Congressman shares views on Ferguson

Fresh off his victory in the November election, Congressman Fred Upton stopped by Leader Publications last week for a discussion about several current issues facing Michigan and the nation.

Over the next few days, we will publish his answers to our questions about everything from roads to immigration reform to the racial tension in Ferguson, Missouri.

Q: What are your thoughts on what’s been happening in Ferguson, Missouri? Is there anything that can be done?

What happened from the start is a tragedy. There is no question about that.

So what does that involve? Well, there is clearly a lot of mistrust within the community.

I don’t know Ferguson at all. I only know what I see in the press. I know my colleague; he’s a pretty good friend of mine, (Congressman) Lacy Clay, an African American from there. We’ve talked about it at the table over breakfast not too long ago. As I look at where things ought to go, I think that there ought to be, particularly in that community, but others too, you need some type of a team of state and local — and Lacy needs to be involved as well — but bring people together. Small business people, religious leaders, press, state and local officials, activists within the community. They need to look at the underlying causes for the reasons for that distrust. Do they need better schools? What is the graduation rate, the class size? What are the community needs there? Jobs? Who are the employers? Is there promise for the kids that go through the education system? What is the infrastructure like? Can they attract jobs?

I know that when we had difficulties in Benton Harbor 10 years ago, that’s exactly what we did. (Former) Governor Jennifer Granholm, who had never been to Berrien County, she and I were on the horn literally the next day. We put together a task force involving the state police and local leaders. We used the incidents in Benton Harbor as a cause to make things better.

As we look back there are some great improvements. We aren’t where we want to be yet, but locals invested a lot of money on Main Street right by the river. They couldn’t have done that 15 years ago and why? The infrastructure, the water lines, were made out of wood. They were laid in the 1800s. Streets and gutters and street lights were pathetic. We worked together and got an EDA grant and we tore up Main Street and the infrastructure from the river all the way to the top of the hill on Main Street.

New lighting, new streets, new gutters, new sidewalks, new water mains. All of a sudden you could now invest in downtown Benton Harbor when you literally couldn’t have done it before because you couldn’t get any water pressure.

It created hundreds and hundreds of jobs downtown. So what does that spin off? They’ve got a new bank there, restaurants there and all of a sudden you’ve got an arts district there.

I worked very hard on Harbor Shores. Whirlpool is a major player in large part because they said, “we started Whirlpool here in the Twin Cities, we are the largest worldwide manufacturer of appliances and we’ve got to attract quality people. If we can’t get people to move here then we are going to move.”

You are only as strong as your weakest community so they stepped up to the plate big time and helped underwrite Harbor Shores. You’ve got a brand new hotel, golf course. They took land that was really bad and transformed it into housing, increasing the tax base. It starts the dominoes falling the right way instead of the wrong way and you see real improvement.

We used the trouble we had as a catalyst for positive change. As I look at Ferguson they need the same type of effort.

The President, the Feds need to be somewhat responsible here, too. What can they bring to the table to help ease the tension and try to make Ferguson be a place people want to go versus run away from?