“All things are wearisome; more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” – Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 1:8-9

I was thumbing through some back issues of The Oxford Leader when a front-page headline immediately caught my eye.
Big, bold letters stated, “Recommend Oxford Cityhood.”
The date – January 4, 1968.
According to the article, “The Oxford City Study Committee made the recommendation Tuesday night that the Village Council take action on extending the boundaries of the village and to incorporate as a city.”
The committee had been considering the cityhood issue since its formation on May 16, 1967, the story said.
It amazes me that 36 years later the village is still contemplating cityhood and the Leader is still writing about it.
One of the main purposes of a newspaper is to report “what’s new,” but in Oxford politics it seems everything old is eventually new again.
I know history is cyclical, but this is ridiculous.
Prior to the current pro-city campaign, I knew the village’s last drive toward cityhood was in the early 1990s, but I had no idea it went this far back.
In the article, City Study Committee Member Willard Green was quoted as saying, “There are 250 cities in Michigan and 270 villages. The change to city from village is going at a rate of 7 a year. I believe we are following the trend and it is progress in the right direction.”
Those numbers didn’t change much 35 years later – there are currently 273 cities and 262 villages.
Green’s quote is ironic in light of what happened over the next three decades.
According to A Bird’s Eye View of Michigan Local Government at the Turn of the Century, – a report published in 1999 by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan – “It is interesting to note the nearly complete absence of incorporations of cities and villages in the past three decades. A relatively large number of cities and villages incorporated in the 1950s and 1960s, and then there was a sharp decline in the 1970s.”
The CRC’s report listed “several factors to explain this phenomenon.”
“First, there has been a significant decline in population growth. Second, the so-called property tax revolt may have been a factor since city status normally involves a higher level of service and a higher level of taxes. Finally, there has been an increase in the powers of units that otherwise would have had to become cities to provide the services demanded by their residents,” the report stated.
The end of the Leader’s 1968 story laid out the necessary next steps for cityhood to become a reality for the village. The last line read, “Probable time for the above action is about 2 years.” Ha, ha, ha, ha. . .
My guess is village officials will still be debating and pushing for cityhood in the year 2039.
But by then, none of it will matter anymore because we’ll all be slaves to those “Damn dirty apes!” that Charleton Heston warned us about.