The View From The Cheap Seats March 2019

The View From the Cheap Seats March 2019

FYI:  There are roughly 2,700 souls resident in our fair little metropolis here.  Of those, we have about 1,800 registered voters.  Last Monday, in addition to the 5 member Board of Trustees (who are required to attend) there were exactly 3 members of our community at the meeting.  I will address this in a future communication, but for now, let’s talk about what the 2,692 (or 1792, depending on which numbers you prefer) missed at Monday’s meeting.

Bruce Lowstutter, a member of our Planning Committee and Board of Review is progressing in his rehab and expects to make a full recovery in time.  So keep him in your prayers and good thoughts.  PS:  I am fully aware that there is a whole body of law specific to the functioning of the Planning Committee and we can only be without a member for a short period of time.  I may find that I need to select a replacement in the reasonably near future and have taken steps to meet that necessity should it arise.

After having the open positions on the Board of Trustees and the Planning Committee posted on the website, on the FB page and in the Salesman for the past 2 months I received a total of 4 letters of interest in the positions.  I interviewed all of them and have made the decision to appoint Mrs. Cindy Sue Franssen to the position vacated by Orien Wetzel when he left.  I look very much forward to working with her on the team.

Our phone & internet service at the office was _X___, was not ____, upgraded last Thursday and all is ____, is not _X___ working up to expectations.  I expect to have al up and humming along in the next few days…but then again, I expect a lot of things.

Orange Barrel Season is upon us and here in Concord, we have Seasonal Weight Restrictions, MDOT’s total rebuild of M-60 through Spring Arbor Township, the planned completion of King Rd. repairs and the proposal for possible work on our local thoroughfares.  All the relevant material is included with these notes, and we need a vote to commit the funds to our road repair.  I’ve attached the contract and memo elsewhere in this “news” letter.

Starting in 2017 I wrote for a grant to install a security system here in our office which the board approved at the February, 2018 meeting.  The application was submitted and approved on 2/2/2019 (attached) for a total of $1,678.00.  The best price we have on the system is through SDS at $3,355.64 so we are going to spend another $1677.64 to get this done, and if we want the grant money, it needs to be completed within 6 months of the date the grant award was issued.  We approved the funding and the order has been submitted to complete this process.

The Admin team recently attended MTA training on matters related to assessing, accounting and recreational marijuana.  We were told that under the recreational marijuana law, we are required to “opt out” and we needed to write an ordinance and conduct a public meeting to that effect, otherwise we were considered to have “opted in” which is the exact opposite of the medical marijuana laws.  The raw ordinance is attached for your review.

I have 3 firms working up formal quotes on the permit tracking document and will keep everyone posted on progress.  This is a complex document and will take some effort to develop.

Ms. Dishaw has completed the first leg of creating a digital copy of our Township Ordinances and they have been delivered to the PC for their review and reconstruction.  She has done an excellent job and as soon as the PC has worked their magic on them, I’ll get them approved by RII Planning Commission and get them on our website for your viewing pleasure.

Work on the Commercial Corridor is ongoing….slow, but ongoing.

Our next Board meeting will be April 8^th, at 6:00 PM in the Township Office.

Till next time –

Al