Township Board - Regular Meeting

I'd like to call the meeting to order. If everyone would stand for Pledge of Allegiance, please. Roll call.

Everybody's here?

Go ahead, Joe.

Yeah. Mary Jo and Matt Brian, I want to just update you guys on the Onekama Walk Sidewalk Project in the village. We're working with the Safe Routes to School Organization under MDOT and have met with them. They, MDOT, everybody seems to feel it's a very viable project to kick it all off this evening we're going to be getting approval from the village council to sign a contract with msu engineering school of engineering to do all of the engineering work on the project uh it's a bargain at six thousand dollars so the council will approve the contract and the funding and we're going to be establishing a special sidewalk commission in the village to look at what it's going to take to make sidewalks viable. But I'll let Mary Jo explain a little bit. We've got a community meeting coming up September 17 with what are called walking audits.

So there's actually two things that are going to happen on Thursday, September 17, and you'll be getting a flyer that looks something like this. First thing is what they're calling a walking audit. I work with the 20 people who are willing to form into 4 teams to basically walk prescribed routes and make observations that they have a little form and they'll be documented on that will be done between 3 o'clock and then 415 are going to regroup. At that time they'll come over to the fire center and there's going to be an open community meeting. The first of three that the MSU folks will facilitate and that will go from 430 to 6. So we're going to specifically invite the folks here at the Township, plus a lot of other people. As you probably know, this was tried once before in 2011. And we feel a lot more positive about it now because they've dropped the two requirements that sort of were a stumbling block. One was a minimum number of kids affected, and secondly, a match. And they've dropped both of those requirements now. So we're pretty positive. We have great people we're working with already from MSU. And looks like full steam ahead right now.

The total grant that we're chasing is about $945,000, which should do an ample amount of sidewalk. And the main route through the village along M-22, the north side will be done all the way from Macbeth out to Prospect. So essentially, the original central section of the Onekama Trails Project, the south side will be probably intermittent. When we met with the Safe Routes to School people, they said a continuous sidewalk, the entire south side is not possible. So there are ways we can get around that. But the concept is that when it's finished, it'll be there and ready. The township goes forward with what's going out the north end. We've got the central section ready to connect. And if eventually there's a south trail, we can connect that into this. So trying to look ahead and make it as feasible as possible. Great.

Questions, anybody? No, thank you very much. Libby?

Please let the official minutes know this is not a public comment. and that I, Libby Schleifer, am making a specific request of action from the Onekama Township Board tonight. Please add to the agenda a discussion and decision on the status of the Onekama Township website. The Onekama Township taxpayer website was created over four years ago and updated six months ago. It continues to lack transparency, accuracy, and consistency. More importantly, it continually fails to serve the public's right to information and communication about the actions, policies, procedures, financial decisions, and legal agreements made on that my township role. For over four and a half years as a taxpayer member of the public, I have attempted to work with the board for a more transparent, accountable, consistent, and user-friendly website. I've been told privately and publicly by board members the following. The township website, while having some issues, is one of the best municipal websites in the state. The website is under the preview of the administrative committee consisting of the township treasurer and clerk. The administrative committee is responsible for the decisions about the website. The board has not adopted any policy or procedures governing the website. There is no procedure for securing public input on the website. Access to updating the website is very limited. AT THE MARCH 2025 DURING THE BUDGET HEARING, THE BOARD DECLINED TO HIRE A PART-TIME WEB ADMINISTRATOR. A YEAR AGO, THE BOARD APPROVED THE EXPENDITURE TO UPDATE THE WEBSITE. THE UPDATED VERSION WENT LIVE MARCH 2ND WITHOUT NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC. IT HAD MISSING AND OBSOLETE INFORMATION. because the previous version was not updated or maintained in a consistent manner. At the June meeting, the clerk assured the board that the present township personnel were capable of maintaining the website and hiring additional part-time help was not necessary. The August 15th memo from the treasurer to the board states, and I thought, I have begun begun auditing our website against the previous vision, as well as for outdated, misplaced, missing, and redundant information. The process is ongoing." End quote. My public service experience, my professional expertise, and my journalism education has taught me the control of the flow of communication should not be held by one or two people, not only because it concentrates the power in the hands of a few, causes confusion, and creates inconsistencies, also because life happens, and sometimes the holder of the communication key is not available to provide the public with needed information. To underscore these points, We have had four township clerks in the last four and a half years. Under the present website, the public does not have the access to information. The township elected officials have not had the time, nor have they allocated the resources to support a vital communication tool, and neither the public nor the elected officials are bent. I am requesting the entire board take responsibility and accountability for a transparent, accurate, consistent, and user-friendly website. At tonight's meeting, the board needs to pass a motion that supports the principles of the website that the public can use as trustworthy and a reliable means of learning about the township policies and procedures. The board allocate the funds and personnel necessary to ensure the township website is transparent, accurate, consistent, and easy to use. And the board provided timeline for achieving these goals. You as the Amecama Township Board have the authority and responsibility to take these steps. With a fund balance of nearly $1 million, The financial resources are available to provide the public with a trustworthy and easily accessible source of information. After more than four and a half years of funding the Onequa Township website, PREs and non-PRE taxpayers, visitors, businesses, and citizens deserve a website that provides information for and to the public And if the Onekama Township Board decides differently tonight, the public has a right to know that decision also. Additionally, there have been no recordings of Onekama Township meetings, special or regular, available on the Manistee Public Television since May 8th. The 2026 Township meeting minutes were posted on the website about 30 hours ago, along with a packet of for the July 22nd meeting. At every level of government, national, state, and local, democracy requires an informed public. Over more than four years of conjoling, requesting, inquiring, offering constructive and concrete criticisms, collaborating, listening, research, sharing, and protecting the board from Open Meeting Act violations, I have had enough. The board can do better. The public deserves better. I have copies of my comments for the board. Hopefully it will be useful for the upcoming conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you. Dan, you want to say something? I think it's a good place to do it. That's why I'm here with you.

I was in, I think it came, I believe it was April of this year, getting worried about possible modification of the Olmecuminoids ordinance. I did some research on the internet and researched communities along Lake Michigan what typical noise ordinance limits are. And in the evening, generally speaking, they're from sunset to 11 p.m. is the evening ordinance. And I couldn't find, the only exception to that that I could find was Onekama at 1 a.m. for some reason.

And we've had incidents at our house, and I've heard of other incidents where You know, people are aware of the 1 a.m. noise order is limited. It's very inconvenient. I would look to see if the township could possibly modify that to normal standards of 11 p.m.

So I thought they told me that it should be referred back to the Planning Commission. I think we have two different times. I think they...

There's two different times. When I looked it up after we received the one communication from them.

I think the short-term ordinance actually specifies an 11 p.m. noise restriction for short-term rentals. And maybe that's the dual limits, but the actual...

Okay, I think you guys look at that. It's a good thing to look at. It should be the same to me. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else for public comment? Yes, sir. I don't know if it's time for this or not, but the recycling bins, is there any headway on that? It's been going on for a year. Nothing's been done. Such as? You mean finding a different place for them? Give you? That's your job. That's mine. My job personally?

I don't know.

I've only been trying for four years. The board's job. Well, yes.

You have a suggestion?

Yeah, move them. To? Get them out of there. To? Wherever you want. Besides them. That's not a great answer.

I could have answered that all day. That was a big stall. Nothing happened with that.

That wasn't a stall on our part, sir. What they did was I asked permission at the meeting. I asked permission at the meeting. I was told it was okay. Six months later, they reversed their decision. Okay. That's not on me. I'm sorry.

What's the progress now?

Progress now is they're over there. I thought they couldn't be that close to a residential home. No. They don't appear to like it. I don't like it. I live on that road also. Okay. And I've picked up trash along here several times.

What was the matter with the fairgrounds when they had it inside the fairgrounds? That was a perfect spot.

I agree, and we all thought so, too. And the county said it takes up too much room over there for the fair. Oh, yeah. I went to a a green team meeting in small town.

One lower corner and it picks up through untrue. And they would not allow it.

The green team wouldn't allow it. I agree with you. To me, more people use the recycle center to go to the fair completely, right? On a year-round basis. And yet we can't use 100 feet of the parking lot.

That is the way I feel about it, too. It was a perfect spot for it. It was enclosed by a fence. Nothing blew away. Now the road looks like a third world country when you go by it. Not so much right now because they do have somebody picking it up from recycling.

Matt and I put the fence up back a couple of months ago. It was like the day after a meeting. I go over there and clean up stuff, but there's been very little stuff. that is blown out of that parking lot since we put the fence up.

Well, that fence don't cover everything.

No, and I picked up a few pieces across the street. I'm not denying it, but I'm just telling you in general. I know it has cut back, but I... You're telling me you're getting stuff the other way now along the building? side, the back side of the building is blowing from behind the building that way?

You know, it depends on which way the wind blows. It really does.

When the empty goes dumpster, even if it's windy, it can go anywhere. I agree with that.

Yeah. One thing that people may or may not know is that where the dumpsters are, that's county property. So we're kind of at the mercy of what they'll allow us to do. And they said they don't necessarily want to you know, constructing a $20,000 fence may or may not be something we're even allowed to do.

You really think it would cost $20,000 to build a fence?

Well, we got a bid for a fence from someone who was how much?

Straight-line fence bid $30,000 on the fencing at the DeVoe property.

Find a different person that's been started there.

But it's an 8-foot high fence. Yeah, and I understand your Yeah, you have a suggestion? I'm all ears. I think the whole board is. We don't know what to do. We could quit. I mean, that's not a tax on the people on the road. Stop taxing them?

Yeah, stop taxing them if we got eliminated.

I wish I had that authority, but I don't.

Did you look into the... Can we wait until it's on the agenda to actually discuss it?

Yeah, he made a comment, so I'm sorry. That's correct. Okay, so we'll discuss it. It's on the agenda today. I'm sorry? It's on the agenda for later today. We will discuss it.

Maybe I got ahead of the program.

You did, but that's okay. I'll let you do your piece. Sorry. No, it's no problem. Anybody else? Are we moving on? We're moving on.

Anybody online, if you'd like to make a comment, just unmute yourself.

Going? Can I ask a question? Going. Will there be public comment towards the end of the meeting? It's not on the agenda.

Do you want to? Do I reserve to write that public comment later? That's fine. Yeah. Okay. So you're happy? Yeah, there you go. Thank you. You're welcome. Approval of agenda. I'd like to move up. Is Red Rock here? Oh, you're okay. I'm sorry. I'm going to move you up right behind Patty because Patty's over here, right? Okay. So I'm going to move you up to there. And I'd like to add the website on here for new business somewhere. We can just add it. I'd like to at least discuss it.

So put it in your new business.

That's all I have to do. Anybody? No? Good. Patty, you want to give your, because, oh, approval of the minutes first. I'm sorry. Ring of Township Board meeting July 22nd.

Time out. I think we want to approve the agenda. Before we go to the minutes.

As amended, correct.

As amended. So I could move for the approval of the agenda with those changes.

Correct. Second. Second. Discussion on being heard. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, carried. The 2026 July 22 minutes. As amended?

No, not amended. So I redid a new draft. The difference between the original draft on the website and this draft is I caught a typo. in here, and so I have fixed that typo. The typo occurs under motion to amend minutes of the May 20th, 26th regular board meeting in the verbiage that Cindy wanted. I mistyped the word reviewed. So you have a clean draft in front of you that can be approved without having to have a motion to amend the previous set. We'll move.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Anybody heard all in favor say aye? Aye. Opposed? That's carried. Okay, County Commissioner Mr. Gantz sent me a text and apologized for not being able to be here. It says son's birthday, I think, or something going on, but not tonight. So I'm sorry, Patty, you're up. Welcome.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I am here with the SBA Office of Disaster Recovery. We're here because of the storms that came through Michigan between April 10th and 21st, flooding the tornadoes that left damage in their way. Manistee County is one of 27 primary counties under the Presidential Declaration, which means that you have the full scope of SBA disaster assistance programs available to you in the form of low-interest loans. What does that mean? They started 2.875% for homeowners and renters, as low as 4% for business owners. You can get up to $500,000 if you're a homeowner, up to $100,000 if you're a renter, up to $2 million if you are a business owner. If you've already, you know, if you had damage and you've already made repairs and you had out-of-pocket costs, maybe in the form of credit cards or you took money out of your 401k, You can apply to replace that money with this money if it's a lower interest rate. It might be advantageous. The deadline is coming up. It is August 31st, which is why we are out here making a hard push. You can get an extension, but it's always best to try to get as early as you possibly can. I have a couple of flyers. I think I emailed these to you. I will leave them over here. There's a fact sheet and flyers. It's as simple as scanning the QR code. It's a free application process. It's pretty easy. If you have a FEMA grant, you can also apply for this. They do not cancel each other out. You can do both. And I think that's the highlight. So are there any questions I can answer?

This is mainly for someone who didn't have insurance.

No, you can have insurance, but maybe your insurance doesn't cover the full cost of the damage.

I think most people's insurance did not because of, frankly, no, appreciated something. What did they call it? They took money off our payment because it was depreciated use or something when they gave a second payment based on some figure.

Yeah, I'm not recalling that term right off the top of my head.

Maybe it's not me or Marisha. It was a depreciated value, so they had to replace it to 100% because your roof wasn't 100%. So let's say a roof was at 80%, they replaced it, and you had to pay the difference between the 80% and the 100%.

Right.

So this will cover that?

This would cover that, yes. You'd need proof of the damage, like photos or whatever you would take, and or receipts. Yeah, yes. Okay.

Well, that would be helpful. I would think most people probably got that because no one had a brand new roof. I mean, you got replaced with a brand new roof, but I don't know. Okay. But she's not talking about the hail. She's talking about the rain we had, right?

She's talking about the rain, the floods. What about the hail? The recent flood.

April 10th to the 21st, if the hail came in that time period. Where were you? I mean, no, really.

So the disaster two years ago? No, this past April. No, I know, but that one was probably... $30 million if we had two-inch hail. Really, I'm not lying. That's what I'm talking about depreciation. So now I know why you're giving me the weird look. Now I understand.

They didn't do anything.

Yeah, well, they didn't do anything. So what damage was there from the rain? Oh, the road flooding. Those guys looked rough.

Trees, by the way. Trees. Well, they covered that? I don't believe so.

I don't believe we had any, is the term substantially, a substantial amount of damage that trips that. I don't believe we had any.

Well, someone had water damage in their basement. Maybe we covered that. Okay. Okay. Now, I'm just going to watch this roof.

Huh? Jill, put it in the potter unless it's really. Oh, that's right. Blew the roof off a pole barn. Is that how?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I'm not the expert on, like, which things will definitely count, but it doesn't hurt to apply. Like I said, it's very easy. Okay.

Anybody have questions? Audience? Anybody? Do you guys do help with the road commission? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I was at the road commission meeting, and it's causing more.

issues that what most people think, especially for the Brogan School District. I think they've lost maybe close to 20-some kids already.

It's a two-hour bus trip near the school.

Wow.

So they're going to end up laying off staff. Yeah. The bridge is closing down.

She wouldn't even saw it. Nobody even thought about that.

Yeah, we're like physical damage. We don't have anything to do. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good day. Well, let's jump right into oil and gas. Perfect.

Thanks for giving me the time. Dwayne Jones with Core Energy and Red Rock Exploration. I've been in contact with Dave and Jennifer, and we've approached the township along with nearly everybody else, residents in the township, about a 10 square mile area, north of the village, Lake Michigan, all the way over to Millard Road and all the way up on a road or just north of that. About a 10 square mile area to shoot some seismic in hopes that we'll find some stray, what they call, shelf reefs, which most of you, I'm guessing, that have lived here for a while are pretty familiar with the oil and gas exploration operations and what the trend is for the Niagara Reefs, which basically runs from Manistee all the way up to Rogers City through Kalkaska, Gaylord, up that way. That's the main thrust of that, what they call the fairway. And Shell, back in the day, came through what you would consider kind of rudimentary 2D seismic. And that equated to a bunch of squiggly lines on some paper that the geologists would look at. and swear up and down that he saw some anomaly there, and they would go and drill, and occasionally they'd hit a big old oil reserve, and Shell found those, what I would consider low-hanging fruit in the way of a million and a half to three million barrel reefs. Well, now things have refined quite a bit more, and we're looking for all those little reefs that Shell didn't find along the edges, along the perimeter, called shelf reefs. They're the two and 300,000 barrel reefs. And so we are working in that area right now to shoot some 3D seismic. 3D seismic is far more refined and far more exact than the old 2D stuff. First of all, way back then they used these enormous three to five pound gel charges. They'd drill a big hole, pack them down in there, blow them up, and of course then you had sinkholes and all manner of other problems. Now we're using something about the size of an M-80, go down about 50 feet far, and hold about less in diameter than a bobcat. So it's far less invasive. And so what we want to do is shoot 3D seismic out in the area. We have almost the entire 10 square mile area permitted, either with surface owners and or surface and mineral owners. And O'Neill Township, has something less than 40 acres, right around 40 acres on the corner, or just north of the corner of 11 Mile and Erdmann Road. And it's up near the cemetery, not to the cemetery. And it would be on the west side of Erdmann Road, although there is a small, I think a three or five acre piece on the corner on the east side. And so what we're looking for, what I'm asking for today, We started by asking for a geophysical exploration agreement with a lease option. Well, in the interest of time and simplicity, we think it's far easier to just do a geophysical exploration agreement. You see something we like, we'll come back and negotiate a lease later that would be far more lucrative for the township anyway. So with that, Hopefully I covered all the high spots. What do we have in the way of questions? Anything?

Do you have the agreement, Ryan?

You guys also have the agreement on your packet.

I think you may have the agreement that has the...

Yes, we have the original agreement. What I'm referring to that's in the packet was the email communication with Tom Greer that I also included for you guys.

And was that the one with the optional lease or just the geophysical with a Simply the geophysical reading. The communication.

The communication when we mentioned.

Okay. The communication mentions $30 an acre. Let's forget about all that. Let's just do $30 an acre so we can get our, your seismic testing done. Correct. That's how I read that.

Yep, exactly right. Yeah, simple as that.

Thanks, Mark.

That's a good point.

Dwayne, I guess my real question, and I had attempted to have some conversations with Dan Warren, but I didn't get any direct answers. I'm trying to understand what the benefit is to us.

The benefit would be, should we see something that we like and want to drill a well, and it happens to be under the township's acreage, you would then negotiate a favorable lease. You get a royalty, which is a revenue stream that can go on for any number of years, depending on the reserve. You know, call it a, let's say it's 15% royalty. You get your 40-acre share of that 160-acre unit over the course of, you know, some of these wells, those wells in Manistee have been operating for, Ed? 70, mid-70s probably. Mid-70s? You know, so, I mean, that revenue stream can last for a long time. And so the township would benefit from that. Or any other leaseholder.

And then what are the dangers of this? Or the concerns? I know Dan was mentioning some to me on the phone, but when I asked for something in writing, I didn't have it.

Which concerns from the seismic standpoint? We would do a foot traffic only. I mean, our seismic contractor doesn't use vehicles. They used to use drill buggies. They're like a bobcat with a drill on the front of it. They don't do that anymore. They just use backpacks. So it would be foot traffic only. We would offer indemnification, insurance payable as a township as a lost payee or any liability or any damages to anything out there. I think the township's property on Erdman Road there is primarily forest. But nevertheless, it would be foot traffic only.

I want to say 60 feet.

Okay. And then the geophones, which used to be, geophones are something that, so when you set off in what they call an energy source or these small charges, you know, small like M80s, geophones pick up that energy and they're laid out in a grid. They used to be all cabled together and out west in wide open space, they would actually lay them via helicopter and guys would go along and stick these little rubber probes in the ground. Well, now they're a plastic box, about four inches square, about the size of a cell phone, a little bit thicker, no probe in the ground, no wiring together. They set on top of the ground and they're geosynchronous. So they're all linked via satellite and they lay out their own grid via satellite. So, you know, all kinds of high tech, and then the computer lays that out and, uh, extrapolates all the data as they shoot each, uh, charge, uh, one at a time. They don't go off all at once. It's one at a time. Um, and then they go along and they pick up phones and away they go. Um, so essentially Cindy, as far as, uh, I guess any problems You're not going to experience any more sinkholes like they used to or any big holes in the ground or blowing up, you know, blowing trees over. I mean, none of that goes on. Foot traffic only, no vehicles. How far away do you have to stay from a house? 300 feet.

And I don't think on your property, on the township property, there's no, no, I'm just thinking, and I've had a couple of calls from people.

Oh, neighbors and so forth? Yeah. 300 feet from wells, houses, farms, any kind of structure, any kind of waterway, ponds, streams. It's pretty regulated.

So this is the geotechnical exploration only. Like you said, down the road, there might be a lease. Right. I've heard from a number of people that have a lot of concerns about this just because of the lack of information and all this lack of understanding. At the time that you guys say, yep, we found a shelf reef, we want to drill, I thought there were 80-acre drilling units for oil. Is it 80 or 160? 160. Okay. So if you have 90 of the 160 acres under lease, is that enough for you to put the well down? And what happens to the people that didn't lease that have 70 acres? Is there a standard payment that the state gives those folks, or how does that work?

Anybody that, so let's, we go out and we lease up all this area. And most of it's under lease option. Some of them are strictly just the geophysical agreement. We said, look, we'll come back and do, you know, we'll work on a lease later with your attorney. Can't come to an agreement. You know, we leased everything around it. We need to have you in the unit. They can do what they call force pooling. And whoever gets forced pool gets the maximum that anybody else got in their surrounding area. So if they got 15% for loyalty and they got 50 bucks an acre or a hundred bucks an acre, whatever the number is, that's what that person or entity.

And is the forced pooling only, you have to have at least 50.1% lease on your own?

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. And then you go through, you go to the state, you go to EGLE or, you know, the controlling agency. entity dollar in Lansing and the oil and gas division and say, okay, you don't plead your case basically. Hey, we've got this unit put together. You know, Ned and Bob didn't sign up. We need to include them. They'll say, okay, Ned and Bob, you know, they're not, don't get me wrong. You're going to be in the unit. They're going to produce oil. So they're going to include you in the unit.

You're going to get paid.

but there wouldn't be any kind of surface operations. There would be no well site on your property. There would be no roads, no pipelines, none of that. They would be off your property somewhere else conducting operations.

Go ahead. Go ahead. When did it go from 80 to 160? Because all the units that I know for years were 80 acre units.

I think they can still do 80s. But you're doing 160s? Yeah. The Ancims are 40s. Yeah, an Antrim is, but this is Niagara, right? Yeah, this is Niagara Oil. Okay. And we could apply for an 80-acre unit.

Oh, okay, because, okay, that's the, most of the units were 80, weren't they? Shell units.

Yeah, a lot of them up in Notsego County, we did, we've done 160s. Okay. Yeah.

So they drill the hole, they put the sides of the charge, and they fill in the soil, the charge goes off, and they refill the hole, and it blows the soil up?

It blows out, yeah. Oh, yeah. But nothing, I mean, they're both small enough to blow it up.

And how many did you say per 40-acre block, roughly?

We could minimize it, but, you know, every 60 to 100 feet, you know, you might have two dozen out there. And then the geophones are more numerous. They'd set more of those to get a better reading. And then, of course, the neighbors would have the same setup. So you would get readings from the charges over there, the charges over there. Likewise, the charges on the township property would radiate out to the side. So you get a good cross section of each property. And so you don't have any data debt areas.

And how do you determine the value of the access fee or crossing fee, I guess they call it?

I guess kind of the going rate, we've been paying 30 bucks An acre. Okay. Just for allowing us to cross the property. That, beyond that, the bonus payment for a lease would be over and above that. That would be another per acre fee along with the royalty. And that's payable on the lease, but the crossing fee is payable immediately.

Okay.

Anybody else have questions?

I see the letter, but is there a new document that we got?

I'll provide that. I just wanted to let you know that we would like to just simplify the whole operation, do a straight geophysical agreement, and then worry about the more complicated later.

What's your time frame going? Are you trying to get done this fall?

We've actually contracted with the seismic operator. They're going to come in and start doing, basically looking around and doing layouts on certain certain areas by the end of the month, we'll probably want to start shooting end of the first week in September or into the second week of September. So coming right up.

Presumably you've got people that will let you do the seismic, but they don't like interfering with your deer hunting.

Yeah, well, we have to be, yes, we have to be done before bow season. Okay. Yeah.

Well, bow season starts October 1st. So you're going to do this on a two week period? Yep. Okay.

Yep. Yeah. We're going to, yeah. I mean, any property that they're on, They're going to be on the property for two in and out periodically for two days, maybe three. And then, and then move on down the line. It's not going to be.

They got more than one team or just one?

Oh yeah. They've got a bunch of guys. Yeah. They'll come in and knock it out in a big hurry. Could you make sure then you send that new document to Jennifer?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. We'll discuss this later on. It's unfinished business. So we'll go there, but I wanted to get you here and then. You're not driving home at 10 o'clock. I appreciate it. Are you going to keep everybody here until 10 o'clock? No. I'll be long gone. Somebody might be here. I appreciate the time. Thank you very much.

Is the force pulling for just production or is it for seismic as well?

No, not for seismic.

So what happens with the people who don't sign up for seismic?

It's a dead area. I guess so because they wouldn't make a lease on something they don't know or anything at all.

Yeah. And you, there would be no future lease. So, and they'd shoot all the way around. Let's say you didn't sign yours and they shot all the way around you. There's going to be a dead spot. Now it would show.

What was it? What if that dead spot was included when it's production?

Well, then at some point, let's say if it's in the one 60, let's say let's say the Miller's to the east of you have have a lease. Okay. And all of a sudden, they're in this unit. And it looks like maybe you're underneath it, but we don't have seismic data, but we do have it across the street. It also looks like it might be in the unit. They would probably want to, of course, fool you into it. You wouldn't have any operations on you, but you're still going to have oil production from underneath it, and you're going to get paid for it.

Unless they went the other way and said, well, you're out anyway, and we like this place over here better.

Yeah.

If they went the other way.

Right. Exactly. We'd be over on Meister's instead of over on Miller's, and then, you know.

It all starts with an M. It's okay. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Can we go right to Ryan so we can get him out of here? Dave, can I make a comment? Oh, sure.

He said nothing about approaching all the people in the township. He's approached numerous HOAs, and they're trying to ram it down our throats. I got documents right here, multiple documents, multiple contracts. They're not being open and honest with any of us.

Now, I'm not leaving it at that. Which we can talk about when we get to the end. I have to leave. He's leaving. He's just bringing it up now. I have a kind of tall movie. Oh, I see. Dave and I have talked on that.

So people need to be aware of the fact that this is more than just a township. It's more than your properties. They want to blanket sections 15 and sections 22. And then it comes a question of who has the mineral rights and what gives them the right to do seismic tests.

It's a hornet's nest. I'll leave it at that. In our case, we own the minerals, so we have the right to do that. So in some cases, the mineral would be separated from the land. I understand that. Right? Well, such as your subdivision. And it can happen with all kinds of sales. Absolutely. I understand that.

So I knew you knew that you didn't put a well site.

But you were looking at everybody. No, I knew you knew that. But some people don't know that. They think they own, because they own the land. And then somebody's getting a lease where they can't even tell them not to come and put a well site on their property. So we don't have to even want to get in that position. Okay. Ed, is that all right if I skip you for a minute? Yeah, thank you. Well, thank you very much. Ryan?

All right. I'm Ryan from UHY. I'm the Township Auditor. And I'm just going to do a brief overview of last year's outcome of the audit. And feel free to stop me if you guys have any questions. But first thing I always like to go over is page one of the audit report, which is our independent auditor's report. So basically, this is our cover letter basically stating our opinion our basis for opinion, responsibilities of management, responsibilities of us as auditors. But the big, the first section there, the opinion section is the one I always like to go over. The second paragraph states, in our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly in all material respects. And then towards the end of that paragraph, in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America. That's an unqualified or unmodified opinion. That's the best opinion we can give. So... And then everything after this is basically the township's data, you know, so that we audited. I'm going to jump ahead to page 13. Kind of in between that independent auditory report and this page 13 of the audit report is the management discussion and analysis section and then the government-wide statements. So those are sections that have been added back in the early 2000s to make it more comparable to like a business versus the governmental unit. But how the township budgets and operates is at the modified accrual level of accounting, which is at this level. This is where they adopt budgets and operate on a daily basis. So that's why I kind of jump ahead of all that other stuff. So page 13 is the balance sheet. You guys have four funds, the General Fund, Fire Fund, Road Fund, and the Lake Improvement Fund. And if you scroll just down a little bit towards the bottom. So what people kind of are interested in is the fund balance section. So there's different components of every fund balance. So the first column there is the General Fund. That one has a fund balance of $1,071,639. Of that $981,955 is unassigned. There's a budget shortfall, meaning when the 26-27 fiscal year budget was adopted, the revenues were short of the expenses by approximately $64,390. And then there's a little bit of restricted money related to some Metro Act monies that weren't spent as of March 31, but not very much, $1,001. And then There's also a prepaid of $24,293. That's non-spendable. The money's gone, so you can't spend it after the money's actually gone. So those are the different components of your fund balance. And then the second column, just to briefly touch on before I get to the income statement side of things, is the fire fund. So that one has a small prepaid of $16,279, and then a restricted portion, of 193,401. And this is restricted because it has a millage associated with the revenue stream. So those monies are restricted for basically like the ballot language restrictions that were approved. So, but a total fund balance of 209,680. The third column is the road fund. That is all restricted of 964,266. Again, associated with taxes. So it is all restricted because it has restricted revenues associated with it. And then the fourth column is the Lake Improvement Fund. That's also restricted 143,206 remaining in that. And again, because it's a special assessment versus a tax, it's still restricted for those specific uses. So overall, You guys have a healthy fund balance across all funds. And then I will jump ahead to page 15. So this is the statement of revenues, expenses, and changes in fund balance. So basically like the income statement for each of the funds. So the very first column there, if you scroll down a little bit further, is the third number or the 212,551. which is the third number from the bottom of that first column, that is your decrease in fund balances past year in the general fund. And a lot of that had to do with, you did have a large transfer over to the fire fund of $250,000. Outside of that, you would have operated as a small increase without that transfer. But again, kind of brings that fund balance back to that page we just looked at of 1,071,639 in the general fund. Again, a good fund balance, nothing to be worried about. I like to see municipalities between that 150 and 200,000 is a good spot for a small municipality. And why I like to see it at least that high is you guys could have a large expense and deplete that pretty quickly, you know, you know, without projecting out quite a few years. Um, and then the, uh, we'll jump back to the second column of that report is the fire fund. Uh, so that one had a decrease in fund balance of 179,685. Um, there was a large, um, purchase of a fire truck this past year, which makes up most of that decrease in some other, um, buyer equipment as well. So a lot of capital outlay purchases this year is why that is even with the 250,000 transferred over from the general fund to help assist with that purchase, but still have a fund balance of 209,680 at the end of the fiscal year. Third column, road fund. So that fund had an increase in fund balance of 126,984. which brings its fund balance up to $964,266. This is very typical. You want to build this fund balance up because there will be some large road projects that will deplete it in the future. So nothing looks out of the ordinary. Comparatively, from this year to the prior year, I think there was a little bit more improvements being done in this fund and expenditures. This seems reasonable.

What happened was they were supposed to do the seal code the year before and ran out of time. We did it this year, which the total there was how much? There will be more this year.

There will be more expenditures this year. That's been pretty common where they can't fit it in the year they want to. The key with this is if you know, sometimes you have to put a down payment down, just make sure you budget for it appropriately. You guys do a pretty good job. Like the fire fund in particular, you guys put a big down payment on that fire truck. What a lot of townships get tripped up on is the year you actually finalize the purchase and pay the, you have to budget for the entire purchase when that happens. So you guys do a good job with that. The fourth column, is the Lake Improvement Fund at an increase of $32,838, which brings your fund balance in that fund up to that $143,306 we discussed in the previous page. So yeah, all of those have, I think, a pretty reasonable, healthy fund balance. Nothing to be concerned about. So that was all the numbers I was going to go over here. And then I was going to kind of jump ahead to... Our management report, I don't know if it's in there, Ed, at the very end.

I saw that.

When you say management report, it came up a letter to the Township Board.

Yeah, yep, there's two of those. So there is this one, the communication with those charged with governance, at the conclusion of the audit. So this is just to kind of share if we have any issues, concerns, if there's some big estimates, new accounting principles to kind of briefly discuss, if there's disagreements with management. We didn't have any disagreements with management, nothing. A lot of this is boilerplate language, unless you have issues, but we did not. So towards the second, bottom of the second page there is where we kind of get a little more nitpicky with our comments. So these didn't rise to the level with the exception of maybe the budget one to like a material compliance issue or anything. This is more just to a general comment. So management's aware of what we came across. So the first one was budgeting. Expenditures exceeded appropriations in two activities in the general fund. One was by like less than $50. And then the other one that was over by a material amount was related to a journal entry that we proposed when we were here. There was, I guess it was the hail damage repair that we needed to book an accrual for, and it wasn't budgeted for. So that was kind of something that wasn't expected. But those are the two budget amendments. Without that being done, it was one budget over to $50. So overall, I think a pretty good job budgeting. The second one was credit card reimbursements. We test those. One had sales tax being reimbursed. So the township is exempt from sales tax. It's hard to get away from that all the time, but I still like to bring it up to people just to make sure you try to do a good job, you know, taking your sales tax exemption form along with you. I think in this case it was under $15 is the dollar amount we're talking about. Nothing material, but still, you know, you guys do not have to pay that, so I like to bring it up. Conditioned accounting records and accounting controls. I mean, overall, you guys do a good job. I know you guys have a McDougal and Richards assist as well, but we do appreciate you guys. You guys are prepared when we get here, so thank you for that. Um, and then the last, uh, kind of comment is there's some old outstanding checks hanging out there. So in the general fund and the tax fund in particular, um, there's some that are a couple of years old. Now, nothing, a lot of them are pretty minor dollar amounts, but, um, there's a couple of different options that could be, um, you know, an error that maybe needs research. We just got to avoid it. If it's not an error and it's just never was cashed, um, You've got to almost research each transaction separately, but then you could send it into the S-Chief Division. So we've sent letters to the people.

Okay. Well, I'm not sure if it's been done on the APs, but for all the tax people it has, and I've gotten some of those back, so I'm partway through that process. Gotcha. Perfect.

Yeah, it is a little tedious. You've got to wait a certain amount of time, too, before you can actually pursue it. Well, but that's it on that particular letter. And then the next letter, is our independent auditors report on internal control and over financial reporting. So this one is if there's material weaknesses or significant deficiencies, we note it here in your internal controls. So one of them that is very common for a lot of governmental units that we audit is number one there, segregation of incompatible duties and document independent review. You guys do a pretty good job. Basically, there's two people involved with most of the accounting. functions on a daily basis. So overall, you guys do hire McDougal and Richards, where they do help with that a little bit. But overall, I still think it is material weakness. The state is the one who actually set who should be involved and how many people should be involved. But a lot of our governmental units that are larger, like a school district that might have a $20 million budget, well, they have an AP person, a payroll person, a secretary that opens the mail. You know, they have superintendent that reviews journaling. I mean, they have so many different people in the accounting process that you can have so many more controls in place versus one person that might do two of those things, you know, so. So I wouldn't worry too much. I don't think nobody goes out and hires new people, but it's just to state, hey, this is why the board is so important. I stress that on a lot of our smaller municipalities because of that lack of segregation of duties. When you guys approve bills and stuff like that, make sure you guys question it, ask questions. You know what's going on in your township more than most people. So just kind of take that additional rule because of that. Um, and then the second one kind of back to that journal entry, we proposed related that payable made you guys over budget. And that one line item by material mouse, I just, you got to put it in two places in our reports. So, um, and that's all I had. If anybody has any questions.

So the question, whoops, I've been aware of the question I have, and I think also related.

while Ryan is here. So we also have the audit deficiency letter.

Right.

Can I make, can I assume the correlation is related to the journal entry he's talking about?

Yeah. Okay. So this, I believe this is our famous roofing guy that didn't give us an invoice for 18 months or whatever. Yes. Ridiculously. Right. So, I mean, honestly, it's, we approved the expenditure just because of the time he didn't make an invoice. Because he never turned it in. no but i just want to because he said that their journal entry caused the difference that's when the light went on where i'm like okay that must be sufficient and we can't we can't make budget amendments after the fiscal year in progress so if you identify something like that it's like oh man it came in late we just there's no way to fix it right which we've done so we have to just tell the state what happened here and i mean if you we can assist we'll draft

Kind of a response, and then we'll let you guys approve it.

Tell them to request it. It was the auditor.

We proposed it. Hopefully you did. You know, but so in that, depending on the size, sometimes we won't make it, sometimes we will. But that one rose to the level where we should make it, you know. So what happens, you know, stuff comes in after you're in, like you said, Couldn't get an invoice. But then at that point, you just got to estimate, hey, if this thing comes in. I just had another place, they estimated 30 grand for legal fees, and they got a bill for 50 grand and threw them over just like this.

In this case, Jennifer and I called him. How many times? Oh. We were trying to track.

Dozens and dozens of times. We emailed. We tagged. We tried employees.

He had extras. Basically, he did the estimate. and then when they tore it apart, they found extras. Oh, okay. Instead of calling the insurance company then, he took pictures of everything and fixed it all and then told them 12 months later that he had all these extras and he needed money for it. I mean, it wasn't on us. We kept harping on it and telling them, you're going to hold the insurance company. Why aren't you having the adjuster come back and look at this? Because there was problems.

Yeah. Brian, what percentage of your townships, small ones like Onekama, do you guys have that internal control finding? Because we had that at the city of Manistee from time to time in the past, depending on who the auditor is.

And we've got way more staff than any of these little townships have. Yeah, over 90%. I'd say probably 95% of ours. I mean, really outside of like when you get to a city, you know, if it's a large enough village, maybe, but mostly it has to be a city level or school district. before you get rid of it. It's just how it's designed. I mean, a lot of times specifically like a tax fund, you know, the, the state's basically like, Hey, just the treasurer needs to do the bank rec, collect the taxes, pay all the units, you know? And there's other controls in place. They got to settle with the county and stuff like that. So there's processes in place, but not at the township, you know? So, so yeah, that quite majority of our audits have done it. And then the other comment we typically have is that we prepare the gap financial statements. And we kind of backed off on that particular here because you guys contract with McDougal and Richards and they also, they've done governmental audits and they've actually prepared your financial statements. So you have the ability from a contracted standpoint to prepare it. And if you have questions, you can lean on them. A lot of places don't have that. And then we would put a second material weakness typically. Usually there's two. And almost all small townships have that.

Yep.

Okay. Questions? Anybody else? No. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Yeah, you want to send a draft of that over and I can look at it to get a second whenever? Yep. We'll... I'll start working on it tomorrow. Excellent. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay. Edward, do you want to go back to Treasurer's report? Sure.

So the report was in your packet. We're still earning decent income on the Michigan class investments, about 3.8%. I mentioned obviously that Ryan was going to be in the prevent the audit, which he did for about 33. It's not the way to the fiscal year 2027 budget for the financial growth in the packet. Property tax bills went out. We got a lot of people that didn't get them in the mail. We're happy to email them or print them if they want to come in and get it. Same story everywhere. Sometimes the Postal Service has trouble getting them to where they need to be. Sometimes people didn't do it. change of address or forward the bill. So you can also get your property tax information online free of charge. Then some people can take advantage of that. The balance sheet revenue and expenditure report and inputs as well. So in the back, I don't know if you have any questions on those or not.

I don't. Anyone on the board? Audience, anyone?

No? No? Thank you. Clark's report, yeah.

All right. So we had an election. Surprisingly, it was fairly busy in here throughout the day. We issued roughly 400 absentee ballots, had about 300 returned, which is pretty high for us, particularly in a primary. Primaries typically have lower participation. We had roughly 245 in-person voters. So Deputy Treasurer Jenny Bradford won the pool of the day in which we make friendly bets on how many people we think will actually show up to vote. We were first township precinct in the county to turn our stuff in on election night. So that's exciting. There's always a little bit of competition between the clerks who get there first and get their stuff in. And we're looking forward to the November election. And absentee ballots for that November election, we're guesstimating right now, will be somewhere around maybe just after Labor Day, first part of Labor Day, that they'll be mailed out for the November election. That's it.

Questions? Go on. Not a question. I just wanted to ask a question before you move on. Go ahead. So with the audit deficiency letter, even though I brought it up, do we have to take action on anything?

I think this would be better. I can just say that, yeah.

Thank you.

I'll come and pick you up. So you're wondering how that works. Yeah, I didn't know if I had to change it. I asked that. Come forward. That's how that works. Irregardless. Fire department. Is the report on file? I didn't see one.

Did I miss it? I don't think I saw one in my pocket, but I could have missed it.

I uploaded that. Wasn't in the back.

Well, I'd like to make a couple comments, I guess. There's been a lot of social media blowing up about this proposed fire district and all that. There's a lack of information. We don't know what's going on. A lot of times. What I'll say is There's a process that has to be followed, and sometimes things have to get approved for other things. So, for example, the millage language that this poll approved at a recent meeting needed to be approved by August, had to be counted by August 13th. So, obviously, the election's not until November, so you've got two and a half months in there. Will there be a lot more educational material coming out? There's a website that's got educational information on it. That's being updated a little bit. But I know there's going to be at least a couple of public engagement sessions between now and the election. And frankly, the data is out there as to why the fire chiefs that are actually running the day-to-day activities think that there's a need for that. There is a group that is opposed to it, as there normally is when there's initiatives like this. But the fact of the matter is, it's up to the township voters if they approve this millage. then that allows the township to move forward. But there's other steps in that process. This board has to approve the interlocal agreement and the articles of incorporation if they deem that that's worthy. So even if the millage passes, that's also got to be something that this board needs to approve and the other boards, frankly. So there's more steps in the process. And I encourage people to ask questions, to go to that website, to go to these upcoming public engagement meetings. You know, we have had stuff on the website for quite some time now about that. The first public engagement meeting was canceled because Manistee Township pulled out right at the last minute before that was scheduled. And so we've had to tweak some things, the steering committee, and there'll be more information out there. So I know there's been a lot of questions, but I just encourage people to educate themselves and make sure you're getting the right facts on this initiative. Can I ask you a quick question? Go ahead.

I sent a question to the NRFI website, just simply asking who are the members of the steering committee for each of the municipalities. I received no response. Can you look into that?

Not on the website either. Anywhere.

All the members of the committee?

No. Or what municipalities they represent.

Well, I know that the proposed draft budget lists all the communities that are involved.

Well, the proposed draft budget also includes the...

I know people are complaining about this stuff, but who are the steering committee members?

So it's two members from each of the counties or cities that were going to be there.

The newspaper said there were three members from the city of Manistee. That's what Chief Herndon said. There's not three members, there's two. Who are they? But who are they?

It's the fire chief and the city manager.

Okay.

Because he named you as a member.

No, I am not on that starting party. Never has been. It's Rob and I. That's for the pound job.

That's what was reported in the... Again, there's a lot of misinformation out there. I guess it was a misquote from the fire chief.

Are you saying, Libby, that the communities in the authority are not on the website for that Murphy...

The representatives from the communities. And they also would still list the Manistee Township. Yep. And it also lists what their millage would be.

The company that created those original graphics is recreating them to show the current numbers.

I think that's great. I also think it's a little late because Manistee Township moved. pulled out June, July 27th. It's been, you should be able to update that website faster than that, I believe, in my opinion. Okay.

Well, they contracted with a group called Double Hall, I believe is the group that's doing the graphics for it. So, yeah.

And Massey Township, we've been going to this for two years. It's been going on, I think, started a few years ago. year and a half with steering committee meeting and talk, just talk about, well, it started over a year ago. I think I don't know the exact time frame, but Massey township, I fear that whatever it's done now, they knew before that date that they were not going to follow through. And that put a, put a big kink in our whole thing, obviously. So, yeah.

I try to access information that's on the website and I find it very frustrating.

Well, I can tell those of you who are friends of near and far friends, friends from near and far, Mary's group, there is going to be a presentation at her October 16th. She just sent out the schedule. So October 16th at the near and far friends here will be fire authority, will be the topic of conversation.

Okay. Now move on. Government Commission, Jim. Good.

That's a lot. They're taking our free money from the parking lot? We got our approval.

And we got the drawings were submitted along with that.

I emailed them to Jennifer this morning. Okay. And about three o'clock I got the specifications

And I emailed those to Jennifer.

Right. I'm sorry. I did forward both of those to you in separate emails. I declined to print the second document because it's 77 pages.

And Jennifer and I have a plan for getting proposals done. And in the meantime, I contacted the foundation, forwarded them the information. And so we'll be able to, I mean, it's grand. Wow.

Only a record now, two years? It's been a while.

And the only thing I did in that communication to the foundation, because, I mean, if you remember, I talked to them two months ago, thinking, asking if we could do an off-cycle grant. Now we're butting up against the regular grant cycle and just making them aware that if I have to follow the regular grant cycle, then we won't be able to do it next year. Right. but if they'll still consider something different, we may be able to pull it off this year, but also explain to them, I'll write that later.

Okay. But you need to put the proposal for bids out and receive the bids. Right.

Jennifer and I already talked about that. Okay. Yeah.

We're good. Okay. I'm just going to ask this because I don't, what is 77 pages? That's the specifications. For the lot? Yeah. This is why it took two years.

I went through, I went through park.

For a paved parking lot. Right. Yeah. I went through the first set they gave me. And I came up with a whole bunch of sections that didn't apply. I can imagine. And I conveyed it to them. So they went through. Maybe 77. Looked at them a little bit better and took some off. It's telling me to install gravel and level it out and put pavement on it. There's 77 pages of specification. They're just covering.

That is correct.

Covering your asphalt.

Okay.

And the other thing is you need to approve the signage agreement for the . Oh, okay. Right, which you guys looked at last month, but. You postponed it through the . Yeah, I don't remember why.

Isn't that the sign they wanted, like, $5,000? Oh, no, this is just that they don't want any money. They just have to sign.

We've done it once before. We didn't approve the one because it was $5,000. This is different. Is it a cheaper sign? Oh, no.

Is it a revised agreement that has $0 on it?

I haven't seen that, Jim. Have you seen a revised agreement with no dollar amount?

Is that the only change that needed to be made?

There's no dollar on to this. The new one I don't have. The one you signed?

Okay. We have it.

Do we have it? I gave it to you last week.

Yes. I didn't print it out for today, though.

Okay. Well, should we act on it? If it's zero, I think we should act on it. Put it off for last week. Somebody make a motion that I sign it.

I'll make the motion that you sign the $0 no-wake sign.

U-S-A-C-E license. Whatever that stands for. Okay. Is there a second? No one's going to second it? I can't sign it. I just haven't seen the agreement. Oh.

It's kind of where I'm at, too.

Okay. Maybe we can look at it for the next month. I don't think they're going to come take our things out every month. No, probably not.

All right. No one's seconded it, so that motion's here to die. I think the one from last month had

It had five grand on it, but the new one didn't. Or it didn't have it in here. They're going for zero.

Okay. Parks and Rec, back. Nothing really in terms of action items. The ADA walkway out at Langland, I guess the plan will be to put it behind the building again this year in the event that we ever uh, do a building itself, a little bit indoors and, uh, hopefully get some extra life out of it. Put it out back. Um, when we pull it up and say October, um, activities are pretty much concluded for the year. Um, shall left just in time. I would have her do a report on them, but by and large, I think they've gone pretty well. Three day challenge. And then of course, a lot of positives about that is, and she will do a final report on the activities for the board in September or October. The five-year plan, you all saw the five-year plan came out from Manatee County, and hopefully everyone gets a chance to take a look at it. One of our responsibilities is to make sure that all of the potential projects are on the website. Most of them are. The last couple of months, I've mentioned to you a few new ones. And I'm working to get those onto the website. Hopefully, we'll have that done in the next day or two. One of those projects which is under consideration for the five-year plan is Disc Golf out at Web 10 Spark. And Matt and Brian have actually selected a location for that. And then we go forward with it. In the packet, there was the notice from MCCF that they are officially agreeing that we are closing the grant or the walkway so that's behind us now. We're working with the shop class at school and they're going to if we budget for some cedar chairs are going to build 10 around that chairs for us but on the beach next year and that we may you know continue going down that road working with the school. We have also gotten complaints about the ongoing noise out at Langland, Lake, and Ike, just mentioning that we're hearing it too. The fitness stations, all that work was done at Northland Park. And recall last month, he authorized me to put in an inquiry for making an ADA. I have not yet had a chance to do that or to do proposals that we can send out for bids. But we'll work on that as soon as I can. We had a visit from DNR at Glen Park for that grant that's there. And she seemed pretty impressed at this point. Hopefully in September, we'll see what the scoring looks like and give us a better idea of whether we're going to be successful with that.

And that's really most of the big stuff.

Yes, sir. Have you guys contemplated having sponsorships for those that are on that chair?

Sponsorship, as opposed to us funding the cost of the theater?

Well, a lot of communities sell plaque for either the cost of the chair or portion of it, and they get their name on the plaque on the chair, and it just helps it afraid of the cost.

This actually just came up in the last couple of meetings that apparently shop is then reinstated at the school last year or two, and they thought, wow, this would be a great way to work together with us. And we thought it was a great way, but I've not even thought about some mentorship yet.

I mean, that's not, that's not maybe something that was right.

And Vic, I, I've had since our meeting, I've had two different people approach me about donating the cedar. Oh, that's even better.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, sir. How many chairs do you think it's going to take to make a bonfire?

Well, I'm more worried about how quickly they'll get stolen. Let's not rain on the parade. We're working closely with the school, and we're going to have a great success with our first tent, and we will see how it goes. I think it'll be fine. We built this for the 95% of people, not the five.

Big chunks of cement. Yeah. Well, chain them down. Yeah, actually, yeah. Put an auger into the sand and just chain them down. Well, it's going to be all over the place, right? Parking lot. Oh, my God. Anything else, Beck, or is that it? Nope, that's enough. Evasive species report.

We did not have a meeting, so the last report you have is from our last meeting.

Implanted commission?

We did not have a meeting. That's our last meeting. That sounds sick.

Okay. Assessor, are you meeting tomorrow?

Well, I actually sent Mr. Wallace an email because I didn't see an agenda, and he said he sent it, but I don't have one. So, yes, we have a meeting. I understand that.

Assessor, so we're doing still new constructions. If you see somebody out measuring or looking at new houses and you're wondering what's going on, that's us looking at new construction. We're not done with the 20% yet here, so we will be out looking at parcels. We don't go on the parcels unless we have to. We'll go to the door and knock. If no one's home, we leave. If somebody doesn't want us there, they could call the assessing office and say, don't come to my house. We'll be glad. What happens? So we just look at an aerial and clean whatever information we can off of that. Roads. I don't think all the chip seals are actually done. I think they're rolled out at their side of the potter. It's not done going around the loop yet. Berker? Yeah, Berker. They're going to pave. Yeah, they're putting two inches over that.

I think they did chip seal it.

They chip sealed it, but then it hasn't been paved yet. So that's supposed to get done yet this year. You went to the meeting today. Brad Laxall retired. It was his last day.

I was at the last board meeting.

Were they not going to chip sale Millard? Millard's not on for this year because it's a primary. It's not covered. We don't have to pay. That'll be done next year. That payment's going to get done. They put two inches over the Chip seal. Remember we okayed that earlier in the year, so that's already been done. Brad Laxall retired. Today was his last day. He was the, I would call the field supervisor, who I call all the time when we want something done. Very good. Joe Miller. No. Scott is the new one. Oh, okay. Joe Miller's doing something. He's probably going to replace. So they're moving Scott up, and then Joe is coming in for Scott. Yeah. Oh, there are two promotions took place. And what did you know about, what did you say about Highbridge? They don't have any idea, do they?

They said closed indefinitely, and it's due to, I mean, it's millions of dollars, and they're working with FEMA, and it's not necessarily the bridge, but it's the coaches to them. And it's all, the way the ground is, they were shifting. Yes, and it keeps shifting, and they were trying to do something where they would open it for one lane, but there's no safe way to do it where they can't guarantee it's not going to shift to where the bus is on. So the superintendent from Brotherhood was there, and he was very concerned because this is putting like, their bus routes are already an hour plus, so now it's a two-hour bus ride. So Manistee sends buses to Wellston, and I think they pick up at 55 mark and a couple in response. So people on the south end of that line are all, a lot of them are transferring to Manistee because the road is not going to be open this school year for sure. So that was kind of a huge.

And in the past when that got damaged, well, 27 or 30 years ago, didn't we have damage over there? Do you remember on High Bridge, something happened when it got washed out? I don't remember. But it got fixed, but it got fixed locally by the road commission, which was they dumped a bunch of dirt. They did this and did this and did that. We can't do that now because it's the whole thing has shifted. The plane has shifted.

They need to do a wetland at the bottom.

And that's how we separate that off.

They can't just dump a bunch of dirt and it'd be okay. Yeah. So the way it sounded was it was going to be a long-term enclosure.

Okay. Two years to then shut it. We'll just talk about projects going forward in the spring. We'll get him in here and see what he recommends we do, and then I guess that's for around. Sony administrator, we have a report on the trial.

Where is that report?

It wasn't in the packet? No, it wasn't in the packet. Jenny just sent it to me yesterday. Okay. So I forwarded it to you guys as soon as I got it.

Jennifer, could I ask you to forward that report on Monday? You bet.

The PLA Community Collaboration Report. You kind of already did it.

Yeah, really we're focused on Onekama Walks, getting the village and the school to collaborate together. And also we've had Andrew from Chamber of Commerce come in and talk to the village council at a work session about possibly DEA formation. And we've got a meeting coming up in September at Lake and Latte. with all the business owners in the village to see their interest in that and participating with the chamber on it. Okay.

Cool. Thank you very much. New business, recycling location, storage solutions.

So I had asked for that to be placed on the agenda because, um, you know, as big even mentioned tonight, but we've been talking about, we do need to do the storage facility of some kind. And it seems that we can kick it down the road. Um, and then with the recycling, with the new information that we had from the road commission, turning down what we thought was our plan. My concern is that, um, The county is not receptive to us having it at the fairgrounds. I have even more concern about that now that they have a new fairgrounds group because it seems they're a little bit more energized. And so I think there may even be a more difficult situation. Current location is causing a lot of concern. And from my viewpoint, I don't, feel comfortable investing any more money into property that we don't own to try to mitigate any of the things happening. So, I mean, I guess what I'm proposing is either we, well, no, not either way, that we approach the county and the fair board, get a definitive answer, whether we can put it back where it was. And if the answer is no, then, My thought would be we have property on Erdman Road. We move recycling to Erdman Road. We built a storage building there. Call it good. So there's my two cents.

Okay.

I don't know what you're looking at me for. I suggested Erdman Road months ago.

Is there any restrictions on that property? Is there a future assignment? We own it. I understand we own it.

You're talking about stuff on the east side of the road. I'm assuming you're talking the west side. No, we don't own anything on the east side. You talking about the cemetery itself? You want to put it on Berthelsen? No, I think that's what I'm asking. And now the other property across the street.

There's a cemetery on both sides of the road. Correct. But there is a...

Correct. The village on the west side.

Are you going to pull the map up?

But we have property all around that.

Well, I'm thinking also, then, on the issue that's been brought up, and I mean, It's property we own. We don't have to buy it. We don't have to invest any more money other than to improve it.

The discussion has been that that could be a possibility. We wanted to explore the road commercial. It obviously didn't work, but it doesn't mitigate the concern that it's a little bit off the beaten path, but not any more than the road commercial, to be frank.

To me, part of it being off the beaten path, it is set off where really there's hardly any impact to anybody other than driving over it.

It's quasi more centrally located, I would say. And I would... To own up to my township. You don't think so?

It's a mile and a half from that end of the township, so that's centrally located, depends what you mean by that. So centrally located to me, then we ought to just put it at... Langham, not Langham Park, put it at the park right in the middle there, because that would be centrally located. Everyone at that point got that hampered, Jason. We have to bring Joe up.

But it isn't going to solve the problem of Manatee County, Brazos, and Sparrow.

Well, yeah, well, because they won't drive off that far. I mean, I don't think. Don't tell them. Which property?

There's two different properties there.

You say next to the village cemetery? Yeah. Number two?

Yeah. And Ed, didn't you at one time investigate curbside recycling would be super, super expensive? Yeah, so that's the bottom line.

We should just do curbside recycling. Well, The township doesn't have the density to make that affordable. The bill would be astronomical and nobody's going to want to pay. We've had that 300 hours. I don't remember what the number was. And I'm sure we can, although it's a little bit disingenuous to go to the vendor and get the number. I mean, they'll do it because they know we're not going to implement it because it's so expensive. You have to have the density. You can probably maybe do it in the village. but not in the times that makes no sense.

So if you go off there, are you going to bring the recycled trailer back for the cardboard? No.

No, that's the school. That's a school decision.

Where are we looking at here? Erdman Road. There's 11 Mile. You just, there's right there. So where's Erdman? There's Erdman. There's 11. Okay, so Bryce.

If you guys move it off the beaten path, something you need to consider is surveillance cameras because If you think people misuse it where it is now, out there it will become a dump.

Yeah, there'll be cars out there. That's all right. It'll be our dump. Okay. How are you going to control that? I don't know either. I can tell you it didn't work here when we had surveillance cameras. They still did it.

Well, and that's not our job.

Jobs, housing, cars.

So this is my question for the cemetery group monitoring. So this parcel here, we own, but it says Onekama Township Cemetery, so presumably that's part of the cemetery reserve.

Correct? Okay, sort of all right now.

Well, this big one I think is just Onekama Township, but my question is, was any of that restricted for future cemetery use? I'm speculating because it was kind of right there. We should look into that, unless we know for a fact that it's not.

What is the other L-shaped piece around our little piece? Well, we can cut that out easily by including titles. That's where we gave them for the cemetery. That's the other part of the cemetery. So, Vic, where was this? This is the cemetery.

This is all cemetery reserve, right? Yeah. So this is not the easiest property to do something on.

Vic, where were they going to have this skull? Well, I mean, that whole property that is not specifically for the cemetery was under consideration. And then a little bit south of that, there's the 10 acres that's really at the intersection of 11 Mile and Erdman. That's our property as well. How about putting it there? That would be my choice. Got power lines there anyway.

There's some terrain there.

Isn't that the parcel that's right next to the guy we gave the permission to? You're going to spend some money improving that.

Well, you'd have to look and see because there is topography there.

Yeah, it seems to me it goes like this right off the road.

It does. It does. As you go up Erdman to the north, I think it flattens out a little bit, but I think it really flattens out on the property to the north of that. I think that southern piece is pretty hilly, but I don't know. I like to worry about taking a pretty pristine piece of property and turning it into a dump. Yes. And then also location for moving all of that equipment from way out at Langland to there is a bit arduous as well. I mean, I'm into getting a solution of some sort. Do you have a better solution either? Yeah.

Yes, quit bringing me problems. Just bring me some solutions. Well, there's some lots right across from the school property that are for sale in the village. You could put it there. That's some commercial. It is? Where? Right where they're building the pickleball park, right? Yeah. Oh, right across the street. Two houses for sale right there. But again, people will scream because it's not in my backyard. The issue here is this is a county recycling. It's an interlocal agreement between the county and the townships that they want to participate in. And the county will not entertain any changes to their standard agreement, which we tried to force through to say we could have that over there kind of in perpetuity because we invested, and they wouldn't agree to that. So I don't feel like the county is really doing much of a good faith effort. They don't think they do a great job of patrolling it. It's very reactionary. It's not as proactive as I would like to see it be. I think people pointed that out. So this is not an ideal situation. Maybe there'll be some legislation down the road that says, hey, you can do recycling differently. Maybe the county will get a grant like they've been applying for over the last three cycles to build a more of a comprehensive recycling center. That hasn't happened. So I feel like the county needs to be a better partner here. And, you know, as far as I understand it, they can kick us off that anytime they want. They haven't said it yet, but.

Well, they've alluded. So last week they alluded to the fact that she told me that who's in charge right now is the ag. No, I'm going to say it wrong. It's not the county fair board. It's. The Ag Society actually controls that piece of property now, and they think they'd like to charge us rent.

How much property does the Conservation District have on their little building there? That'd be a great spot for them. Where? The Manatee Conservation District.

On 31? I have no idea. It's not that big.

I don't know if they have space or not, but that would be kind of fit with their mission, right?

Yeah, they're not going to want that.

Wait, wait, wait. They're not going to want it there. Nobody wants it there. That is true. There's no good solution for this dilemma.

So you're saying that there was dialogue about... I got told this last week about $500. I don't know anything about it. That's what I'm asking.

I got told that by... Oh, Kelly, I think told me they were talking about, but they'd like to get rent for that because we shouldn't be using it for free.

Oh, you're talking about where we're at, not going back to the fairground. No, no.

Otherwise, I'd have already said, let's move. I'd have gone with my forklift and moved them things over there. She just said, you can move back to the fairground. I'd have moved them in half an hour.

Well, look, that's what I thought you were saying. Fairgrounds, which that to me is okay.

That would be okay. I would do that.

I would too.

Well, so let's ask a question.

Why don't we ask that question? Who controls the fairgrounds? Is it the Agricultural Society? Is it that other advisory group? Or is it ultimately the county board?

I can help you with that. It's controlled by the Agricultural Society. The Agricultural Society is not a new group. It has been in effect well before the 1950s. There is a document that has been signed. The county is fully aware of it. And the Ag Society still operates as the fair board. The county has a fair commission. Correct. Which we just had a meeting Monday night. So a lot of the things that are being said are totally false.

So if the Ag Society has an interest in getting a rental payment to have the recycling bins, I would entertain that.

And those bins are not to be located in the fairgrounds where we operate the fair. And it is on the other side of our Callison building, which is the new building where we own property around that as well, so.

Well, there you go. Can't have it at the Fairgrounds. So if anybody's got some ideas, that would be great.

Because I don't have to think about 35 is a great spot either, but maybe. Is that something we could talk to our commissioners at all? Or is this a dead issue at all?

So they wouldn't entertain moving them back where they were about a hundred foot piece. Can I ask you why?

Why not? Because the lines lease that section of grounds for their building, they lease the building and that amount of parking lot for their activities. And then we also host different activities throughout the year. But when it was there, the abuse was atrocious and I And there are no other fairgrounds in Michigan that have a recycling on their grounds. In fact, most of them are locked up. So they're not accessed year round. Ours is open because of reliance.

So are you, did I misspeak when I said that you would like to charge us, you're in charge of where they are at?

It was a conversation and it was $600. Okay. And that the section down, but honestly, if I was the property owners around that corner, I wouldn't want that there either. I know the gal that owned the house directly across it was constantly picking up garbage. She was never alerted that it was going to be moved there. I would be very upset with that.

No, she saw about the previous owner.

Yeah. So does the Agricultural Society lease this parcel from the county? It looks like you own this one, according to the tax roll. Correct. Do you lease this one, or is that just a county parcel?

Some of those properties are actually owned by the Agricultural Society.

This says it's owned by Manistee County on this one.

But we have in our documentation that as long as Ag Society is in place, we have rights to the ground.

I'm asking about that parcel in particular. Do you know if that applies to that parcel? Because the big one here also is listed as Manistee County. Obviously, you guys must have a lease, like you said, on that one. But I'm talking about this little one here in particular. Do you know? Where the park is? No, it's on Jones Road. It's just to the east of the fairground. The backside. The one that's highlighted.

Can you see that? Oh, on Jones Road. That is our campground.

Okay, so you own one and the other one's probably leased, so those are probably not an option either.

The campground is for what, the fair wear participants?

Am I missing something? I heard the Lions leased the property for their building and where the recycle was there, that's in their lease. Right? That section of the parking lot they have marked out for their activities. And we approached the Lions. I mean, I will say this. I can't remember her name. Running Thorne. Sherry Miller. Sherry Miller. Yeah. Exemplary work. It's really cleaned that up. And if that continued, could the township sublease from the Lions to put those back?

Why not? Because you're going to end up moving them when we have all of our activities at the fairgrounds, especially during fair week.

Or you wouldn't have recycling during fair week.

It seems outrageous. I'll say it.

Here's what seems outrageous. You have the fair once a week, once a year, one week, right? I have all thousands of people that use recycling trails. The use of that ground... is 100 times or 200 times more with the local people, yet we won't even consider looking at that. It's ours. We lease it. We're going to do it. You know what? To me, it's ludicrous.

Tell you what, if this hit the paper, I feel sorry for your organization because you're going to take a hell of a publicity hit about not cooperating. I'll agree with Dave. An event one week out of the year is impacting something that thousands of

tax paid residents need and want and it's improved over the last couple months so it seems like yeah well anyway if they're going to charge us money for that i assume that's where that's headed but they don't want us there anyways we need to find another place or then pull this and just say we're not doing recycling and i hate to be the guy to say that but i don't know what else so we're back at looking at urban road then well it's up to the board

the township abandoned recycling yeah so absolutely i i i live in the township i don't want to do that but i mean but you have no choice and the other option is that like i said the curbside which might make a little bit of sense in the village over the course it makes sense to the village the cost goes up astronomically at all because then you're in this and they won't do it on a

ad hoc basis where, you know, every fifth house recycling.

They might, but they would be charging you even more than what they would do with every house recycling.

So that would be hundreds of dollars. And I see more people, I hate to say this, I see more people, not village people, out recycling or just in general. Just because there's more people that live out in the township that are in the summer and there's way more people there that recycle.

So if you, as we abandon it, um, Would residents have someplace else to go to drop? Recycling? No.

I mean, they could go to Bear Lake or one of the county sites, but they're not supposed to do that. So we're just putting in the trash.

That's just another problem.

Well, what's going to happen, frankly, because the volume of recycling compared to the volume of trash, I mean, recycling takes up a lot more space. That stuff's going to end up in the woods.

There's gonna be people just so I know where they want to do that. We need to just figure out where I go So since nobody appears to have like my urban road idea It's getting beat up from the standpoint I think people are worried that you're gonna have nobody there.

Well, okay, you'll have people there that are dumping stuff I'm sure you I'm sure you will brave and it's not an instant thing you're the whole infrastructure will driveway and parking lot and fence and Because currently it's wood. It's a wooded area. I don't even know how flat that is. Right.

It would take considerable amount of time to concrete. I don't think it's 10 acre parcels that steep on 11 miles. Oh yeah, that one is.

So maybe we should appoint a subcommittee to look at the 10 acre parcel and then the bigger parcel and come back with a recommendation as to where it might be and then we can

And a storage bill. We might as well talk about that briefly. How big a storage bill are you on? 100 by 200? 100 by 400? 100 by 50?

I think whoever's on the subcommittee can figure that out.

We need room, but we don't need 30 by 40? And for its size. I don't even know what size that is. I don't know. 40 by... Are we forming one? Yeah. Matt? Who else? Matt and me. There you go. That's fine.

We spoke about just at a parks and rec meeting potentially about putting a building somewhere along with Greenway.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, just a potential spot because A huge majority of the things that need to be stored are out that way. But at where?

By North Point Park. Well, so the specific area that was mentioned, and I won't say I personally support it or don't support it, just for clarification. It was just brought up. If you're going down Greenway, the back way around the park, there's an entrance that says employees only or something like that. And it's sort of a blighty-looking area next to some other blighty-looking area that might be okay. Now, there are members of Parks and Rec who are very conservation educated, and I would want them to weigh in on that. But in terms of location, moving all that stuff from Langland to there would be easier. It would be, but it's

You have to develop two sites then because you're not going to put recycling out there. So you're still going to have to have a, you know, it's less intensive, obviously. Excellent point. Yeah, I don't think you want recycling out there. The question I had, Vic, is do parks and rec and their long-range plan for that 10 and this, I guess it's like 30 or 20, whatever that is in there, do they have any future vision for that for the parks?

Right now, there are no proposed specific plans in the five-year plan for that area. but we've always felt it was an absolutely fantastic potential, but we lost the 10 acres that were in between those two, which would have made it a huge swap, which would have said we really need to do something with that. They're nice natural resources areas. I think that there is something we could do with it, but there are no projects in the five-year plan at this point.

Why don't we look at We'll look at that anyways at the same time. You might as well get both pieces. Not that I actually like putting it out there because it is closer, but you just have to develop the driveway, gravel, you know. Where? On North Point? Yeah, Greenway. Well, it's pretty much ready for a building. But it's flat, right?

Yeah, it's flat. This is for a building, you're saying? Yeah, just put a building. I just put a building. There's a driveway here.

Is there a driveway? Yeah. Yeah. It's my understanding is there is a resident that owns properties on each side that uses that. I'd almost rather have the building there from the standpoint of vandalism or anything instead of it closed out there in the middle of nowhere. I mean, really. Matt, can I be a junior partner on the team? Absolutely.

And since I kind of proposed it, I'd kind of like to be on the subcommittee too.

There, you can go on with him. I might. What's that?

I just want to know that there's an advocate for it. I'm not saying that you're not, but.

So my minutes will reflect that the subcommittee is now.

These two and Vic is a junior partner. A junior partner, an alternate. They can't be an alternate. I guess you could. Something happens to me, I go down. He's not on the township board. He can be a partner. Okay. Do you do that and have something back by next month? Really? Okay, yeah. Okay. 34 by 16. That's a decent size.

Okay. Are we done with that?

We're moving on to Libby website. I put that on our new business because I think we should talk about it. What the board would like to do to address some of these concerns. What they think we should do.

So where are we at today?

So there are some missing methods. I've asked the clerk to get the official copies together. He's working on that once we get those open post.

2026 is all complete. And now I'm starting to pick back through 2025 and making sure that those are correct and not transferred over incorrectly when we did the Roll over.

And then there is the website that this one got upgraded from, the Drupal open source one. They supposedly have kept that open or will keep that open until the end of September. That's what I asked for. Last time I checked, it was still available, but eventually we're going to take that down. So I was going to compare just to make sure that we've got kind of the same things on there. So once that's done, it's just a matter of making sure that the agendas and the minutes get posted on their banner. It's just a matter of doing it.

Excuse me. What about all the errors that are continuing there, including now on the clerk under election? It says a click to amend agendas and minutes.

I think you read out loud that I was going to go through and audit the website. That was part of that process.

What I want to know is, okay, I think I have my answer. So the township board is not, is just going to continue the way we have been continued for four and a half years. Yes or no? I don't know that we've said that. Okay. So why hasn't anything been done in four and a half years?

Sorry. We have a new website. There was an issue. Libby, we know there's issues. We're trying to fix them, but they're not going to be fixed in one week.

I know that. I think on the clerk page, I don't know. My first thought was like yours. Why is the agendas over here on the clerk page when it's so clearly on the government when you drop down on the agenda page? That might be a placeholder for I don't know, election commission, maybe, but the election commission.

That's similar stuff.

Yeah.

But the agendas are in the agenda center on the homepage. That's where they're going to live. They're not going anywhere else. That's where they're at. That's how it's done.

Okay.

That's a good question. So I understand we're working on updating the missing minutes. So does that include ZBA, border review, planning commission?

Yep.

And they were transferred, and they should have, and

They weren't there on the other one either.

Maybe Planning Commission was on the other one. I understand. Because I put those on myself.

Yes, but the ZBA was not.

Yeah, don't say that. I put the Planning Commission on myself.

And I've updated Harbor Commission to today. Everything. I'm missing one. It's been up there.

Okay.

Libby, I think we are working toward, you know, I know you don't believe that, but they are, he has been working. She's been in an election, unfortunately, which is too much time, but that's come to an end now. We are going to devote more time. Cindy's offered to help a little bit. I have had conversations. So we are working towards trying to.

So the answer to my question is you're going to continue working as you have them.

No.

No, I don't think that's true.

I don't think that's a true statement. I think we're making a concerted effort.

I should phrase the answer to my question.

I have no idea how you'd phrase that. I told you we're working on trying to fix it.

We are working on it. Okay.

Back to this different topic, posting of the Zoom. MEETINGS THAT STOP SOMETHING.

I'LL CHECK WITH THE PEOPLE THAT DO THAT. WE DON'T DO THAT. IT'S NOT OUR CONTROL. THEY DIDN'T GET THE E-MAIL OR THEY JUST HAVEN'T GOTTEN AROUND TO DOING IT.

WE DON'T DO THAT OURSELVES. THAT INFORMATION JUST GOES TO, WHAT'S HIS NAME? IT GOES TO PEG PEOPLE. I'LL SEE WHAT THEY DO. WE DON'T CONTRACT. AGAIN, THAT WOULD BE GREAT.

AND I'D APPRECIATE ACTUALLY HEARING directly from you, let you find out.

I will do that. Okay.

Okay. Or we could, I'm moving on. Okay. DeVoe problem. Well, Mike and I met at Mr. DeVoe's last week, Mike being from the county.

Oh, not Mike DeVoe. You're saying the other Mike.

Yeah. Oh, there was two Mikes and myself there. Okay. Mr. Sherbrooke, the code enforcement officer. Code enforcement officer. He came to know... I hobbled around on one leg with my crutch because of my knee, walked around. We've determined that five of the cars do not have plates, current plates. So he's going to go get the current plates for them. I can't do anything. All the other cars have a current plate on them. So that being said, as long as they're plated, we really have no say in what you have on your property. Well, to an extent.

Played it with the current sticker.

Yeah, played it with the current sticker, not an old plate that's, okay, so he had five that were not. What about like boats that are not currently registered? Yeah. We're on the water, but, so out back where the fence goes, I just actually measured yesterday, falling back, do you want to know about how many feet you thought you should pick up for this fencing? the computer on the area 150 feet they obviously think they're both in the front yard though yeah you can store those legally on the trailer in the front yard I think there's a the zoning ordinance I think there's a limit there is but you gotta remember we did it we did a we didn't do it we did a Stipulation would be not zoning ordinance. We're not following zoning ordinance now. Okay.

But the zoning ordinance has a limit on the number of recreation. Two or three. Like of one kind, like up to six or some pretty, you know, accommodating number.

And Pat Bentley is going to survey the roads so we know exactly where to put the fence.

But the stipulation was he could store all that stuff with a fence, correct?

Different than what, that's what I'm saying. It's different than what the zoning ordinance does. It's totally different. It was conditioned on the fence. Conditioned on the fact that he was doing that stuff before we changed the zoning ordinance to not allow that. He had some of that stuff there from before. That's what this whole, I mean, that's really what the whole stipulation was.

So is a fence going in and when?

Well, as soon as he gets the materials there, I guess. Who is he? Mr. DeVolver.

So he's not putting in the fence?

We're not right now, unless he doesn't do it. And that's where that $32,000 bid came from, from a fence company was $32,000 to do the thing.

Yes, 30,000.

Or 30,000. To do it. Which I just thought was rather high, but that's what they want.

Is it not correct? Is it not possible to encourage Mr. DeVoe to move those items to the other property he owns?

I have encouraged him to move everything out back and just put the fence across out back. He wouldn't see any of them. I mean, that's what we agreed to. I know.

I know. We're trying to get it so that there's one fence on that back lot rather than the two fences that go along the back of the house, which isn't going to really do anything. It's going to make it bad. This makes it a lot of work. Was he agreeable?

In your conversation with Mr. DeVoe, did he share with you a timeline that he thought he might complete this in?

Well, I talked to him a week. So we were there a week ago, and then he called me Monday and asked me how many feet that was. So I'm assuming he's moving towards that because he's the one to call me back and said, you know how many feet of fence I need. Because you were like an eight-foot fence. It can't be eight foot. The zoning is only six foot high. I think the price that we get after the court order says eight foot. Yeah, but you can't. against ours. That's against ourselves. That's against ourselves too. Okay.

It needs to be eight foot. You'll see it. That's why the fence was expensive.

I was going to say, the guy that did our bid, bid an eight foot fence. I went with him.

Correct. The gentleman from Straight Line Fence bid an eight foot fence because that's what the court order said.

The court order said eight foot. He was like, are you sure? I said, that's what it says right here. Okay, it was much more expensive than a six-foot fence.

Correct. Well, I'm not so sure you can buy eight-foot-tall fence sections at Menards or Lowe's or any, I don't know that.

Well, if they have to construct them from scratch, that would explain the $30,000. That would explain the $30,000.

I did ask for a more detailed explanation of his bid, and he did not respond.

But he should not put that up that he's going to be installed before it's even written.

No, no, I'll tell them tomorrow. We need to get a survey because we don't want the fence on somebody else's property. No, we don't want it on our own. Right. Okay. Well, that part would be okay. Okay. Portage point in sewer ball field. I attended a meeting. They're going to apply for a septic permit. Sorry, it's not going to be called septic fitting heat. George Spinell is going to apply for a sewage, whatever you want to call for the end on the property that they own by distributable.

So wastewater treatment and whatever it is, the application go to EGLE for that because of the volume or can it be limited to? I think it goes to EGLE.

I'm pretty sure. So they've already had a design work, I think, done, and he's in the process of throwing out the application for that. So I think the deal with you guys, we've talked about you don't have capacity now. Probably I'll put another pond anywhere. It would require improvements, yes.

What about the blank letter you got? Is Mr. Goodman working hard to get that cleaned up? Because I haven't seen anything moved, really. That I don't know.

According to the last tracking and according to what Mr. McCall shared, they were going to work on that in August. It's still August. Correct. It's still August.

Okay. You guys, when you have a meeting.

We have a meeting tomorrow is what I understand. I have not seen you, Jim.

Okay. If somehow you could work in the question about removing no marine improvements until the other stuff is done. So he could put the seawall in and get all that stuff off of ball diamond and be helpful.

Well, I thought there was going to be a whole review.

There is. But that should be mentioned. He's brought up. Can I ask when?

Because it's been discussed for two years. I don't know. Well, maybe we should direct the planning commission to do it. Because the chair doesn't seem to be very willing to help me with that in a timely fashion. OK.

Personally, I don't think the stack of seawall material is the issue. Okay. It's all the other junk out there, the piles of leaves, the wood chips, the heat.

Brush pile.

Yep, and the higglety-pigglety of all the other stuff. The what? Higglety-pigglety. The technical.

Yes. Yes.

That's the word I've been looking for. Okay, so it's not the steel that everyone's complaining about, it's everything else.

When I drive by there, the steel's been there since the low water in 20...

I think part of the issue for high water, which I'll say may be different, I think a lot of the issue, which is similar with other things we deal with, I I think the actual what's on the property, it's more of an issue that nothing's being done, that everybody's getting frustrated. And it's just got to be dealt.

Right. And to the untrained eye of what junk pile belongs to who, most people go by and say it's a whole junk pile from a ball of diamond to the balls. There's really no distinction there. It's all blending together. So I would say it's all got to get

Well, I would agree that there's two old buildings that should just be torn down and hauled away. Brush piles should be burned.

I think you should have Mike look at the storage building that's got a hole in the roof. It's blighted. It needs to go. I mean, on the inn property, when you drive behind the inn, he's let those buildings go. They need to be torn down. They're blighted. I'm sure that's not allowed in the specialty district.

Oh, you're talking about the kitchen where they tore down the other building around the back side. There's another building with a hole in the roof.

You're right. I mean, that shouldn't be allowed to stand. You should either fix it or tear it down. It's that sort of stuff that people just, they drive by it every single day.

Yeah, because it is bad right there. They tore the other thing down, but it still doesn't look well. There's a fence around half of it. No, they finished the fence. Did they? Yeah, a few days ago. Okay. So the whole thing's now...

It's an outgate fence and a gate all around it. Better than it was. I'm sleeping better. Hey, that could be where we could get some.

Yeah, seriously. Maybe Duncan will do it. I had a quick question. Where is he going to put the sewer? Oh, Mike, how are you? Property over there.

Say that again? You'd have to ask Bob. He owns the property over there by you, right? The ball diamond? What did I call the old ball diamond?

Yeah, so how is he going to get the sewer from the portage point into the ball diamond?

I have no idea. The pipe, I would assume.

But he doesn't own any of the land in between the ball diamond and The Portage Point End, correct?

You can't get permits on the road right away, presumably.

You can't get permits for private use of public property. It's just not possible.

Okay. Mike, you're actually saying stuff that I don't have any knowledge of or can even answer, so it sounds like you know more than we do. About that. I don't know the biggest stuff about that.

Well, maybe you guys should look into it before you authorize it. This is very disruptive.

I understand the concern, but can we continue on with the agenda? I'm sorry. Sorry. Oil and gas.

Well, it's kind of already discussed that.

So what exactly was Duane here looking for today?

An agreement to allow them to do seismic.

Which we have not seen. I don't have anything written.

No. I'd like to say that, but if it's just seismic and they pay $35 an acre and they don't have it signed a lease, I don't think I don't know why they wouldn't do it. But that's my opinion only.

I would be totally against it, but I think part of it for me, and Rich kind of alluded to it, I have tried for a couple months to have conversations to get more information. They have committed to sending me information. I still haven't seen it, which starts putting red flags on. And I have a difficult time as a trustee approving something that all I've heard is everything verbally, and I don't have anything in writing to react to.

I don't disagree, but that's the last communication I had, which was forwarded from Tom to me, and I don't have any sort of documentation that says... We want to partner with you, and here's what we want to do.