Agenda for the July 17 Grand Rapids Township Trustee Meeting

The trustees have a relatively light agenda for Tuesday evening.  In the absence of Supervisor DeVries, Dave Van Dyke will chair the meeting.

There will be a report from Kent District Library, which receives support from the township.  In my case, $126 of the taxes we pay go there. The report provided in advance has some interesting details.  For example, ebooks and e-audiobook circulation rose by a factor of almost three from 2010 to 2011.  There were a total of 113,000 checkouts for electronic material. 47% of Grand Rapids Township’s residents have a library card, and most use the branches in Plainfield or Cascade Townships, or East Grand Rapids.

If you’ve not looked at what the library is doing recently, visit the KDL website.

Next is a public hearing on rezoning 1.8 acres of land at Forest Hills Avenue and Ada Drive.  The intent is  to allow commercial development of the property.  There is some information on this in the April 24 Planning Commission minutes. Action was deferred until the May 22 meeting, at which point it was apparently approved (although the minutes have not yet been posted almost two months later).  The neighbors who showed up were less then enthused about the project.  There will be a “public hearing” before the vote, although this will be a formality since the trustees, given past practice, are unlikely to respond to any objections at this meeting given the extensive consideration by the Planning Commission.

The trustees will next take up two ordinances discussed at the previous meeting — a signing ordinance and one to allow limited outdoor dining at township restaurants.  See my comments on the previous meeting for the details.

Trustee Bob Roth will summarize the state of township finances.  If precedent is any guide, this will be brief.

The meeting will conclude with a proposal to spend up to $12,000 on three computers and a server.

If you’ve never been to a meeting of the township trustees, consider showing up at 7:00 p.m. at the township hall.  The meeting will likely last the usual fifteen or twenty minutes.