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Carolyn Muyskens|The Holland Sentinel

FENNVILLE A city commissioner who brought controversy and international media attention to Fennville due to his ties to a far-right organization called the Proud Boys is expected to leave public office early.

According to Fennville city administrator Amanda Morgan, MorganBolles hasnot submitted hisresignation,but he made the city commission aware Monday, Feb. 15, he wouldbe resigning from the commission sometimethis springdue to plans to move out of the city. City commissioners are required to live in the city limits to hold the office.

Bolles was appointed to the Fennville City Commission shortly after the November 2019 city elections in which he ran as a write-in but failed to win a seat to replace another commissioner who had resigned that same month.

In December that year, The Sentinel reported his apparent affiliation with the Proud Boys organization. Bolles was photographed at a Second Amendment rally in Lansing in September 2019 carrying a Michigan Proud Boys flag.

The Proud Boys, whichcalls itself a "Western chauvinist" drinking club for men, is known for its members' affinity for white nationalist views.

More:Fennville commissioner defends hate group affiliation

More: More photos, charges surface with Fennville commissioner

The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled it a hate group, and Canada designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist organization earlier this month.The group also isbanned on Facebook and Instagram.

Proud Boys members have also been charged with conspiracy in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

When Bolles was seated on the city commission in December 2019, he defended the Proud Boys as an anti-racist, pro-freedom organization.

However, in a publicFacebook post in June 2020, Bolles said he was no longer affiliatedwith the group and had not been for "a long time."

"Also, to clarify I have had no connection with the Proud Boys in a long time and my interactions with them were minimal at best," Bolles wrote." [...]I cut any ties I had with them over lifestyle and idea differences."

The statement was in stark contrast to what Bolles said in December 2019 when he defended his affiliation with the group. During a city commission meeting,Bolles said the Proud Boys are anti-racist, promote entrepreneurship, are pro-freedom, limited government, and want to venerate the house wife."

... Thats not a demand that women stay at home, but the ones that do want to stay home, we should praise them for wanting to stay home take care of our children not going to a babysitter or anything like that, Bolles said.

The Fennville City Commission drew criticism for appointing Bolles, who was one of two candidates to apply for the position, but commissioners said they were unaware of the Proud Boys connection or of his criminal history, which included a misdemeanor assaultconviction and a traffic violation related to a crash in which he fell asleep at the wheel andkilled a Sentinel delivery driver.

Fennville City Commissioner Jim Hayden, who maintains a local blog on city issues, wrote ofBolles' announcement Monday. Hayden was among those who called for Bolles' resignation over his association with the Proud Boys.

However, he distanced himself from the council bearing responsibility for the situation, saying he was strongly against vetting applicants for the commission, and that it was themedia's role to vetBolles.

A message seeking comment from Bolles was not immediately returned.

Bolles' term on thecity commissionexpires in November.

The city commission will be tasked with appointing someone to fill the position. The appointmentprocess involves a call for applications, a brief interview of applicantsduringa commission meeting and a vote by the commission to appoint the new member.

It is against the citys charter to do background checks on people who apply to fill vacant commission seats, Fennville Mayor Tom Pantelleria said in 2019. Commissioners discussed potentially looking into the legality of conducting a vetting process for future appointees, but came to the general consensus that would put too much of a limit on who could serve.

Contact reporter Carolyn Muyskens at cmuyskens@hollandsentinel.com and follow her on Twitter at @cjmuyskens.

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Fennville official with Proud Boys ties to resign - HollandSentinel.com

Blaise Mesa|Topeka Capital-Journal

Small businesses in Topeka could look forward to more local relief after the city council unanimously voted to add over $500,000 to its business relief fund.

The governing body voted to amend the 2019 Consolidated Action plans budget to add the additional CARES Act money at Tuesday nights meeting. Small business grants will receive $529,131 from the budget amendment, according to documents attached to the meeting's agenda.

The city was required to amend the 2019 action plan to utilize the funds.

Preference is given to minority and women owned businesses, said Corrie Wright, housing services director, last week when she spoke to city council. The additional funds will be a great asset to the community.

This is the second amendment to the 2019 action plan with the current business relief funding projected to soon run out.

CARES Act funds have to be used to prevent, prepare for or respond to the pandemic, Wright said. Businesses must show a need, demonstrate a loss due to the virus and the business owner or 51% of a business'semployees must be low- to moderate-income to be eligible.

The additional funding could help 26 businesses in Topeka.

Councilmember Mike Lesser told The Topeka Capital-Journal local business relief programs are hoping to help businesses that may have been ineligible for other programs. Lesser is also a member of the Joint Economic Development Organizations local business task force that is working on additional COVID-19 relief.

The citys relief program has different requirements for the money because it relies on federal funds, but JEDOs program has fewerrestrictions because it is funded locally.

What we dont want to do is have the same people eligible and leave the same people out, he said.

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CapFed Best News: Topeka receives over $500,000 in CARES funding to help small businesses - The Topeka Capital-Journal

By JACQUELYN VOGHEL

EASTHAMPTON TheCity Council will hold a public hearing with the Planning Board on Wednesday night to adopt a plan intended topromote housing for low-and moderate-income families and individuals, reducehousing production barriers in the city, and addresslocal and regional housing needs.

The city last released a Housing Production Plan in 2014. But according to City Councilor Tom Peake, the council at the time did not reach many of the goals laid out in that plan. The plan, detailed in a 102-page draft document, seeks to address continuing concerns in the city surrounding affordability and housing choice.

According to the plan, which details steps to take from 2021-2026,Easthamptonhas very few of the regulatory tools that communities use to promote housing diversity and affordability,and a limited inventory of affordable housing,along with other general difficulties that do not address the housing needs of lower-income residents.

The new plan outlines six goals: Creating a variety of affordable, mixed-income housing to foster "a welcoming, inclusive community"; increasing affordable and market-rate housing options for low-income families, seniors and people with disabilities; meet state affordable housing assistance requirements through producing at least 38 qualifying units per year; encourage development and repurposing of existing buildings into mixed-income housing; and promote the development of the mills and town or institutionally owned properties into mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhoods.

Its no secret to anyone that the cost of housing in Easthampton has increased substantially over the last decade, Peake said, and its becoming an issue that I hear about a lot from constituents.

While some homeowners appreciate that the value of their homes have gone up, he added, there are also a lot of people who are starting to ask serious questions about whether they can afford to continue to live in this community, and whether their kids will be able to afford in this community when they grow up.

If the city does not address affordability issues, he added, it also risks losing communities that have long characterized and enriched life in Easthampton.

Easthampton has a long history of blue collar residents, Peake said, and it also has a long history, especially recently, of being a place for artists. If we become a community that is unaffordable to those populations, those are important contributors to our civic life that we could lose.

At the Wednesday night meeting, Peake will propose two zoning amendments intended to complement this goal. One amendment would relax current zoning barriers that can restrict the production of accessory dwelling units, such as attached in-law apartments, tiny homes or backyard cottages. A second amendment streamlines the permitting process for multifamily housing developments that include certain percentages of affordable housing.

The meeting will be held virtually on Wednesday at 6 p.m., and can be accessed via a Zoom link on the citysAgendas & Minutes webpage.

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Plan to increase affordable housing topic of joint meeting in Easthampton - GazetteNET

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany and France are making a new effort to resolve an impasse over the development of a joint fighter jet, Europes biggest defence project that has led to tensions between Berlin and Paris, security and industry sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

FILE PHOTO: French President Emmanuel Macron and others attend the unveiling of the French-German-Spanish new generation fighter model during a visit to the 53rd International Paris Air Show at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, France, June 17, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool/File Photo

At an estimated cost of more than 100 billion euros, the venture brings together Germany, France and Spain to forge a future weapons system that is seen as the heart of a deepening European defence cooperation.

Dassault Aviation , Airbus and Indra are supposed to build the aircraft, which is expected to be operational from 2040 with a view to replacing Frances Rafale and Germanys Eurofighter warplanes over time.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron kicked off the ambitious venture in 2017, when the EU was rattled by Britains decision to leave the bloc and deeply divided over other issues such as the migrant crisis.

But the project has run into difficulties due to mistrust and differing visions between Berlin and Paris as well as corporate infighting over work shares, security and industry sources told Reuters.

At the beginning of February, Merkel and Macron failed to settle the issue, thus leaving open when the next tranche of payments of at least 5 billion euros can be released, according to insiders.

On Wednesday, envoys of the defence ministries of Germany, France, Spain as well as from Dassault, Airbus and Indra met in Paris to try to resolve the impasse, security and industry sources told Reuters.

Part of the controversy revolves around intellectual property rights, and who should possess them in the end.

Before moving ahead with the venture, Germany is trying to gain more concessions from France on the issue, insiders said, adding that Berlin would like to be able to use technologies co-developed with Paris for its own projects.

One French source said Germany also aimed for intellectual property developed at national level in France, something a German source denied.

Disagreements run so deep that there are even considerations to build two demonstrators instead of just one, one source told Reuters.

A senior French parliamentary figure also expressed doubts about the projects viability, citing diverging approaches and political constraints, such as Berlins refusal to participate in combat operations abroad.

To be honest, it would be a lot easier for us to work with Britain because we share the same military culture, the MP told Reuters. Britain is running its own fighter jet program, Tempest, with Italy and Sweden.

A planned update for the Franco-German Tiger combat helicopter, costing more than 5.5 billion euros, is another bone of contention.

France is keen on the modernisation, whereas Germany is digging in, with some parts of the military not wanting the upgrade at all given the low operational readiness of the Airbus helicopter, sources told Reuters.

On Thursday, the defence ministers of France and Germany, Florence Parly and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, will have another chance to solve the row, when they are scheduled to meet virtually.

Additional reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Giles Elgood

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Berlin and Paris in crisis talks to bring fighter jet project back on track - Reuters

As the migrant crisis played out across the country during the lockdown, theatre director and playwright Aniruddha Khutwad found himself observing familiar scenes. He had met the protagonists, who came from villages to the cities and belonged to both and neither, in his plays such as Virasat. He had explored the role of the family in an individuals life in Raisins in the Sun and several other productions and studied the part played by women in society. So, when the Repertory Company of the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi decided to usher 2021 with a new play by Khutwad, the Pune-based director chose a stark sociopolitical work from the Marathi canon, Adhantar, to fit the times.

Written in 1993, Adhantar is about the impact of the closure of the cloth mills of Mumbai on the lives of the families who depended on it for their livelihood. I first watched it as a Marathi commercial theatre presented by the playwright Jayant Pawar in 1997. I directed the play in Marathi in 2009 and, again, in 2014 at NSD, both times as academic productions. Why have I turned to it again today as the world battles and medical and social crisis? This is because the play is, unfortunately, just as relevant now as it was 25 years ago, he says over the phone from Delhi. The play has been translated to Hindi by Kailash Sengar.

The script revolves around a lower-middle-class family of the 1980s and 90s from the chawls of Mumbais Girangaon and Lalbaug Parel. Aai is the mother to three sons and a daughter as well as the widow of a mill worker. The eldest son, Baba, has a college degree, dreams of being an author and considers getting a salaried job beneath his dignity. The second son, Mohan, did have a job once but is now applying to offices and meeting with failure every time. Naru, the youngest and uneducated, is a Bhai and a part of the Mumbai underworld. The daughter, Manju, feels suffocated by her job, her home and the society that forced her to abort after a premarital pregnancy. All of them are confined in a small room with an open toilet in a corner and a single light bulb suspended from the roof.

When the mills closed, 1.50 lakh families found themselves on the street with no food, money or employment. The aspect of COVID-19 that moved me the most was that labourers were let go overnight. While those with permanent jobs stood a chance of fighting back, the wage worker or employees on contract had nowhere to turn. Employment figures were not looking good even before the pandemic but, after the lockdown was announced, labourers had no option but to leave for their villages in large numbers. We need to take urgent measures to stop the spread of COVID-19 but the government should have looked after the lower strata as well, says Khutwad, an alumnus of NSD.

The performers in the play were unfamiliar with the politics or history of the Mumbai mills so Khutwad began the process of creating the play by using a small room, instead of a hall, for rehearsals. In this confined space, the actors internalised the pressures of being locked in with others without privacy through endless days. They evolved rituals and marked out spaces for themselves and the protagonists they play a corner with a bookshelf for one brother; a loft over the bathroom which is always dark and smelly for another; the tiny balcony for the daughter because she has no space inside the room.

We did not look at the characters as good or evil, but as people doing what they must to survive. Society is as responsible for a persons fate as that person themselves. As we worked on the play, discussing the mill culture and watching the sensitive documentary, titled Narayan Gangaram Surve, a veteran poet of Marathi literature who was a mill labourer himself, we began to see the play as events close to ourselves rather than something that happened long ago, says Khutwad.

The play unfolds in a room that set designer Rajesh Singh, with Khutwad, represents as a two-walled triangular structure to ensure audiences feel the walls closing in on the protagonists. The soundscape by Sourav Poddar represents the daily mix of traffic, mill sirens and local conversations while Motilal Khare moved around Old Delhi to find props that recalled a different decade in Marathi culture in the mills. Nalini Joshi, on costumes, worked with the cultural symbols surrounding the nine-yard sari that is worn by women in Maharashtra.

Ever since I read this play, it shook me from inside. I have no direct blood relation with the people of Girangaon, but there was a wave of empathy for them. I began to study the issue and its far-reaching effects. This is what the artistes in the play want to convey through Adhantar. We must understand the oppressed and stand with them, says Khutwad.

The play is being held at the National School of Drama in Delhi till today, 6.30 pm.

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How a Pune theatre director is commenting on the COVID-19 migrant crisis through a play on the Mumbai mills - The Indian Express