Grosse Pointe Woods nominating signatures due Tuesday!

  By Pete Waldmeir
   If you're thinking about running for mayor or city council in Grosse Pointe Woods, or in any of the five Grosse Pointes, for that matter, you'll have to 
submit 200 valid nominating petition signatures to your respective city clerks by 4 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday, Aug. 13).
   After that, only write-in candidates will be allowed on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. Only the signatures of registered voters count.
   It'll be interesting to see how many candidates file in the Woods, either for mayor or to seek the positions of three council members whose terms expire this year. All four are finishing four-year terms.
   In the last eight years, GP Woods' voters have had slim pickings when it came to choosing candidates for public office. In 2011, two of the three virtually unknown and unopposed rookie candidates for council were elected without even having to kiss a baby.
   Why all the apathy to date among candidates and voters alike when it comes to filling powerful elected offices in the Woods? Who knows? Perhaps potential prospects just shrug and figure that the voters must like the status quo, no matter how much it costs them.
   Incumbent Mayor-for-Life Robert Novitke is paid $6,000 for his part-time labors. Council members Vickie Granger, Kevin Ketels and Richard Shetler Jr. each are paid $3,750. They are the most expensive elected officials in all of the Grosse Pointes.
   All GP Woods' city elections are wide open and non-partisan, with no primaries and no political designations on the ballot. Alas, if only four candidates were to file, those four would be elected. At this writing only one newcomer challenger, Robert Sheehy, has announced his candidacy.
   Novitke, a Roseville-based attorney, and Granger, a retired educator, both are long-time GP Woods' political figures.
   Novitke hasn't faced a challenger in eight years. Patti Kukula Chylinski tried and failed to unseat him as mayor in 2005.
   Shetler - like Granger and Novitke - was virtually unopposed when he ran for his first term in 2009. Ketels first was appointed to the Woods' council when an elected member resigned. He filled that unexpired term, then ran as an incumbent.
   All four 2013 candidates come packing some pretty heavy political baggage. A mere two years ago the mayor and council unanimously tried to push through a pair of whopping Headlee Amendment Override bond issue ballot proposals that would have saddled Woods' voters with a tax increase of upwards of $20 million for 10 years. Or more.
   No voter apathy on that one. Woods' taxpayers defeated the proposal by a wide margin.
  
   Pete Waldmeir is a retired former award-winning columnist for The Detroit News and a GPWoods' resident for more than 30 years.