While the Leelanau Township board of trustees were ready to present information about the 2024-2025 budget on Tuesday, many audience members that tuned in via Zoom to listen to the budget hearing said they were not aware of the scheduled meeting until the day of or had difficulty finding specific information pertaining to adjusted salary resolutions.
“For the 30 years I was on the board, there was always an annual meeting,” said Leelanau Township resident and former board trustee Gary Fredrickson. “What I remember is this was a community meeting and this was not a board meeting. It gave the populous of this township the option of being able to set your salaries… You want to talk about the wages, but there ain’t nobody in the audience that has ever seen these. You talked about it at the last meeting, but it needs to be open, that’s the whole purpose of an open meeting for the annual meeting.”
Leelanau Township has not held an annual meeting to review the budget since before the COVID pandemic started in 2020. According to township board minutes from April 27, 2021, the 2020 Annual Meeting was canceled, and the 2021 meeting was changed from an annual meeting of the electors to a state of the township address. The then supervisor at the time, John Sanders, moved to no longer hold an annual meeting of electors, and trustee Gina Harder seconded the motion. The motion carried in a 4-1 vote, with trustee Denise Dunn opposed.
