Improvements at Herman Park in Suttons Bay Township continue to be a source of controversy, as the township’s park and recreation committee is disagreeing with a contractor about the placement of a sidewalk leading to the dog park. The township board took action at their July 10 meeting, accepting the contractor’s recommendation.
At their June regular meeting, the township board had approved a contract with Outside Edge Concrete Construction to install a sidewalk extension in Herman Park, connecting the pathway to the new dog park that opened in September 2023.
However, Outside Edge did not return calls from the Parks Manager Jared Pontius after this meeting. So, the board awarded the contract to another one of the bidders, Leelanau Excavating, for “slightly more money,” at a July 1 special meeting, according to the meeting minutes.
This contractor wants to place the sidewalk at a different angle than the parks and recreation committee had in mind, however. Committee members had agreed that the sidewalk would veer off to the dog park at a slight angle to discourage people from cutting across the grass, but the contractor preferred to have the sidewalk make more of a 90-degree turn around a downward slope.
This prompted the parks and recreation committee to ask the township board to step in and have the contractor install the sidewalk as the committee had intended. Ultimately, however, the board accepted the plan presented by Leelanau Excavating, as recommended by Pontius.
“We can’t keep going back and forth between parks and rec and the township board,” township Trustee Dorothy Petoskey said. “We have to give faith to the person we hire to make those decisions or make those recommendations and bring them to this board.”
“It’s been a long time since we had a lot of trust and communication between the parties. We have to start trusting in our recommendations from our parks manager,” Petoskey continued.
This isn’t the first time that the parks and recreation committee has come in conflict with township staff over the direction taken with the township’s parks. Committee members also clashed with Pontius’s predecessor, Parks Supervisor Bill Drozdalski. Drozdalski voluntarily resigned from his position in October 2023, and Pontius was hired two months ago in May.
The board also followed up on actions at their previous regular meeting by sending a draft of an intergovernmental agreement with Suttons Bay Village to village staff for review. If the agreement is approved by both governmental units, it would allow the village to extend water and sewer services into the township on a case-by-case basis.
Larry Mawby, founder and president of the nonprofit land trust Peninsula Housing, requested the township board to enter into this agreement with the village at their June meeting. Since then, a draft agreement was reviewed by township attorney Tim Figura.
Mawby said that the village does not actually have the capacity to extend these services to the village, but if Peninsula Housing makes the effort to use village utilities on their projects in the township, it will improve their chances of getting federal tax dollars.
Mawby also presented a draft ordinance at the June meeting that would allow the township to collect a payment in lieu of taxes on workforce housing projects, but as of the July 10 meeting, Figura was still reviewing this document.
