Talk:Swartz Creek, Michigan

Fire Chief
Fire Chief are of the Swartz Creek Area Fire Department which is a joint department of Clayton Township and Swartz Creek City and previously Gaines Township and as such should not be considered a part of the City's administration.

Fire Chief list Edward Pavilica (1956-1971) Lynn Muchler (1971-1981) Richard "Butch" Hart (1981-1984) Thomas Spillane (1984-1986) Bernie Merrow (1986-1987) Joseph Edgerton** (1987-1988) Ronald Mills Sr. (1988-1993) Joseph Edgerton** (1993-1994) Ron Downing (1994-1996) Brent Cole (1996-)


 * Edgerton was interim Fire Chief between Merrow and Mills and again Between Mills and Downing —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spshu (talk • contribs) 17:40, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I don't see why Government of Swartz Creek, Michigan needs its own article. Its a small town and its governmental structure is typical of such. TomCat4680 (talk) 02:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It does have local information ie. members of city council, joint fire authority/department with other communities. At some point the Wikimedia software usually gives a message that the article is too long, so I though I would advoid that with have the government article.  Additional, I though it would be easier to scroll through the main article. Spshu (talk) 18:28, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes but why is listing the city council members from 50 years ago necessary? I doubt anyone would ever want or need to know that. I think if the charts were deleted the rest of the article could be merged into Swartz Creek, Michigan and it would be perfectly navigable and not too long. I think the merge would transform 2 good articles into 1 great article. TomCat4680 (talk) 18:31, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. The individuals listed in the table from previous councils are not notable enough to have articles. Once that is removed, the rest of this article should be merged back into the article on the town. As for the message about article length, that's a holdover from the days when certain browsers had technical limitations that prevented them from allowing the edit pages to load for more than 32K of of text. Section-editing has largely solved this problem on older browsers. Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What does the notablity of the council members and mayors have to do with the merger? There isn't any wikilinks to articles for any of those persons. With the merger, you end up popping out the Swartz Creek Area Fire Department/Authority as it really kind of belongs to currently two local governments (and I believe it was up to 4 at one point; for sure 3)  and previous to that a private entity until force to turn its assets over to the townships.  The city has more history too.  This isn't any small city; part of it served for Governor Crapo as his effective state capital.  It is home to Paul T. Spaniola, such info was removed dispite his status as a multiple world championships.--Spshu (talk) 01:17, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you're confused. This isn't a deletion discussion. A merge is when you move one article into another. The info would still be here, just in a different place. The history of the town is clearly notable, as are some of its past residents. TomCat4680 (talk) 01:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not confused, I am responding to Imzadi's statement; "The individuals listed in the table from previous councils are not notable enough to have articles. Once that is removed,".  Well now I recall that two of the previous Council members have some notability, one when on to become the County Clerk (Trecha), the other, Kay Hart, when on to become a state representative.  The notability to the article as the City Council is the governing body.  Additional I am point out that previous editors had removed info on Paul Spaniola along with some spam about Mike Monroe dispite a few source.  I can not completely defend any removal dispite having source given he is related to me.  In general, a merger might trigger an evaluation of where to place the Area Fire Authority, as it more deserves its own article as it start out as a private entity then a joint department of 2 township then 3 local government and eventual back to 2 local govs.  --Spshu (talk) 17:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * It's simple. Why list them if they aren't notable? You may disagree, but I don't think that it is necessary to have a separate article on the government of a minor city when the majority of the article is a list of unnotable people, linked or not. Imzadi1979 (talk) 17:39, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No you stated "The individuals listed in the table from previous councils are not notable enough to have articles. Once that is removed,". ie. you are directly talking about them, the members of the city council, being notable enough for their own article.  And in my response to TomCat to get him on the same page I indicated why they are notable, ie. members of the governing body.  If they are not notable then the leader fields should be removed from the Infobox settlement as the appropriate positions, mayor, mayor pro tem and city manager are all either members of the city council or appointed by the city council.  As you can see there is notation regarding which city council member is the mayor or mayor pro tem.  Just to stated that you think they are not notable to the article after a reason give for them being notable to either article (merger or not) is not an argument for their notability or not.  --Spshu (talk) 20:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, let me clarify, I meant, "they're not notable enough to have their own articles, so there's notability to keeping the historical listings. Once that..." Sorry, I guess I left something out of that edit, which is easy to do when feeling sick. Imzadi1979 (talk) 22:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Spshu, please read WP:POLITICIAN. None of the city council members meet the criteria on it. Swartz Creek is a minor small town. Its not a county seat like Flint, etc. Yes it has a city council, so what, most small towns do, and that's all the readers need to know. TomCat4680 (talk) 21:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I also don't see what's notable about the Fire Authority. Its a local fire department, it puts out fires. Yes it also serves Clayton, but that's not uncommon. In Genesee County alone, several FD's are consolidated: Davison Area FD also serves Richfield, Clio Area FD also serves Vienna and Thetford, and Atlas Twp also serves Goodrich. I think all that it necessary is a link to their official web page. TomCat4680 (talk) 21:07, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * TomCat, that (WP:POLITICIAN) is for notability for there own article. Read down in the Invalid criteria which allow them to be listed: "That person A has a relationship with well-known person B, such as being their spouse, is not a reason for a standalone article on A (unless significant coverage can be found on A); see Relationships do not confer notability. However, person A may be included in the related article on B." Subsititue Swartz Creek (or Government of) for person B and A with council members for person A. On the Fire Authority, it was original a privately owned entity (in the sense of not being a government department) providing a public service as far as I know an unsual situtation.  Goodrich is a village and is still part of Atlas Township, so its not much of a consolidated department.  Genesee County also had/have the odd ball situation of have more than one department per government, see Beecher Fire Department.  I don't have any information of those other consolidated fire departments, otherwise I don't see why they couldn't have their own article, after all we have articles on CDP that might not have much more than some census data and location information.   --Spshu (talk) 23:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary break
To put it simply, in my opinion, the previous members of the councils does not need to be listed. If and once that is removed, there's not much here that can't be merged back into the parent article. In fact, merging it back in would benefit that article. Imzadi1979 (talk) 23:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits 5/9/2017
Template:Infobox fire department is for fire department articles, of which very few exist, as fire departments are not inherently notable and only the oldest and largest have had significant coverage. A historic population table that includes three widely spaced entries, one of which wasn't even a census year, is useless. And the fact that the firehouse got destroyed is trivial in extreme. We did this before, but it escapes me where. The fact that it got put on the AP wire and the only paper that picked it up was in Ludington is indicative of how trivial it is, not of its significance. The pipe smoker isn't notable, the arguement that winning an award qualifies a porn star for an article is both apples & oranges and classic OTHERSTUFF. John from Idegon (talk) 16:51, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * One notability is an argument for an AfD (thus article as that is what the "A" stands for), which already occur. You initiated it on the area fire department already. There is no rule against using an infobox for a section. This is not an article about a tornado. Just because that the only record of the tornado on the internet is from a scanned newspaper from Ludington is more an indication of when the event occurred than the trival nature as was pre-mass use internet. There are articles on tornado (1953 Flint–Beecher tornado) A historical population table is not useless as I switch it to the "pagr" setting, which "display annual growth rates (per annum growth rate) using the formula from Population growth" to make it more useful give the irregular years. Else, why is there a separate template for historical population and census population.
 * Yes, there is OTHERSTUFF, but I am pointing to the guideline not a particular porn star having an article. See below, what I started before your post here. Spshu (talk) 18:34, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

, you already gutted this article do to the results of the AfD on the Swartz Creek Area Fire Department. I carried it out myself removing all reference to Going up the Swartz... You now are attacking the articles content regarding the area fire department as "opinion" via WP:WEIGHT. The point of its own section is one to central information on it so it can be pointed to from each current (and former) member municipalities. When just a search on mlive.com, the Flint Journal's website, turns up 760 article. So it has verifiable sources.

Paul Spaniola is a city's founder as charter commission chair and former fire chief. He has multiple articles (38) at mlive/Flint Journal that refer or cover him. There has been more, but most publishing company seems to dump past article or never place them on their websites. "promo hatracked as a notable person" is the supposed reason for not including Spaniola. Huh, plenty of coverage of Spaniola and ownership/founding of Paul's Pipe Shop is one of the thing he is know for. He is six time World Pipe Smoking Champion, while a porn star would get a whole article based on 1 award. Spshu (talk) 18:07, 9 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, John from Idegon, the AP is a nation wide reliable source thus counting towards notability. And the comparison to the WP:PORNBIO is that it is a subset of the WP:NBIO. Since, both porn and smoking are on the outer fringe of society, it would seem to be good parallel. There is no established rule for pipe shop owner, smokers, event champions and  industry innovators (he invented a new method of curing pipes) nor Kentucky Colonel. He is covered in reliable sources, but with out nation wide general, thus while not notable for an article, enough to be in an article. Spshu (talk) 16:55, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I've been busier than a one armed paper hanger for the past week. Hopefully, I'll get back to this after I get the kiddo to bed tonite if I don't pass out from exhaustion. If not tomorrow. John from Idegon (talk) 01:20, 16 May 2017 (UTC)
 * , response requested as you indicated that you would do. Spshu (talk) 18:01, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that I reduced the WEIGHT (although this applies to alternative theories) of the Fire Department by instead duplicating all its information on four articles (as it served 4 units of government of over time) down to mentions on three with a section in one article. Spshu (talk) 20:25, 10 January 2018 (UTC)