Bloggin’ on the Edge

Posted by Scott Spielman at 2:00 AM | Comments

Rarely in my life have a seen a ‘passive’ park be the focus of so much activity.

The park in question is Thayer’s Corner Park in Northville Township and the activity is the off-again, on-again concept of developing it.

This is something that, in one form or another, comes up virtually every month at the township board level. Last week was no different: this time, the discussion centered around a grant application that nobody seemed to know anything about a month ago—other than Township Trustee Marv Gans.

This whole back and forth process confuses me. Township officials say there’s no hurry to do anything with the park, yet it moved from a long-term to a medium-term project during the latest round of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan talks.

Then there’s discussion about a grant that could fund work next year and disappointment when the township board effectively tabled the request—they sent it to the parks and recreation commission, which is also a bit odd since after the reorganization of that body, Township Supervisor Mark Abbo, Township Clerk Sue Hillebrand and Township Treasurer Dick Henningsen essentially have a controlling interest.

The members of the board trustees who wanted to pursue the grant voiced their disappointment that they can’t do so this year. They voiced disappointment that the remainder of the township board was unwilling to even listen to their plan. They even accused them of stonewalling the project.

That’s strange.

Anybody who has sat in the audience at a township board meeting knows that the acoustics in the room are a bit, well, funny. Even so, I think I heard the same words that they did and I didn’t hear an unwillingness to listen to a plan, I heard an unwillingness to commit to a grant application without a detailed plan.

I agree with that. I think it’s smart in this case, too.

It may be true that you don’t need a finalized plan to apply for a grant. I’m sure you could identify the types of things you want to do and then pencil in the details once the money is awarded. And, yes, it’s true that you don’t have to accept a grant once it’s awarded, but that, to me, is just bad politics.

These things tend to develop the same way: that underlying premise or rejecting a grant you can’t afford turns into trying to find ways to make it work because you don’t want to offend the grant-givers.

In many ways the barn that was moved to the park is the perfect representation of this: it was originally supposed to just be moved and ‘mothballed,’ but mothballed turned into a complete restoration project.

If the township is looking for a passive recreation area, they’ve already got one. It’s hard to get any more passive than Thayer’s Corner right now.

Let it sit, already, and let the issue rest.

Originally published in The Northville Journal __on March 21, 2007.

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