Dear Members of the Board of Trustees:

I watched with interest the March 12 board meeting, which addressed different ideas for housing the township’s work, including an expanded or new township hall.

During a comment period local resident Jim Engler said that the township “is now tied with Mt. Pleasant for the worst and least friendly area for development in the state of Michigan.” He urged you to “clear that with any developer in the state.” He also laid the township’s poor population growth at the feet of its officials' “overregulation, excessive fees and [a] general anti-business attitude.” He was not the only citizen to level familiar complaints, which present some challenges you should consider.

I have co-authored three articles detailing some of the obstacles developers and others say they have faced. It was refreshing to see members of your community directly express those concerns to you. I have heard and continue to hear the same complaints from others — even from former township officials.

I’m writing to you today about pointed concerns expressed in those articles I wrote.

In the first article, “There’s Something Wrong with Union Township: Part I,” my co-author and I noted that only a few of the many public officials, builders, investors and others we interviewed would speak on the record, for fear of retaliation. The township’s official response to our request for comment read, in part, “The allegation of possible retribution is abhorrent and false.”

Township officials may sincerely believe that, but community members believe the threat is real. After writing that article, I interviewed another six people: two former Union Township officials and four developers or entrepreneur-investors. None would speak on the record for the same reason most of the original 21 didn’t: fear of retribution.

One developer I interviewed this month told me that Union Township is far and away the worst municipality of all the townships in which he invests. Like others, he cited unnecessary delays and costs he doesn’t face in other Michigan municipalities, including the need to build sidewalks that don’t or can’t go anywhere.

He told me of two nearly identical projects he worked on, one in Union Township and another not far away. It took a year before Union Township gave him the approvals he needed, but it took the other municipality only two weeks. This disparity is one reason he no longer invests in your community.

Former Union Township supervisor and local small businessman Ben Gunning is one of the few willing to speak publicly. He wanted to put up a small storage shed in fall 2023. He was told by the zoning administrator that his project would trigger the sidewalk mandate. The price tag for installing 600 feet of sidewalk would have run to $80,000, an untenable price for a small business owner to pay. “This was a very restrictive and silly requirement,” Gunning said.

Gunning challenged the mandate, and like others I’ve profiled, he was forced to spend time and money doing so. “The policy didn’t make sense, and it needed to be changed,” he told me. It took a while, but he finally got a resolution, thanks to his tenaciousness and the willingness of planning commissioners to hear him out at a series of meetings. Thanks to Gunning, planners in the township now use neighborhood density as a guideline for providing temporary, if not permanent, relief from the mandate to install sidewalks.

Before the township constructs new headquarters, I sincerely hope that trustees ask themselves how many new buildings were never built due to the problems mentioned by Jim Engler on March 12, or by those detailed in the articles I wrote with my co-author.

I wish I could get more residents and investors to speak to you in person. I don’t blame anyone who fears retribution, however. Many of the people who won’t come forward have businesses to run and employees to pay. They also don’t want their concerns to be blithely dismissed or to get publicly smeared for their efforts, and they are concerned for the well-being of those who depend on them.

Former Township Supervisor Ben Gunning is troubled by the idea that local residents fear retribution from officials for speaking out. As he says, “You shouldn’t need to be afraid to tell the truth.”

Sincerely,
Michael LaFaive
Senior Director of Fiscal Policy

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.