While the Leelanau Township board of trustees were ready to present information about the 2024-2025 budget on Tuesday, many audience members that tuned in via Zoom to listen to the budget hearing said they were not aware of the scheduled meeting until the day of or had difficulty finding specific information pertaining to adjusted salary resolutions.
“For the 30 years I was on the board, there was always an annual meeting,” said Leelanau Township resident and former board trustee Gary Fredrickson. “What I remember is this was a community meeting and this was not a board meeting. It gave the populous of this township the option of being able to set your salaries… You want to talk about the wages, but there ain’t nobody in the audience that has ever seen these. You talked about it at the last meeting, but it needs to be open, that’s the whole purpose of an open meeting for the annual meeting.”
Leelanau Township has not held an annual meeting to review the budget since before the COVID pandemic started in 2020. According to township board minutes from April 27, 2021, the 2020 Annual Meeting was canceled, and the 2021 meeting was changed from an annual meeting of the electors to a state of the township address. The then supervisor at the time, John Sanders, moved to no longer hold an annual meeting of electors, and trustee Gina Harder seconded the motion. The motion carried in a 4-1 vote, with trustee Denise Dunn opposed.
A general law township is not required to hold an annual meeting unless a majority of the township board decides by resolution to do so, or the electors vote to establish the annual meeting at a primary or general election. The annual meeting is usually held on the last Saturday in March at 10 a.m. with a special meeting to follow.
Leelanau Township resident Allan Dalzell, who also said he wasn’t aware of the meeting until an hour before it started, added that while it may be too late to switch to an annual meeting this year, it should have never been discontinued.
“I was very disappointed that it was given up a few years ago, we never should have given up the annual meeting,” Dalzell said. “It wasn’t good the last few years and it isn’t good now.”
Mike McMillan, who was appointed as township supervisor last spring, explained that salary recommendations have been available to the public for the past month. He also noted that the township board has been holding meetings to discuss and work on the budget in recent weeks. Salary resolutions were left blank, McMillan said, because the board wanted to have a discussion with the public before putting it on paper and coming to any resolutions.
“So I won’t accept that we have not been clear, that information has been out there…” McMillan said at the meeting. “At this hour, I’m very open to that discussion (of annual meetings), so I’m not trying to close off anything… I’m wide open on the suggestions… We’d like to have more of an open meeting, I can see the benefits of that.”
Trustee Georgie Murray, who was also supportive of the idea for suggestions to better the budget hearing process, said 90% of townships in the state don’t do annual meetings, and that they use the format Leelanau Township is currently practicing with people being able to have input through a budget hearing.
“It doesn’t matter what the majority of townships in the state do, we’re kind of a unique county up here,” Dalzell said in response to Murray’s comment. “We all get along and we all meet, we all talk about this, I still think an annual meeting is important, and I don’t really care what they do in Wayne County or whatever.”
“It is impossible for the public to keep up with you guys if you don’t communicate broadly and make changes at the last minute…” said Northport resident Anne Harper. “I found it odd that all of the salary resolutions that you plan to take action on today are left blank, so one needs to somehow rifle through various pages, which I have not had the chance to do, to figure out what the salaries are. The salaries are not on the five resolutions and the benefits aren’t listed clearly. So it’s really making it difficult for the average citizen to find out what you’re doing and to give any input…” Treasurer Denise Dunn, the longest serving township board member for over 20 years now, said she recalls the township holding an annual meeting every year at the same time and date in March. At these meetings, the public was allowed to raise salaries or decide to keep them the same. In addition, she said each department head would give an annual report at the meeting, which was “all very well received.”
“When that meeting was closed, we’d have lunch, and then we’d have our regular meeting afterwards,” Dunn said. “For me, I thought the annual meetings were really, really good because it gave the community the input if they wanted to put it in at that meeting in public. I was disappointed that the annual meetings have been discontinued… it made the public feel a part of the meeting.”
The budget hearing went over its allotted time by 10 minutes, moving the start time for the regular township board meeting to slightly after 5:30 p.m. The board agreed to set another special meeting to address the budget in the weeks to come to allow for more public comment and time to present on the actual budget categories and salary resolutions. That date has yet to be determined, but people can check the townships website leelanautownshipmi.gov for updates.
