Live Timeline

CALL TO ORDER

INVOCATION

PLEDGE

ROLL CALL

ADOPT AGENDA

PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS

• Adam Olney:cautioned against public prayer to religion-specific gods

BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS/CLARIFICATION

NEW BUSINESS

1. Approval of Ballot Language for the Public Safety Millage Renewal

• Wagner
• Fink makes an adjustment to the resolution or ballot language's fourth "whereas"
• Zelenock
• Muchow says it is not a tax increase
• Chief Wagner says tax increase is to cover the cost of Fire Department transitioning to full time personnel and eliminate or reduce coverage by unqualified personnel."
• Dignan says it's a decrease if you factor in the retirement of PSB debt but does not provide numbers.
• Manley: we have until the 11th to turn in the ballot language

2. Motion to enter into Closed session

• Zelenock asks to have Township Attorney explain why the closed session is necessary.
• Township Attorney Fink responds with boilerplate
• Motion passes. Board vanishes into a private zoom meeting room

Transition: 28 minutes of closed session pass in 8 or so seconds

Board returns to open session

3. Possible action as a result of Closed Session

• Dignan makes a motion to notice the public about a public hearing about Chestnut development.
• May 25th seems to be the date although it is not specified.
• Zelenock will not be voting yes

Otto makes a motion to update the zoning ordinance to do something about PUDs and the PC, murky language which Dignan clarifies.

4. Consideration of Continuing Independent Contractor Services

"Slammed" 

5. Consideration of Job Posting for Township Manager position

• Dignan: My plate is full. I'm getting slammed.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS None

BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS / CLARIFICATION

• Chick
• Manley
• Zelenock: criticized Chestnut communications and miscommunications in newsletter
• Muchow: Fireworks are on July 2, Parade on July 3
• Manley
• Otto
• Dignan:staff responsible for newsletter content
• Dignan sputters: "hyperbole of blowviating"
• Dignan sputters: "outright blatant lies that are being spewed are nothing short of atrocious"
• Dignan dismisses: 20 year history of Township citizen objection
• Chick
• Dignan: People wanted more communication? They got it
• Muchow

Adjournment

 

 

 

 

 

LiveTimeline

CALL TO ORDER

PLEDGE

INVOCATION

ROLL CALL

APPROVE MINUTES from April 13, 2021 Meeting

ADOPT AGENDA New Business Item 1 removed from agenda on advice of township attorney, to be subject of a future closed meeting.

Citizen Comment (Please limit comments to Agenda Items)

• Commissioner Susan Shink (Dignan did not interrupt or cut her off)
• David Gordon Interrupted by Dignan at 15m05s Cut off at 15m19s
• David C. Interrupted by Dignan at 15m45s Cut off at 15m59s
• Angeline
• David Perry Interrupted by Dignan and Cut off at 17m58s
• Adam Olney
• Suzie Wienckowski

BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS

• Zelenock
• Chick

CORRESPONDENCE Letters/E-mails from residents regarding Chestnut Development proposal will be moved to a later meeting and packet

OLD BUSINESS

1. 75 Barker RFP Committee recommendation.

• Zelenock: Moves to accept sales agreement, selling for $81,250 with a $30,000 down payment paid immediately
• [Unbelievable! A Cannabiz had at one point offered around $600K]
• "Mr Jay"
• Jay, who looks amazingly like a younger Rupert Murdoch, rationalizes the ridiculously low purchase price.
• He's doing us a favor. He has to pay for a well. [Who doesn't?]
• That the building was assessed "As Is" at a much higher value by a well paid professional assessor is swept under the rug.
• Mr Jay has to spend money to rehab. [Who doesn't?]
• On the plus side, it's for a food business.

NEW BUSINESS

[Removed from Agenda] 1. Consider Chestnut Development Planned Unit Development (PUD) Application

2. Consider Personnel Committee’s recommendation to hire Officer Dawn King for the Code Enforcement Officer position contingent upon the purchase of a township vehicle

3. Review Fiscal Year 2021-22 Draft Budget Changes

4: Land Preservation Committee Budget Request

• Controller Yvette Starbuck mentions $7,500 in Land Preservation Committee budget for next year and request for $13,050
• Dignan mentions the 50% increase in LPC budget that showed up when drafting the budget. Wants more time to consider.
• Otto asks what another survey will answer that previous surveys have not.
• Zelenock says the survey will answer the question of land preservation's importance to residents and more importantly, if residents are willing to pay for it.
• Whether it's a random sample or complete sample is the UofM professional surveyer's choice.
• Chick: "Surveys typically in Northfield Township are used to weaponize."
• Chick suggests zeroing out the proposed LPC $5000 expense and pushing the question onto a ballot, the premise being that a land preservation millage vote is a defacto survey.
• Muchow: dislikes LPC's "return to the well" to double their budget

ANNOUNCEMENTS

PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS Citizen Comment (Open):

• Steve Gronow: Says his development will be a major change.

• Gronow invites residents for a look "behind the drywall" at his Highland development. 

• Saturday, May 8, 10:00AM   Chestnut Crossing at 2800 Highland Road, US-23/M59 exit    Saturday May 8th 10AM

• Julie Kapnich (?) "looking forward to growth of our community"
• David C: "Miss Chick, I don't think you have a clue."
• Marissa Prizgint: LPC was "not coming back to the well"
• Laurie Nelson Daniels If we wanted to pay for wider roads, more crime and more drugs in our schools we could live in Canton
• Angeline Robatero (?) 200 rental townhouses = no investment in community/ bubble/ cherry hill village /owners trapped underwater
• Julia Henshaw
• Cecilia Infante Serious discrepancies between minutes of the meeting and planner's report on what happened.
• Erica
• Brian, Timbercrest lived here 6 years decried "fear of growth, fear of change," followed by effortlessly hurdling the cognitive-dissonance divide to say "we all moved here for the green space"
• Reinhold Dillman (?) moved out here for a rural green lifestyle
• Karen Alexa
• David Gordon
• Adam Olney:  (y'know-ism at its most edifying.)

BOARD MEMBER COMMENTS / CLARIFICATION

• Supervisor Dignan
• Treasurer Zelenock Re development: "It will define us forever." Re the incessant attacks and butt ignorant brickbats hurled so casually against the LPC, she speaks on behalf of volunteers who are not as professionally thick skinned.
• Clerk Manley
• Trustee Nelson "I read every comment."
• Trustee Chick
• Trustee Otto
• Trustee Muchow 

Announcements

ADJOURNMENT

 

 

The PC meeting has been LiveTimelined.  -which means that the video's timeline manifests as labled segments in the YouTube video timeline.

Each segment delineates a speaker, an agenda item, a snippet.

If you click through to YouTube proper by clicking the "YouTube" (bottom right in the video window) you can also view and

select from the timestamps in the video description. Clicking a timestamp catapalts you to that instant in time in the video.

 If you're viewing from YouTube, you can also add timestamped notes in the comments below the video window.

Did something someone said seem important?  Did I forget an Agenda item? Note it with a time.

The extensive Commissioner discussions have not been fully annotated.  Feel free to contribute comments with timestamps under the youtube video.

 

 

4/5/2021    Proposed housing, commercial development in rural township north of Ann Arbor ignites debate, by Samuel J Robinson, MLive

A Change.org petition launched this week titled, “Support greenspace in Northfield Township,” currently has about 200 signatures.

And there's a website.

 

 

I can't be the only person who noticed the disappearance from the Township website of former Manager Howard Fink's favorite work of fiction, the page claiming that Northfield Township voters had voted for "the Township Manager" form of government in 2012. 

Quite the opposite was true.  The 2008-2012 Board attempted to hire a Manager but did not complete the task.  The core of that 2008-2012 Board was kicked out of office by Township voters in November, 2012. 

It was their replacements on the 2012-2016 Board who hired Howard Fink as Manager. Four years of Township wide turmoil ensued.  Biltmore rose and fell.

A reform Board was elected in November of 2016.  Fink panicked. He fled to the relative comfort of Park Township, deep in Michigan's DeVos country.  Door to Door Billionaires.  Mercenary Mendacity.

FWIW, Fink's heightened interest in haircuts had telegraphed the fact that he had been shopping his resume and interviewing. As an anonymous attorney commented, Fink was a good interview. 

Fink was tack sharp and underchallenged by Northfield Township  He was a master of the cornerstones of municipal governance: policy prattle and government finance. His failings were a few social engineering tics, a facileness that rarely showed cracks or telegraphed doubts, a too willingness to lie when cornered. 

Fink ran the Northfield Township Board like it was their idea.  Fink shaped and controlled their perceptions. Fink fueled their fantasies. Fink owned them.

Throughout he remained true to his Liberal ideals, ideals I share.  What are a few fibs between soulmates?  With luck he'll someday land a position in a place befitting his underchallenged, underappreciated talents, a hyper planned upper middle class mecca like Pleasanton, California: diverse, education and educating valued, vineyards, close enough to a coast that sushi bars have something to work with, taco trucks to die for and municipal budgets meted out in acre-feet of cash.

 

 January 6th, Insurrection Day, Local's Selfie at the Washington Monument Rage Rally

Long story shortened, the 2016 Board arrived with the promise of reform. Three fresh faces: Supervisor Marlene Chockley, Clerk Kathy Manley and Treasurer Lenore Zelenock. 

Any promise of progress was soon crushed by the unholy evangelical marriage of Jacki Otto, Janet Chick, right wing extremist Tawn Beliger (pictured above at a Washington DC Protest) and the agnostic but loudly Liberal hating Libertarian Wayne Dockett

Otto and Chick dictated that the best way to control the new Supervisor was through another Manager.  (A manager more easily controlled, it must be noted.)

If Fink had stuck around, the job would have remained his. That's how quickly they flipped.

Steve Aynes was hired. He was a nice guy. He knew his business. He spoke calmly and even mentioned the truth about the net costs of development at his public job interview. He knew what Fink knew but was less strident.

Thus began another four years of increasingly broken Board Meetings, a Supervisor bent, folded, spindled and mutilated by nonstop manipulation and deceptions large and small of the All-Republican cast of characters.  Aynes was restricted to the signing authority of a gnat and micromanaged to a standstill.  After approximately forever, the Board realized that Aynes was pinned down and hesitant to decide anything.  Blame Board micromanagement.  The Board led with the steadyness of a fish gasping for breath, flip-flopping on the bottom of a boat.  The insane vacillation around the issue of doing something/anything/wtf about 75 Barker Road was only one example, exhibit A.

 

But wait! There's more! 

Coming next, the story of Downtown Non-Parking and the Tsunami that's rolling down U.S. 23 toward the first downtown pot shop south of the Livingston County Line. 

 

 

 

2/9/2021   Two Special Northfield Township Board meetings in One LiveTimeline (Aynes walks the plank)

 

LiveTimeline

CALL TO ORDER of 6-00pm Special Meeting

PLEDGE

INVOCATION

ROLL CALL

ADOPT BALANCE OF AGENDA

Public Comment: Lisa Lemble

AGENDA ITEM 1.

Dignan makes a motion to go into Closed session: "Pursuant to MCL 15.268(a) to consider the dismissal, suspension, or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against, or to consider a periodic personnel evaluation of, a public officer, employee, staff member, or individual agent, per the request of Mr. Steve Aynes this will be a closed hearing"

• Manley:< Motion passes 7 to 0
• (The transition to closed session happens in fits and starts)
• Jennifer Carlisle shares on her desktop the Notice of Closed Session. This will remain visible in the public zoom meeting room for the next hour+, well into the 6-30pm special meeting.
• Boardmembers vanish from public room
• Aynes appears: "Jennifer, it's you, me and Lisa, huh?"
• Dignan reappears: "Jennifer, are you there still?"
• Dignan disappears,
• Aynes reappears at the top of the public facing zoom window
• The Board remained in closed session for 51+ minutes. Part of that 51 minutes elapsed during the four or five minutes of transition following the vote.
• The stream as it transpired was recorded continuously and uninterrupted to the Township Livestream account as the 6-00pm stream. The Boardmembers left public chat, secure from public observation in a separate zoom virtual meeting room.
• For the purposes of this LiveTimelined stream, I eliminated the need for viewers to either watch 51 minutes of nothing or to guess where the meeting resumed. I cut out most of the 51 minutes of silence, empty room, and dead screen. The 51 minutes I replaced with a 30 second title.
• The 51 minutes was streamed untouched to the Township Livestream recording of the 6:00pm special meeting.
• There is one exception to the contentless-ness of this 51 minute interval. Manager Aynes did not attend the closed session. Physically, he remained in his Township office, fitfully reading bundles of paper. The zoom thumbnail reflecting his activity remained visible at the top of the public facing zoom meeting screen during most of the first closed session. So I time-compressed and overlaid his action-packed 51-ish minutes of office work onto the 30 second title. Aynes was muted. There was no audio.
• Dignan reappears in public zoom room.
• Boardmembers reappear in public zoom room.
• Open session resumes.

Citizen Comment: Marissa Prizgint at 7-03pm

ADJOURNMENT of 6-00pm Special Meeting

CALL TO ORDER of 6-30pm Special Meeting at 7:04pm

ROLL CALL

ADOPT BALANCE OF AGENDA

AGENDA ITEM 1. Closed session: Pursuant to MCL 15.268(a) to consider the dismissal, suspension, or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against, or to consider a periodic personnel evaluation of, a public officer, employee, staff member, or individual agent, per the request of Mr. Steve Aynes this will be a closed hearing

• The Board enters into and remains in closed session for 31 minutes. This 6-30pm stream was streamed continuously and recorded in its entirety to the Township Livestream account as the 6-30pm special meeting.
• Apart from Aynes' difficulty in reaching the closed session zoom anteroom, nothing was happening onscreen in the public zoom meeting, so I compressed it into a 20 second onscreen message.
• Dignan, then the other Boardmembers reappear

AGENDA ITEM 2. Possible action as a result of Closed Session

Dignan: Motion to amend the Township Manager's employment agreement as follows, Should Mr. Aynes resign from his position, he shall be entitled to the severance amount referenced in paragraph 9.b of his employment agreement dated July 31st, 2017, contingent upon him entering into a severance agreement. Is there support?

• Manley: I'll support
• Dignan Motion by Dignan Supported by Manley. Roll call vote, please.
• Motion passes 7 to 0

Dignan: I'd like to make a Motion. I move to amend the Township Manager's employment agreement as follows, Should Mr. Aynes resign from his position, the Board shall have the right to place him on paid administrative leave for the duration of his 30 day resignation period as set forth in paragraph 9 of his employment agreement dated July 31st, 2017.

• Otto: I'll support.
• Dignan Motion by Dignan Supported by Otto. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, Miss Manley will you call the roll?
• Motion passes 7 to 0

Dignan: Finally, I'll make a motion. I move to accept the resignation of Mr. Aynes from his position as Township Manager, effective immediately, and to place him on paid administrative leave for the period of 30 days, after which time he will be entitled to his severance amount referenced in paragraph 9.b of his employment agreement dated July 31st, 2017, as long as he executes the release in the severance agreement.

• Manley: support
• Dignan Motion Supported by Manley. Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none, Roll call vote, please.
• Motion passes 7 to 0
• Dignan: Mr Aynes, we appreciate the time that you served this community and we wish you well. Thank you Sir.

ADJOURNMENT of 6-30pm Special Meeting at 7-43pm

Boardmember chat