Tonight the Northfield Township Fire Department was presented with a brand new flag in memory of retired Assistant Fire Chief Valentine Anthony Dreffs (Val) by Bill Burton and members of Dreff's family. 

Chief Bill Wagner: "Just a real quick history; We've never been able to afford to purchase a brand new flag and so that flag that we actually had there had been donated to us and Shellie Manning repaired that flag for us so that it was somewhat presentable.  In previous funerals before that flag, we actually borrowed flags from area departments, so I'm very proud that we'll have one for the Northfield Township Fire Department."

Deputy Fire Chief Chris Bishop 234w312hLater in the evening, Deputy Fire Chief Chris Bishop was commended by Chief Wagner and applauded by all for saving the life of a ten year old Augusta Township child following a July 6th dog attack.   Bishop said the child had recently undergone a seventh operation on his arm.  He was hopeful that the child would soon return to doing what ten year old kids do.  

Regular meeting business began with Ben Fineman's presentation of the Michigan Broadband Cooperative's effort to organize local sponsorship and co-ops to build and provide broadband internet service for residents.  Their original Lyndon Township presentation is below.

On the Agenda: the People’s Express contract, Fire Department Capital Improvement Plan and new Firetruck order, Main Street Sidewalk Project financing, Maintenance of the 75 Barker Road parking lot. 

Agenda Item 1: The People's Express Contract.  Last week Green Oak Township enthusiastically renewed their contract with People's Express.  (Green Oak Township Renews People's Express Contract)  Northfield Township's contract has been turned into a political football.

Agenda Item 2: According to Chief Bill Wagner's Fire Department Capital Improvement Plan, we need to restructure the Fire Department and its equipment.  The combination pumper/tanker trucks with which Wagner proposes to replace our existing separate pumpers and tankers each cost $250,000 from the General Fund.  Some money will be recovered by selling the existing equipment, as the process procedes.  A down payment of $125,000 for one pumper/tanker truck was requested at this meeting.  

Buried in Manager Fink's notes on the Fire Department Capital plans is Fink's recommendation that the Board reduce the Rainy Day Fund Balance policy to 50%.  It has only been a little over two years since the Board accepted crippling investment losses in order to turn un-easily spent WWTP and General Fund investments (bonds) into easily spendable cash.  Shortly afterward, the Board embraced Fink's scheme to reduce the Rainy Day fund balance policy to 85% and even held a Board Retreat, aka a visioning session, to discuss ways of spending the "excess" cash.  Fink did not insist on discussing or acting on the policy change immediately but said that the discussion and policy change would very soon be necessary.

Agenda item 3, the Main Street Sidewalk Project: Dockett asked why the Township was building a sidewalk for a Middle School school it no longer operated.  At one point Fink admitted there might be better uses for the funds but that this was the direction they had committed to; changing directions would waste time.  Dockett also objected to the narrow width of the sidewalk.

Fink danced around the issue of who would be paying for the project.

"There is no money coming out of the General Fund; there is no money coming out of the Township's coffers, but I do want to update you on the cost of the project.  We had had about $68,000 in unspent Community Development Block Grant funds through the county.  The total project cost came in higher than anyone had expected at $159,893, which means that our allocation of the community development block grant for roughly nine years will be taken up with this project.  I still recommend moving forward."  Fve minutes later, Fink admitted that the Township was borrowing from its general fund, describing the CDBG annual grants as "dollars that we can borrow for from the future."

Agenda Item 4: The DDA has offered to pay half the cost of sealcoating the parking lot of our old Township Hall at 75 Barker Road.  Dockett asked if the new owner of the Driftwood Marina could contribute since they have asked for about twenty of those public parking spaces to be reserved for his upcoming restaurant.  Dockett was told that the question could be asked during the discussion of parking space for the Driftwood Marina/Restaurant/Bar/Grill.  (It was not.) 

To cover the cost of new signs marking the lot as public parking, Engstrom added $800 to the amount provided in the motion to cover the cost of sealcoating.  Dockett objected to that.  Engstrom's laughing response: "Oh yeah, we're just made of money."  The motion was approved.

Added, as Agenda item 5, was Supervisor Engstrom's proposal that the Township abandon the township's former committment to MDOT to pay for landscaping or maintaining landscaping at the Territorial Road Roundabouts.  These roundabouts will be built as part of the Territorial Road bridge replacement phase of the US-23 improvement project.  Township Manager Fink asked the Board for the authority to make that decision himself but the Board seemed to reject his power grab.  Actually, if you listen to the entire five minute discussion, it is difficult to discern precisely what the Board voted on or agreed to do.  Engstrom's motion is unusually vague and ambiguous.

Discussion item 1: Renewal and modification of the National Staffing lease of 75 Barker Road.  The Board plans to change National Staffing's lease to a month to month contract.  They discussed reducing to as little as sixty days, any required notification of lease termination.

Discussion item 2: A proposal to designate twenty or so parking spaces of 75 Barker Road Parking for use only by the restaurant and bar that Township Manager Fink has apparently, according to Fink, convinced the Driftwood marina's new owner to build across the road from Polly's Market.

During Board member comments, Wayne Dockett informed the Township that Township Manager Howard Fink has moved his residence to Green Oak Township.  It's still in Whitmore Lake, said Fink.  No one knows when the move occured, if a move occured, and Fink was not forthcoming.

[Written before the Meeting]

Discussion of Fink's 85% Fund Balance initiative first appeared on the April 22, 2014 agenda.  I've been a bit busy lately so I haven't had time to put together a LiveAgenda.

July 26, 2016 Meeting documents:

Meeting Packet Breakout:

At this meeting Benjamin Fineman of the Michigan Broadband Cooperative (don't get too excited; they don't have any money) will talk about their efforts to organize public funding for Broadband infrastructure in local townships.  Below is their Lyndon Township proposal.  Cost per household looks to be at least $7,000 plus monthly rates.

The documents found on the Township website:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Board meeting was hard to watch.  Wayne Dockett was absent, so we lacked the comic relief of watching Wayne poke holes in inflated public personas and half-baked ideas.  Wayne - we hope you're ok.

The pain began with Call to the Public.  A long line of Township residents chided Township Treasurer Kathy Braun about the hurt and offense they felt when they read Braun's fiction-filled editorial (and free campaign ad) in the July issue of the Courant newspaper.  They also addressed the issue of the huge financial losses occured by panic-selling sewer and general fund investments.  Patrick Tetreau asked for a response to his FOIA requests for documentation of the Contracts and evaluations of the Township Manager.   Craig Warburton described Board and PC corner-cutting, asking us to think about what that implied about their behavior when out of the public eye.

The Board responded by not responding.   They talked about how nice Braun was, how well intentioned, how hard she had worked. 

There's no argument about that.  There never was. 

Supervisor Engstrom gave her mouthpiece, Township Manager Fink, a full fifteen minutes for election campaigning on the Board's behalf.  They were the "best people he'd ever worked with."  This was the "best work he'd ever done."  Under the beatitude inducing glow of the new Boardroom's $14,000 worth of lighting fixtures, he attacked this blog.  He said our reporting was "personal."  It "turned his stomach."   The reporting was all "supposition," all "speculation."  He said there was nothing here but scattered "shards of truth."  Later he walked that back, dialing it back to a a less insulting, [we were] "very often wrong."   He bludgeoned NorthfieldNeighbors.today with his most indignant bluster.  He capstoned his litany of vague generalizations by calling NN.today's observations, "rhetoric," as if everything he said was not.  The Board nodded along.

Attacking NN.today for examining Board behavior "personally" is misguided.  Everything about this situation is personal.  Did any Master Plan supporter take the attempt to subvert the Master Plan un-personally?  Does anyone take the transparent lies and self-serving spin published in the Courant un-personally?  Does anyone not watch every facet of a person's personal behavior when they decide whether a person is telling, or selling the truth?  This Board has earned having their behavior examined under a microscope.

It is a bitter irony that when the Biltmore request first arose, we learned from our FOIAs that Trustee Kathy Braun was the Trustee who defended the Master Plan.  Neighbors were heartened to see that.  It shouldn't have been a surprise.  Braun had been a longtime supporter of the Neighbors.  Back in the era of the $28 Million dollar Territorial Bridge nonsense, she had Neighbor campaign signs proudly displayed on her lawn.   She was the first person to register for this website.  I do not believe that Braun really believes everything that she wrote in her Courant editorial.  She wrote and signed it anyway.  That saddens me.  This has taken on the dimension of a soul-destroying personal tragedy.

Supervisor Engstrom topped off the introductory ironies - what amounted to twenty minutes of election campaigning for Boardmembers - by insulting the Citizens who'd dared speak their mind about issues that have become campaign issues.  We're here "to do business," she said.

Later in the evening, the Board was schooled by Township Planner Phil McKenna.

Phil McKenna BOT 2016 07 12 pic1 ahead

Phil McKenna: "You're a little bit ahead of yourselves.  What do you need one for now?"

What was this about?  Items 3 through 6 on the Agenda.  Van Curler.  At this meeting, the Board voted to pay $329,000.00 in cash for the purchase.  Fink's earlier recommendation to borrow had been roundly rejected.  The implications of this were mentioned.  The Board must now abandon its hard-won 85% rainy-day fund balance policy.  The closing on the property has been fast-tracked and is now contingent only on a staked property survey being completed.

Earlier in this process, Trustee Wayne Dockett had recommended a staked survey to make it easier for Boardmembers to visualize what they were getting.  Dockett wasn't at this meeting so no one championed his very reasonable point that Boardmembers actually view the stakes.   But no personal visits are required.  The Board's haste was underlined when Planner Phil McKenna informed the Board that they were trying to hire a commercial broker (Agenda item 6) before they had a plan or even a clue as to what they wanted a broker to do.  Fink blithely opined that he was planning on soliciting "3 or 4" broker proposals, "to develop relationships" for down the road.  He asked McKenna to toss out a few names.  Fink said he was thinking about using the broker who handled the Van Curler property fire-sale today; he named the broker.

McKenna patiently explained that it wasn't that easy.  He explained why brokers didn't want their time wasted.  He explained the costs to brokers of preparing proposals.  $19,000 was one figure mentioned, incurred in a particularly complicated case.  McKenna explained this and more.  For the Board, it was a real world education from a Planner of long and deep experience.

Thank goodness someone who has actual hands-on experience is involved in this process.

 Looking on the bright side, as longtime Township meeting devotee Mary Devlin often commends us to do, it seems that the Township government has heard our complaints about the unreadable financial reports in meeting packets.  The financial reports in tonight's meeting packet have been rotated so you can read them.  They are marginally more legible. 

There has been no explanation of why they've been so barely readable for so long.  In my opinion, there is no credible technical excuse.  This is nothing more than an administration's policy of making it as difficult and miserable as possible to read Township financial reports, in other words, a standard political evasion.  Feigned transparency.  The effect falls most harshly on older eyes, older citizens.  The Board is either paying no attention, doesn't care, or is laughing along with the policy.  Wayne Dockett was the only Board member I've ever heard complain.  The Board "smiled" him off.

I'm guessing that the real reason the reports suddenly became more readable is so that we could read the report listing the cost of Boardroom materials and physical labor.

According to the last page of the financial reports, the Boardroom cost about $52,000.   Let's hope it stays there.  The Board was promised that taxpayers wouldn't have to pony up $60-$80,000 to upgrade the HVAC.  At the July 6th Planning Commission meeting, sweating in his brand new "professional" Boardroom, Fink looked more than a bit dissatisfied with that plan.

Unmentioned and unaccounted for in that $52,000 claim was the time and expense of scheming, fantasizing, planning, replanning, managing, procuring, contracting, administering, and lobbying for the Boardroom since Fink's first sales pitch for a "professional" Boardroom in 2014.

Our Township Board went along with the fiction. 

They can't have it both ways, boasting of their business acumen, while at the same time allowing fantasy to permeate Township cost accounting.

During Board member comments came one of the uglier moments of this meeting.  Township Clerk Westover suggested politicizing the Township's small contribution toward the People's Express (PEX) because the PEX Treasurer, Lenore Zelenock, had spoken out about the Township's spending. 

Earlier in the meeting, Zelenock had presented PEX's financial report and asked that the Township renew it's annual committment.  The PEX accounting showed that the Township's annual committment meant that Township citizens could get a ride to hospitals and doctors in Ann Arbor for $12 instead of $45.  They could catch a ride around Northfield Township for $1 instead of $12.  People's Express can do this because it uses local committments as seed money for matching grants.   In a year the senior and disabled Township Citizen riders save over $40,000.  The Township's cost for that, a flat rate fee per trip, is about $16,000.  The PEX data showed that less than two percent of those trips were rides to work.

 This is not the first time the People's Express contract has run into Township politics.  Fink delayed their previous contract renewal for months, claiming that they had insufficient insurance.  He demanded $5 Million in insurance, a crippling, cost inflating demand which apparently no one in this business carries.  The contract approved by the Board on December 9, 2014 was stalled and stalled again by Fink.  The Board finally overrode Fink's objections at the July-28, 2015 meeting, re-approving the People's Express contract.

 

Meeting Documents:

 

7-12-2016 Northfield Township Board of Trustees meeting packet

Individual Packet Items:

Department Reports:

Financial Reports:

People's Express:

Arvin Sango:

Van Curley Property Purchase and Planning:

Planning Commission recommended Ordinance Changes:

 

Blowing in Seed Corn 2016 05 22 420w 315h

This is a Sutton Road farmer's seed drill being refilled with seed corn in May.  The enormous drill is over 30 feet wide.  In the July, 2016 issue of the Courant, we were informed by Whitmore Lake's leading authority on virtually nothing, Gary Wellings, that farming is defunct in Northfield Township. 

 

 

 

At tonight's meeting Sally Hodges announced her retirement as Northfield Township Planner.  She will be moving to North Carolina.  Her McKenna Associates replacement will be Patrick Sloan.  You may remember Sloan from the July 14, 2015 Planner interviews:

Video: McKenna Associates Principal Planner Patrick Sloan 7-14-2015 interview

 

Watch the 7-6-2016 Northfield Township Planning Commission meeting on VideoNorthfield

2016 06 28 Fink Fanning himself

Manager Fink fanned himself exuberantly during this meeting.  He interrupted the PC discussion to explain that the air conditioning had been turned on at 3 pm, although the brand new $60,000? Boardroom seemed a steambath.  What are the odds that he'll replay this Oscar winning performance a few more times to goad the Board into paying for $60,000-$80,000 worth of HVAC work, a cost which was part of Fink's original proposal?

 

Yes, another Planner has left.  Four minutes into this meeting Township Manager Howard Fink announced that Sally Hodges has retired from McKenna Associates.  Phil McKenna explained that he had sold the company to McKenna's Executive Vice President in early June.  Hodges' announcement followed.  Patrick Sloan, who introduced McKenna to Northfield Township in 2015 following the resignation of Carlisle Wortmann, will assume Sally Hodges' role.  Interesting times.  The full conversation, maybe 8 minutes total, is linked to in the LiveAgenda.

I will fill in this report as I find time.

Boardroom Lockout 2016 06 28 402w315h

Tawn Beliger and Pat Kelly waiting for Closed Door Session to End

[Meeting Documents]

 

 

 Meeting Highlights:

The Township Legal Counsel has requested, through McKenna Associates, a formal written legal opinion describing and prescribing the process which must be followed to properly consider the 2014 request by Biltmore.   If a public hearing is required or if the legal opinion cannot be issued in time, the June 29th Special Meeting will be cancelled.

At this meeting, the Living Water Lutheran Church Conditional Use and Site Plan for their new Barker Road location were approved.  Revised plans for building the parking lot led our Township Engineers to reverse their objections and recommend approval.  Permeable parking surfaces reduced runoff to the point that the planned detention pond would be sufficient. 

You may remember that the advantages of permeable parking surfaces were loudly derided during a previous Township administration when it was suggested that the Meijer's project use them to reduce the volume of runoff into the Horseshoe Lake watershed.

The effect of market forces on the development of Downtown Whitmore Lake was weighed against the Township's vision during the PC's Goals and Objectives Agenda item.  Interesting perspectives were provided by both Planner Sally Hodges and Township Manager Fink.   The regulatory burden inhibiting downtown Business property improvement was described.  A 5% change or addition requires full engineering and a Planning Commission review, a possible $10,000 expense.  Fink has mentioned these regulations before.

[Meeting Documents]

(Kudos to the Planning Commission - the Packet is a work of PDF art)

 

Nixon Road Farming Courant Style pic3 965w177h

Nixon Road, North of Dhu Varren, July 14, 2016:  A Gary Wellings Farmland Dreamscape

  1. June 14, 2016 Northfield Township Board of Trustees
  2. May 24 Northfield Township Board of Trustees Workshop
  3. May 18, 2016 Northfield Township Planning Commission
  4. Rural setback variance approved at May 16, 2016 Northfield Township ZBA
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