new non-profit could provide further assistance in addition to that. A 501c3 charity is able to collect donations with tax advantages for the donors, and my co-founder Jacque and I, we got ready to do so. We formed the corporation with the required three roles, me as President and Jacque as Treasurer/Secretary. We opened a bank account, started this website, and seeded the organization gently with our own cash and many dozens of hours of labor. 

Along the way, we met many people in local government and politics. The assumption was that we would be environmentalists and therefore Democrats, but Jacque and I are both staunchly disinsterested in partisanship. We both boldly discuss all kinds of topics freely, however. And there was a LOT of investigation into how to navigate the many interactions offered to us by political agents, as a 501(c)(3) corporation. This is a carefully-built organization. However, what we found was that the nonprofit community at large does not follow rules very well, and we were spending a lot of time trying to do so. Therefore, we found ways to legitimately separate things to make it easier. The Facebook "group" is not a nonprofit asset, for example, but the separate Facebook "page" (where donations can be accepted) is. 

Many of these interactions with politicians and officials led to revelations that the public should be aware of. If I had my way, I'd have publicly reported everything immediately, on social media. However, there is something to be said about protecting your sources. If you want people to tell you things, you can't make a habit of burning them for it. So, I carry with me still many factual things that the public does not know. It grinds at my conscience and I want a way to convey these stories safely. But I don't think it's possible.

One example is, the Williams Hatchery developer Allen Edwin didn't really care to pursue developing the parcel. They did, however, tell JLG, the company run by Joe Locricchio, that they'd give them $1million for it, if JLG could secure entitlement to build there. So JLG proceeded to aggressively pursue that entitlement on behalf of Allen Edwin, despite being rebuffed by the township government at least three times. The third time, someone convinced one of our board members to re-do his official vote via a technical process that is part of Robert's Rules of Order, Revised. However, this requires the content of the vote not to change, and it did apparently change - the original vote included a time frame for the project, which was not found in the eventually-approved content. This means the vote was not legal. Later, after Allen Edwin purchased the entitlements from JLG, who was falsely posing as the builder (and making apparently very effective threats at a public zoom meeting to build a halfway house there if they didn't get their re-zone request approved), Allen Edwin decided the already-built homes would be rental units, which directly violated the terms of the conditional rezone. This is another reason the development is illegal, but the township board did not wish to pursue any corrective action. I agreed with them, at that point. But the community deserves much better. This information was provided to me by various people who didn't need to be so forthcoming, and while I haven't named them, it could make them regret sharing. So you see the dilemma. And there's much more, but I won't share it all. 

So this is my first blog post, a look into one major challenge of doing community advocacy volunteer work. How to collect information, share it publicly, and protect your sources. It's probably not possible to do both. The same issue arose while working with the county. Certain elected leaders wanted information kept out of the public's view, and I partly obliged in order to cooperate with people who were ostensibly working toward our mission. I can't decide whether I regret that. I wish it weren't a dilemma we had to deal with, because transparency is definitely a good thing. If only people weren't so attached, so sensitive, so touchy. If it's true, share it. Let others do so. It should create a better world. If you fail because the public learns your secret, then it's an opportunity for growth. For my part in this Machiavellian behavior, I often reflect and wish I had someone more experienced to give me the cleverest advice. But our community is rather fractured and broken, so I'm certainly on my own with this and many other things. That may sound depressing, but I assert very strongly that if it is difficult to swallow, then it's a matter of hypersensitivity, and not good judgment. We must be able to address problems.

So here we are in 2026, over 5 years in to this journey, and it has the feel of a plant growing larger and larger, but not yet mature enough to bloom, let alone produce fruit. But like the oak tree, our root system is deep and large. What comes up over the next many lifetimes is exhilarating to imagine. Where the aim is true, the work will eventually hit the target. And there's no way that securing ecospace in our neighborhoods is a false aim. We just need to continually and sustainably figure out the means to reach it.