Representative Betsy Coffia (D-Traverse City) and Senator John Damoose (R-Harbor Springs), who represent the county in the Michigan House of Representatives and state senate respectively, sat side-byside at the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners July 16 regular session to give them a “progress report” from Lansing.
Although Rep. Coffia and Sen. Damoose are from opposing political parties, their presentations emphasized cross-aisle collaboration on legislation that has positive impacts locally. After the presentation was over, several county residents spoke up during the public comment periods to say it was encouraging to see elected officials in the capitol putting the issues before party politics.
“We play politics to get where we are, but the job is to govern, not to play politics,” Damoose said. “And most of that — as you know full well — is relatively boring stuff. It’s routine stuff, but you got to do it. It’s not stuff that gets your base fired up. It’s not stuff that you necessarily even post about.”
Among other things, Coffia and Damoose discussed their efforts to introduce bills in the House and Senate that could “change the law (for) stateowned property across the state,” starting in Leelanau County.
These bills could allow housing to be built on state-owned property. Coffia said the idea was pitched to them by Glen Lake Community Schools Superintendent Jason Misner, who has identified state property near the school in Maple City that could be used for affordable “educator housing” for teachers and support staff, if new legislation allowed for it.
Coffia said these bills could avert a crisis at Glen Lake Community Schools, as many staff members could retire in the coming years and replacing them would be very difficult, partly because of the lack of affordable housing in the area.
“Glen Lake Schools has a cliff: half of their teachers can retire in the next five years. Half ! The superintendent pointed out to us that they pay pretty well for starting wages for teachers, but for context, when he moved up here from Kalamazoo a few years ago to take the job, he couldn’t find a house in Leelanau County on a superintendent’s salary. We have a real problem here,” Coffia said.
“The plan would be to develop educator housing for support staff and teachers for Glen Lake Schools,” Coffia continued. “There are other areas in my district and across the state that are dealing with some of these challenges — more flexibility for use of land to address this need.”
“Everywhere we go, we hear about this housing problem. It’s the number one thing anyone’s talking about. I don’t know if the government can come in and solve it, but there’s certain things we can do to help it — one of them being this project in Glen Lake,” Damoose said.
Damoose is currently senator for Michigan’s 37th District, which includes Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, and Emmet counties, as well as parts of Mackinac and Chippewa counties. He commented briefly on the educator housing in the county, as well as other bills he’s supported from the senate.
Damoose said that since he was elected in January 2023, he’s been willing to reach across the aisle to work with Coffia and other Democrats, including supporting the Michigan School Meals program providing breakfast and lunches at no cost to students.
“You have to back up sometimes and not just go with your gut instinct on ideology – you can’t make all your decisions based on it,” Damoose said. “I was arguing with my own caucus about this. They said, ‘John, you want to hand out free lunches to millions!’ Well, if a couple millionaires get a free lunch, to make this kid not feel like a second-class student, that’s worth it to me.”
“But even more, look at it this way: we’re not going to get a lot of tax cuts that we want as Republicans over the next few years. So, this is a way to actually return hard dollars into the pockets of hardworking taxpayers, because it saves $850 a year per kid,” Damoose continued.
Coffia represents all Leelanau County, half of Grand Traverse County, and part of Benzie County. She previously appeared at a board regular session to give an update in December. Since her last visit, Michigan’s fiscal year 2025 budget was approved, and it included another $125 million for the rural school transportation funding.
This represents a continuation of the House bill that Coffia introduced in 2023 to help rural school districts in Michigan deal with inequities in transportation costs compared to urban/suburban districts, particularly due to longer bus routes.
Coffia highlighted the continuation of these rural school district funds, along with other bills that she’s sponsored since. One of them has involved working with the Northwest Regional Airport Authority to change state statutes to allow the authority to fully cover Cherry Capital Airport employee’s healthcare.
She said that “all the other airports” in the state can do this already, but the joint Grand Traverse and Leelanau County airport authority cannot expand their employee healthcare benefits because they currently adhere to an older chapter of the aeronautics code. She said the bill passed the House and moved to the Senate, and there will be a hearing on it by the end of the year.
Interim Administrator Richard Lewis introduced the presenters. Lewis’s and Coffia’s paths previously crossed when Lewis was mayor of Traverse City from 2021-2023 and Coffia was a Grand Traverse County commissioner from 2019-2023. Lewis said that while they were serving in these positions, Coffia was instrumental in helping reopen the Traverse City Senior Center.
