Leland Township approved 4-1 to designate Schaub Outdoor Services as the township’s primary outdoor maintenance contractor for fiscal year 2025 at a special meeting on April 1. Township treasurer Shirley Garthe voted against the motion.
A list of lawn care services from Schaub Outdoor Services with prices based on a per mow basis was referenced for consideration by the board. A second handout with total costs for the projected outdoor maintenance schedule was also presented. Hancock Field, for example, is $450 per mow, but with the anticipated 15 mows needed for the season, the total cost is estimated at $6,750. Other parks considered in the maintenance schedule are: the soccer field, Nedows/Bartholomew, Suelzer, Schneider, Grove, DNR, and Drow. Cemeteries included are Beechwood, East Leland, and Manseau, as well as properties like the township office and road ends/narrows. The total estimate for lawn care services and maintenance is about $30,830.
“I’d like to get started on some spring cleanup sooner rather than later… I did put ‘primary outdoor maintenance’ just to note that they won’t necessarily be the only ones when we do have other work that needs to be done,” said Leland Township Supervisor Clint Mitchell at the special meeting. “We can still use other firms/other services, but they (Schaub Outdoor Services) would be the ones I’m working with based on the schedule I provided.”
While a township procurement policy — which is a set of guidelines that an organization uses to ethically and efficiently obtain goods and services to ensure compliance, transparency and value for money — could not be located online, treasurer Shirley Garthe voted against the motion to approve of Schaub Outdoor Services as the primary maintenance contractor. Garthe questioned the bid, citing how a couple of the service estimates were more than $5,000 (Hancock was anticipated to cost a total of $6,750 and Beechwood Cemetery would cost $5,655) and would clash with a procurement policy by not seeking services bids for a need over $5,000.
“It’s (the services estimate) over $5,000, and if you look at our procurement policy, it says it right here,” Garthe said. “I just have a problem with that. To me, it’s all going to one thing… I just feel that you have the numbers here and they’re already over $5,000.”
Mitchell clarified that the outdoor maintenance schedule would be considered on a perproject basis, and that he spoke with all three previous landscape contractors that the township worked with over the last two years. Schaub Outdoor Services was the only contractor that would be able to do the share of the work though, Mitchell said, and was ultimately the cheaper option.
“My expectation is as we go through this and see exactly how many mows were required for different properties, we can get that down and have a more definitive view of it going forward,” Mitchell said. “If at that point, the board wants to do something on an RFP lump-sum basis, we can, or if you want to stick to the per property. My preference is that in the flexibility of it so we’re not locked into mows that may or may not be necessary… It was based on discussions with different companies and kind of what they suggested we would need, starting with weekly mows in the heavy growing season of May and June and probably a little bit more regularly in September, and less frequently in the summer months, and then into October.”
The two members of the public present, township residents’ Cal Little and Keith Ashley, both commented on the action taken by the board to approve Schaub Outdoor Services as the township’s primary outdoor maintenance contractor. Little was the first to comment against the basis on which the decision was made, explaining that it seemed like the board was parceling something up to avoid a RFP or bidding situation.
“If you weren’t, you would have bid this, you would have had three pieces of paper instead of one, and picked one of those contractors for one of those tasks… it’s a position that requires an RFP,” Little said. “Not only that, but as you go down the line, when you’re talking about maintenance for the township, this is mowing. There’s 1,500 maintenance task assignments, and I think there’s an attorney that’s going to grab on to this pretty quickly in a lawsuit that has been filed because the township has represented the cost saving as one of the reasons that the dismissal was made. When it turns out that the cost saving was put together like this, there’s a lot of holes in it.”
Ashley also expressed his thoughts on the matter following Little’s comment.
“If this were handed out to the other two companies that have been here then you’d have your representative number of what it’s going to cost the township for the year and be in compliance with your policy,” Ashley said. “So I think it is a violation and I don’t see the problem with going back to the other two and saying, ‘here’s our plan, we don’t give you the numbers, you just tell us with this frequency and what it’s going to cost.’” In light of the recent annual meeting and some of the comments made then about former Leland maintenance employee Ken Hagstrom, township Clerk Lisa Brookfield also asked the board if there was interest in having any further conversations about whether to put something together for Hagstrom or if they were content in letting the situation go to court. However, Mitchell relayed that he did not know if it was appropriate to deliberate the topic as it was not an agenda item, so no further discussion was had.
Last month, Hagstrom’s legal counsel filed a lawsuit against the township and its supervisor in Leelanau County Circuit Court citing wrongful termination from his full-time position of 29 years. Hagstrom’s official last day was cited as March 31, the end of the fiscal year.
