Stories indexed with the term ‘Jerry Lax’

This past week’s Ann Arbor city council meeting did not adjourn until nearly 2 a.m. Several factors contributed to the length of that meeting.

But instead of writing a few thousand words analyzing those factors, I’d like to point out something that was absolutely not a factor. The council did not lay claim to the public’s time by considering any resolutions last Monday that wished someone a happy birthday.

But that was the sort of thing the Ann Arbor city council of 43 years ago did.

I was alerted to this by Jim Mogensen, whose name some readers will recognize as a resident who will reliably appear to comment at various public meetings on topics like transportation and social justice. One of Mogensen’s favorite rhetorical tactics is to tie current events to decades-old actions and to remind people of some forgotten historical point.

Mogensen spoke at the Ann Arbor city council’s Nov. 18 meeting urging the approval of a resolution that added Ypsilanti Township as a member of the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority. He called it the continuation of a process that began over 40 years ago. And ultimately the council voted 11-0 in favor of adding Ypsilanti Township to the authority.

Three days later, at Thursday’s meeting of the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority’s board, Mogensen’s remarks served to bridge that four-decade span – between the Jerry Lax of Pear Sperling Eggan & Daniels P.C. who currently provides legal counsel for the AAATA, and the Jerry Lax who was Ann Arbor city attorney back in 1970.

Mogensen bridged those four decades by reading aloud a city council resolution from 1970 recognizing Lax’s birthday, which, as luck would have it, is today.

The full text of the tongue-in-cheek resolution is presented below. But it’s not just the hilarious text of the resolution that I thought was worth sharing with readers. It’s something else from that page of the council’s minutes that I thought was even more remarkable. [Full Story]