Here's a portable copy of the Live Timeline
2/25/2020 Northfield Township BoT Town Hall
Below is the stuck-to-this-webpage version. These are notes, names, quotations, descriptions or snark conveying the meaning of what someone said. There are also a few timestamps to give you an idea of what point in the meeting you're looking at. These timestamps are in the form [xxmyys] i.e., xx minutes yy seconds from the start of the stream recording.
Clicking the first link, 'Audience and Boardmembers milling around, talking,' takes you to when the stream recording starts. The milling around lasts about four and a half minutes. Trustees take their seats. The Town Hall begins in earnest.
Audience and Boardmembers milling around, talking
Faith Wheeler:
- Faith Wheeler: asks about the lines that are at capacity already
- Chockley: [admits that those upgrades are coming soon, the subject of a study already in progress, for which the board is in too much of a hurry to wait so that the total debt load on sewer customers can be planned for]
Udo Huff: Why are we paying for this development when it is for the development of the North Park, correct?
- Chockley: No
- Udo Huff: It is in general maybe six thousand dollars.
- Udo Huff: but the sewer fee or let me say, the connection fee and everything for the sewer is dependent on the size of the property
- Udo Huff: And it can be very, very expensive
- Udo Huff: Very expensive
- Chockley: the connection fee is $6,250 right now
- Resident: per tap
- Udo Huff: That's not correct. That's the tap, but the entire fee for this is by the size of the property
- [14m26s]
- Chockley: That's already been assessed, yes
- Chockley: the lines have already gone down Whitmore Lake road, which is why you're getting stuck
- Chockley: with a bill every year I believe for a significant amount of money
- Chockley: for that particular line that went through.
- [14m45s]
Manley: Why didn't, after you decided on housing
Faith Wheeler:
- Faith Wheeler: We had a Master Plan
- Manley: My first reply on that
- Manley: And we're still in negotiation for it
- Faith Wheeler: But that is completely different
- Manley: Again, it's not approved
- Faith Wheeler: The other night, if it had been ready, and Mr. Fink had said, yeah, everything looks great
- Chockley: [drags out synthesis poster boards as if they represent or support the immensely differing Developers' plans]
- Faith Wheeler: You would have signed that night
- Manley: not necessarily
- Faith Wheeler: You could have. That's what I said. And we would have been stuck with it without any approval
- [17m47s]
Zelenock: So if I can add a comment
- Zelenock: It is incorporated. It's called the North Village Plan...
- Zelenock: which was approved and was in the Master Plan and I think it's very key
- Zelenock: The Board on a 5:2 decision said to continue to negotiate with the developer on the 90 houses
- Zelenock: I was one of the persons who said no because at a minimum I think we should let you know
- Zelenock: We need mixed use. We need to have a gathering. We need to have a vibrant downtown.
Resident: Does anybody know the story behind that, of what they were hoping would happen with the property?
- [19m25s]
- Chockley: that was zoned for a planned shopping center
- Otto pounces. No, that's not right. [Chockley is just making shit up. Unreal.]
- Otto: The property was up for sale, probably for twenty years, for four million dollars
- Otto: So when Mr. Van Curler passed away, his wife approached the Township
- Otto: And asked the Township if they would be willing to buy it
- [20m19s]
- Chockley: For three million dollars if anyone wants to buy it
- Dockett: That's one person't opinion
- Dockett: As far as I know he wanted the Township to have that property.
- Dockett: That was his wish.
- Dockett: That's why the price was $330,000.00
- Dockett: And as far as I know, when we were doing the
- Dockett: It was bought as just a park
- Dockett: that was all it was gonna be as far as I can remember
- Dockett: And I was on the Board
- [21m47s]
Manley: We have multiple questions on the park
- Tim Saville: That's no longer a park; that's a boulevard.
- Tim Saville: You are not gonna want your kids playing in the center of two roads that are going back and forth
- Tim Saville: And when I was on the Downtown Planning Group that got disbanded
- Tim Saville: There was eight to ten acres that was supposed to be set aside for the Park,
- Tim Saville: of continuous acres, not counting what's on the west side of the road that's along the lake
- Tim Saville: So why don't you stop the developers fromw wasting their money
- Tim Saville: and say, Listen, give us the Park; give us our eight to ten acres
- Tim Saville: Let us do what we want and then give them the balance, say, here - you get to develop this
- Tim Saville: Stop wasting developers' money. They come up with all these plans
- Tim Saville: And then later on you say, oh by the way we need eight to ten acres for a Park
- Tim Saville: Because by the time you get done putting in a dog park in thereand a children's playground into the Park,
- Tim Saville: There's gonna be no room with five acres for anything else
- Tim Saville: That doesn't come anywhere near what this Township had originally talked about doing with that Park
- Tim Saville: And now you keep giving these developers more and more property
- Tim Saville: And now at this point with the 90 homes, we're only getting five acres for the Park
- Tim Saville: And that's nowhere near enough
Chockley: That's still under negotiation
- Chockley: The houses may not materialize
- Chockley: It may end up looking more similar to this [points at synthesis plan]
- Chockley: We've got another developer who...
- Chockley: This isn't written in stone but this was the plan that got put into the Master Plan
- Chockley: and it was adopted, so we'll see what we can do that approaches this
- [23m41s]
- Chockley: So we'll see [the language of almost unimaginable passivity]
Dockett: As far as I know the five acre park, the ingress and egress, there's three of them, is coming out of that
- Dockett: five acres.
- [23m55s]
- Dockett: That's all to get two hundred cars, or four, two cars per unit, to get them in and out every day
- Dockett: A lot of that property is gonna be taken up with driveways
- Dockett: with the road, that's going across the Park
- [24m14s]
Sue Shink: Hi, I'm Sue Shink. I'm your Washtenaw County Commissioner. I'm also a Northfield Township resident.
Otto: [a weird moment of embracing the synthesis plan while having utterly trashed it with her acquiescence to the whims of Livonia Builders]
- [30m41s]
- Otto: so there is time that people had to provide input
- [30m52s]
- ? We're talking about Today
- Otto what I'm saying is the Synthesis plan started three years ago
- Otto:
- [31m22s]
Dignan's voice. I've got a quick question
Resident: Real quick - Maybe it's time to have another public input, actually focus on this
Dignan: First I'd like to thank County Commissioner Shink
Chockley: When they came to us...
OK, um...
Mary Devlin:
- [37m59s]
- Mary Devlin:When Howard Fink was the Township Manager
- Mary Devlin:And he negotiated to get that sale done for that property
- Mary Devlin:There was a bench out in front of the property on Main Street that said Northfield Community
- Mary Devlin:And it was originally supposed to be Northfield Community Park
- Mary Devlin:That's my thought . Thank you.
[38m53s]
Resident: mic turned off: Resident: I've lived here since 1983
- Resident:
- Resident:
- Resident: I'm sorry; I apologize, so
- Resident: So, as one of the people who doesn't live in the town
- Resident: There's sort of a separation I perceive between the people who don't live in the town
- Resident: and the people who do live in the town, which I think's unfortunate
- Resident: but I think it's partly because there's no public space in the town
Manley: Nothing is concrete on this plan
Manley: Boardmembers, do you wanna continue this or do you wanna move on?
- Zelenock: I think, I didn't catch your name; we need to reengage the community
- Zelenock - Chockley photos
James Dumore: Hi; My name is James Dumore and I'm sorry to report I'm one of those trolls who live a township or so away
Zelenock: Someone mentioned an RFP
- Zelenock: We sent out a Request for Proposal for this. That's not what we got back.
- Otto: One thing I do want to add
- [45m31s]
- Otto: This lot has sat ...
- Otto: How are we gonna pay for the amenities and how are we gonna pay for the maintenance?
Resident:
Otto: [offers 30 acres of swamp again]
Dockett: I'd like to tell you
- Dockett: As far as I'm concerned, we should keep all the Park. We shouldn't be in bed with any developer.
- Dockett: We're not developers. We're making a big mistake any time we get involved.
- Dockett: They're looking to get the property for nothing
- Manley: OK
Chuck Steuer:
- Chuck Steuer: I have a quick point [about reluctance of MDOT, WCRC, Drains Commission, MDEQ/EGLE...
- [47m35s]
Resident: I'm all for engagement, but more than once it's been mentioned that
- Resident: We need to have multiple ways of getting in touch with people
- Manley: We do have a Township newsletter; we do have a facebook page
Resident: One of the points
- Resident: We're better off throwing the brakes on it than just filling it up with houses and not getting what we really wanted in the first place
- Resident: People are responding to the plans they see and the plans did not include a ton of houses and a tiny park
- Resident: It was quite the opposite
Manley: Next question. Can the Township provide an update on the marijuana application review process?
- [52m58s]
- Faith Wheeler
- Manley: All the questions were on either park issues or wastewater
- Resident: Task Force
- Resident: I think Town Hall Meetings are great
- Manley: I totally agree