Keeping Watch and Shining Light on the Politicians and Political News of Hayes Township Published Monthly and Mailed Free to all Residences of Hayes Township, Charlevoix County www.hayestownshipsentinel.com Hayes Township SENTINEL OCTOBER 2019 EDRWSS EDDM POSTAL CUSTOMER PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID ROYAL OAK MI 48068 PERMIT #792 State Grantors may release funds if Hayes opens Camp Sea-Gull in stages Halloween came early to Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull this year as many rolls or orange safety fence went up along and around all hazardous areas of the Park. The fencing will remain until funding is secured to remedy the situation. Supervisor Ron VanZee reported to the Board and the public at the regular September Board meeting on September 9, that the State of Michigan grantors confirmed by email that if Hayes Town- ship opens Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull in safe stages beginning with the top half of the Park, the grantors may release the rest of state grant monies (ap- proximately $107,000) to Hayes Township. The Park has remained closed all summer because of infrastructure and safety issues cited by the Township’s liability insurance risk assessor and upon the advice of Town- ship attorney Bryan Graham. Graham has cautioned the Board that if it opens the Park without attending to the cited safety issues, each Board member is personally liable for any damage or harm to those visiting the Park. Van Zee and the rest of the Board stated emphatically at the meeting that they all want the Park opened as soon as possible. They were responding to oft-repeated criticisms and on-going pressure and ac- cusations of intentional delay in opening the Park from Paul Hoadley and Bill Henne during the public comment sections of the meeting. However the Board insisted that the Park remain closed until it is certain that the Park is as safe as it can be and will take no chances. The risk assessor will have to agree that the Board has done enough. Subsequently the Board spent most of its time at the meeting setting priorities and staging the necessary tasks to be completed in order to get the Park open and safe. The Board noted that timelines for completion of these three stages are dependent upon approval from the Township’s insurance risk assessor and of course finances. They defined three stages. Stage One, which will take 2-3 weeks, is opening the Park from the Boyne City Road to the top of the ridge, where the top level safety fence has been installed and is finished. The tasks to be completed before the top of the Park is opened include fencing off the old playground area until it can be cleared, Install a gate to block road access to the lower park area, lock the electrical panel by the old cabins on the top side, bury exposed electrical lines, bring in a port-a-potty, and install the Park entrance sign. Stage Two involves opening the lower half of the Park including the fishing pier, in 45 days, and puts the possible opening at the second or third week of October. The Board believes it will take this long to complete the following list of tasks. A railing must be installed on the west seawall, escape ladders and gates must be installed on the pier, USCGG approved life rings and safety ropes must be installed, and all open PVC pipes holding conduit must be capped. Additionally the cabins on the shoreline which are scheduled for demolition must be fenced off until they are gone sometime this fall or next spring. Safety signage must be posted as well as a special sign warning boaters that there is not a large enough turning radius to ac- commodate boats on trailers in the lower parking and launch area. Safety fencing must be secured around the rain gardens and along the entire length of the shale wall which will restrict boat and trailer launch access. The boat launch will be impossible to negotiate with all the safety fencing in place. Finally the entrance/exits to the grass walkway must be blocked off to the public, and the Board will also install a port-a-potty down by the launch as well. Stage Three consists of a realistic as- sessment of what the Board can hope to complete as grant monies and tax revenues come in. Supervisor VanZee emphasized that the Township needs the $107,000 in state grant money to complete Stage Three. The Board has instructed its consulting engineers at Beckett and Raeder to pre- pare a plan and get estimates to address the shale wall fencing, rectify the non -functioning rain gardens, and to re-work the grass walkway into leveled terraces so that it is safe for pedestrians to get up and down the hill without slipping and falling. The Board estimates that this stage will be completed by the summer of 2020, depend- ing upon grant reimbursement and fund raising efforts. When asked after the meeting when resi- dents will be able to use the boat launch, the Supervisor responded, “I don’t know. The turning radius is so short with the safety fencing in place that a trailer will end up in the rain gardens if anyone tries.” When the Park is fully opened next summer, it remains to be seen what tow- ing skills will be required to get a boat launched at Camp Sea-Gull.
Transcript
Keeping Watch and Shining Light on the Politicians and Political News of Hayes TownshipPublished Monthly and Mailed Free to all Residences of Hayes Township, Charlevoix County
www.hayestownshipsentinel .com
Hayes Township SENTINEL
OCTOBER 2019
EDRWSS EDDM
POSTAL CUSTOMER
PRSRT STD
US POSTAGE
PAID
ROYAL OAK MI
48068
PERMIT #792
State Grantors may release funds if Hayes opens Camp Sea-Gull in stages
Halloween came early to Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull this year as many rolls or orange safety fence went up along and around all hazardous areas of the Park. The fencing will remain until funding is secured to remedy the situation.
Supervisor Ron VanZee reported to the Board and the public at the regular September Board meeting on September 9, that the State of Michigan grantors confirmed by email that if Hayes Town-ship opens Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull in safe stages beginning with the top half of the Park, the grantors may release the rest of state grant monies (ap-proximately $107,000) to Hayes Township. The Park has remained closed all summer because of infrastructure and safety issues cited by the Township’s liability insurance risk assessor and upon the advice of Town-ship attorney Bryan Graham. Graham has cautioned the Board that if it opens the Park without attending to the cited safety issues, each Board member is personally liable for any damage or harm to those visiting the Park.
Van Zee and the rest of the Board stated emphatically at the meeting that they all want the Park opened as soon as possible. They were responding to oft-repeated criticisms and on-going pressure and ac-cusations of intentional delay in opening the Park from Paul Hoadley and Bill Henne during the public comment sections of the meeting. However the Board insisted that the Park remain closed until it is certain that the Park is as safe as it can be and will take no chances. The risk assessor will have to agree that the Board has done enough.
Subsequently the Board spent most of its time at the meeting setting priorities and staging the necessary tasks to be completed in order to get the Park open and safe. The Board noted that timelines for completion of these three stages are dependent upon approval from the Township’s insurance risk assessor and of course finances. They defined three stages.
Stage One, which will take 2-3 weeks, is opening the Park from the Boyne City Road to the top of the ridge, where the top level safety fence has been installed and is finished. The tasks to be completed before the top of the Park is opened include fencing off the old playground area until it can be cleared, Install a gate to block road access to the lower park area, lock
the electrical panel by the old cabins on the top side, bury exposed electrical lines, bring in a port-a-potty, and install the Park entrance sign.
Stage Two involves opening the lower half of the Park including the fishing pier, in 45 days, and puts the possible opening at the second or third week of October. The Board believes it will take this long to complete the following list of tasks. A railing must be installed on the west seawall, escape ladders and gates must be installed on the pier, USCGG approved life rings and safety ropes must be installed, and all open PVC pipes holding conduit must be capped. Additionally the cabins on the shoreline which are scheduled for demolition must be fenced off until they are gone sometime this fall or next spring. Safety signage must be posted as well as a special sign warning boaters that there is not a large enough turning radius to ac-commodate boats on trailers in the lower parking and launch area. Safety fencing must be secured around the rain gardens and along the entire length of the shale wall which will restrict boat and trailer launch access. The boat launch will be impossible to negotiate with all the safety fencing in place. Finally the entrance/exits to the grass walkway must be blocked off to the public, and the Board will also install a port-a-potty down by the launch as well.
Stage Three consists of a realistic as-sessment of what the Board can hope to complete as grant monies and tax revenues come in. Supervisor VanZee emphasized that the Township needs the $107,000 in state grant money to complete Stage Three. The Board has instructed its consulting engineers at Beckett and Raeder to pre-pare a plan and get estimates to address the shale wall fencing, rectify the non -functioning rain gardens, and to re-work the grass walkway into leveled terraces so that it is safe for pedestrians to get up and down the hill without slipping and falling. The Board estimates that this stage will be completed by the summer of 2020, depend-ing upon grant reimbursement and fund raising efforts.
When asked after the meeting when resi-dents will be able to use the boat launch, the Supervisor responded, “I don’t know. The turning radius is so short with the safety fencing in place that a trailer will
end up in the rain gardens if anyone tries.” When the Park is fully opened next
summer, it remains to be seen what tow-ing skills will be required to get a boat launched at Camp Sea-Gull.
PAGE 2 OCTOBER 2019
Sunday, August 25 dawned sun-ny and breezy, a perfect day for an annual celebration at the Hayes Township Hall (Hayes Town-ship Park Camp Sea-Gull is still closed). Volunteers had scrubbed and hauled canoes and benches for the silent auction, and others bravely put up a large pavilion tent with absolutely no instruc-tions! The tent provided shade for those who wanted to eat outside and listen to the Dorothy Gerber Strings, a local strings education group to which Jack and Luke VanZee belong. Charlie Whittoff, a Hayes resident, lent his blues/rock talent to the occasion as well.
Attendees dined on grilled-to-perfection hot dogs, fresh sweet corn, and a variety of pot luck dishes fit for a king. Approximate-ly 90 folks attended throughout the afternoon.
Katy Hill put together an infor-mative and interesting slide show featuring all the Township Parks and guests stuck post-it notes on the current drawing of the Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull stating their opinions regarding what we should provide there. There were no surprises; they still want beach access, playground areas, handicapped access to the water, and restrooms! They added rustic camping to their list of sug-gestions.
Parkluck Event makes friends out of neighbors, declared a success
The silent auction offered six Camp Sea-Gull canoes filled with treasures from the storage barn, benches from the original dining hall and arts buildings, picnic tables, signs, and more. The auction netted over $4,300 for the Park, due to some generous anonymous donors. The Board also received a John Deer tractor
and a regulation volleyball net from others. Supervisor VanZee said, “We made more money than the big auction at Camp Sea-Gull a few years ago!”
The Parks and Recreation Com-mittee reports that they have learned quite a bit about planning and running an annual celebra-tion and have already begun to
plan for next year’s event to be held at Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull. Special thanks go to the Tent Crew: Bob Jess, Ron VanZee, Matt Cunningham, Tom Cunningham, Gary Janz, Abby Cunningham, Jack VanZee, Luke VanZee, and Kaira VanZee.
The Park and Rec Committee and additional volunteers went
above and beyond. Thanks to Paul Zardus, Susan Pyke, Michelle Biddick, Lisa Kuebler, Katy Hill, Brandon Hill, Julie Collard, War-ren Nugent, Mary Nugent, Kris-tin Baranski, Dee Janz, Jennifer Cunningham, Alessandra Jess, Sophie Herboleshiemer, and Cris Cunningham.
OCTOBER 2019 PAGE 3
by ROY GRIFFITTS, Chair of the Hayes Township Planning Commission
According to the Michigan Planning and Enabling Act, as amended in 2008, the Plan-ning Commission is mandated to make and approve a master plan as a guide for future growth and development. This plan must address land use and in-frastructure and should project these 20 or more years into the future. The final master plan is approved by the township Board of Trustees. The master plan must be updated every 5 years. The Planning Commission is currently involved in updating the 2013 Master Plan which it hopes to have completed and adopted in 2019.
This plan serves as the basis for developing zoning regulations
Beckett & Raeder Cost Summary taken from the July 19, 2019 Project Memorandum to the Hayes Township Board of Trustees:
As part of the Sentinel’s on-going interest in financial transparency in Hayes Township government, we are publishing the summary cost sheet from the Beckett & Raeder Consultant’s report, released to the public by the Hayes Board on August 12, 2019. The 28 page report goes into detail as to what the Board must do to make Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull as safe as possible to open for the public. The complete report can be found on the Hayestownshipmi.gov website and on the Hayes Township Sentinel’s Facebook page. Keep this summary sheet handy, along with the budget sheets we published last issue and refer to them often. You can see the fund raising challenges we face here.
Revising the Master Planand amendments to the current Zoning Ordinance, for land use in the township. The goal of the master plan is to establish com-patible land uses, protect natural resources and provide guidance for any citizens who wish to de-velop their property in a manner consistent with the character of the township. It is important that the resulting Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance reflect a balance of growth and commu-nity character. To accomplish this, the master plan must in-clude land uses for agriculture, residences of differing sizes and type as well as for commerce, industry, recreation, forests, woodlots, open spaces, wildlife refuges, and public buildings and facilities. The plan must also consider conservation of the soil, waterways and lakefront areas.
The first step made by the Planning Commission was to commission a survey of the township views on important issues. The firm Beckett and Raeder, a landscape architec-ture, planning, engineering and environmental firm was hired to assist in developing the survey and analyzing the results. The final report contains answers to specific questions as well as the additional comments provided by some of those surveyed. This data was compiled in the analy-sis which will help to guide the Planning Commission in devel-oping this Master Plan. With the help of Beckett and Raeder staff, the Planning Commission also reviewed the current land use map in the current Zoning Ordinance to see what exactly has changed in the township in
terms of land use and where it is most likely to change in the next 5 years. This information is combined with other sources of information to help in forming the draft of the plan.
Once the Planning Commission has a comprehensive draft of the Master Plan, we will be holding several open houses to gather community feedback on the draft. We cannot set the dates yet, but people in the township will be notified in ample time to attend and put in their “2 cents” on the draft plan. Before the adoption of the Master Plan, the feedback and comments from the township wide open houses will be reviewed and used for final input into the Master Plan and a public hearing will be held prior to it being approved first by the Planning Commission and
then by the Board of Trustees.The Master Plan process is also
part of a broader effort in the state to share and coordinate experiences and issues common to many. To that end, the draft plan is shared with neighboring townships, local governments, and the Charlevoix County Plan-ning Commission for feedback and comments. Recognizing the shared projects and inter-dependence we have with our neighboring townships creates the opportunity for meaningful joint goal setting on projects that benefit us all.
Editor’s Note: The survey Mr. Griffitts refers to in the above article can be found on the website hayes-townshipmi.gov or at the Hayes Township Hall, Corner of Burgess and Old US 31, Charlevoix Mi 49720
The edge of the cliff at the top of the launch excavation has now been completely fenced off with a rustic rail fence with dark green wire mesh behind designed to keep both people and pets from accidental falls. See the chart to the right for a complete summary of the consulting engineers’ recommendations and costs.
PAGE 4 OCTOBER 2019
Opinions Shining Light on Political News
Hayes TownsHip senTinel
“Democracy Dies in Darkness”Visit our website at
hayestownshipsentinel.comto listen to recordings of
township meetings and view the many pictures of Camp
PUBLISHED BY: Hayes Township Sentinel, A Non-Profit Corporation
P.O. Box 581 • Charlevoix, Mi. 49720
Have you ever tried to clean out an old abandoned shed, or a musty basement and had to first knock down, sweep away, and clear your face of those sticky, stubborn, gray spider webs that can fill an old room or niche? It can give me the shivers, and easily distract me from what I started to do which was to clear a space, and send me off cursing! But the cobwebs have to go in order to get things cleaned out and ready for progress.In the same way, the Board of Trustees
has to deal with the tangled cobwebs of misinformation that have gotten in the way of making a clean move forward to get Hayes Township Park Camp Sea-Gull moving forward and finished-for-now, and to clean up the gray, sticky, opaque bookkeeping they found when they achieved a like-minded majority after the recall election. Now that the hard work has begun
in earnest to finance and finish Camp Sea-Gull and the accounts are all straightened out (monies that were restricted have been put in their proper places), we can all see more clearly what the task at hand is. One of the issues that has been com-
ing up repeatedly at monthly board meetings is that the “contingency fund” allocated for unforeseen but necessary items when the plans were made (we had at least 23) and would cover the ex-penses of installing the safety require-ments for the boat launch and park.Contingency funds are set up for
construction projects typically at a rate of 10-20% of the contract, and then added to the contracted amount on top of the engineer’s estimate. In the case of Phase 1 of Camp Sea-Gull, the Board set aside $71,636.18 which is 5% of $1,432,723.55 making the total contract
These charts represent the bare bones financial facts that the Township has to deal with in the immediate future. In total we have spent almost twice what was pro-jected for the contingency on this project. In addition we paid for a mistake in road design and we paid to re-connect both electricity and water to the host house when it was cut by the contractor. In this writer’s opinion, the project engineer is responsible for reimbursing the Township for those mistakes. With no certain grant funds available, we had to go to into our reserve funds.
Then there is the issue of the “Additional Unplanned Cost Items.” These are all logi-
From the Observation Deck
by Leslie Cunningham, Editor
Change orders and safety measures wiped out contingency funds
Phase 1 Contingency Allowance Summary
Original Project Contract $1,432,723.55Contingency Cost $71,636.18
Actual Additional Costs Paid Out of
ContingencyChange Order #1 58,612.00Change Order #2 3,394.60Change Order #3 25,843.60Change Order #4 8,334.90Change Order #5 4,733.50Change order #6 0.00Change Order #7 0.00Change Order #8 0.00Re-Design Road 3,000.00Park Signage 3,000.00Great Lakes Energy 2,331.00 Wojan Plumbing 2,790.00Wilmott Electric 2,500.00Security Camera System 13,759.65Temporary Fencing 1,035.56Upper Safety Fence 8,314.00Upper Fence Wire Mesh 2,997.00TOTAL 140,645.81Over Contingency $69,009.63
cal safety and environmental issues that should have been included in the original plan. If you know you are digging in shale (proper borings would indicate that) then you might want to do some more investigat-ing before removing twice as much hillside as planned to get the launch in. You could take plenty of time to create a plan (#24 or 25) to accommodate a shale wall, do the research, include a fence at the top of the cliff—not rush to dig at any cost. The $95,325 to mitigate a slip-and-slide pedes-trian walkway, railings, fences, and fixing non-functioning rain gardens will again eat deeply into our reserve funds.
So the cobwebs are thick and sticky and the Hayes Board has to clear them away at every meeting. But they have not given up and kudos to the Board, and to all the volunteers who are brainstorming and working to get this park in shape. The Su-pervisor and Clerk will have had another conference call with the state grantors by the time you read this and hopefully the grantors will accept the Board’s three stage park opening plan. We are moving forward.
Meanwhile the Parks and Rec Committee is looking at other grants to help us down the road to fund picnic areas, pavilions, sports areas, an interpretive center, and real running water restrooms!
The Hayes Board remains committed to fixing and restoring the park without pro-posing a millage. So we need all hands on deck when it comes to thinking, imagining, fundraising, and preparing for the future here in Hayes Township. And we need you to have the facts, not some deceptive sticky web clouding your eyesight. The next meeting of the Parks and Recreation Committee is October 2, at 5:30pm at the Township Hall and the next regular BOT meeting is at 7pm October 14, at the Town-ship Hall. Mark your calendars and plan to participate.
$1,572.980.86. There has been an ongoing misunder-
standing about how much is left in the contingency fund and so Clerk Warren Nugent has prepared the following chart showing exactly what has been spent so far and what the Board has pared down from the Beckett & Raeder list of priorities to do by the spring of 2020. You will see that the contin-gency fund is in the hole to the tune of $69,009.63 and the Board will have to make up the difference out of Town-ship reserve funds if grant funding does not come through. These figures are all taken directly out of the books and can be verified in the accounting program and the checkbook.
