Glen Arbor goofs again

Opinion by Linda Dewey

Sun contributor

Glen Arbor just can’t seem to catch a break from its own communication goof-ups. After a terrific uproar over the surprise new large digital sign foisted on an unsuspecting populace, followed by an Aug. 21 meeting attended by 70 taxpayers demanding better communication, the township called a special meeting to deal with the question of the sign. Problem is, the meeting was called on Aug. 29 for an Aug. 30, 4 p.m. meeting, giving townspeople less than a 30-hour notice.

That notice was posted at the Post Office and on the sign in question, nowhere else. There was nothing on the website, a problem which township supervisor Peter Van Nort has admitted is ongoing. At the Aug. 21 meeting, Van Nort addressed the website problem, saying it would be taken care of within two weeks. Nine days later, it did not appear the problem had been solved.

There is one improvement, however. At the Aug. 21 meeting, several members of the public noted during public comment that no board meeting minutes were up on the website past 2017. We can report that minutes for regular board meetings from January-June, 2018 are up. That’s something. However, July and August 2018 meetings were still missing, as of Sept. 11.

Even if the meeting had been posted on the website, how would one know to look? There is currently no system in place to notify concerned citizens to visit the website, such as a link from the Facebook page, which has 239 followers but no posts beyond Nov. 7, 2016. The township could do what Empire does and send an email to concerned citizens, entities and business owners. (Empire errs on the side of commission, rather than omission, and sends email notifications of meetings, minutes, announcements and upcoming meeting agendas to all who request to be on the list.) Mailchimp or something similar might be a solution.

Perusing the website, one sees Recent Posts for the public are obsolete notifications for summer events. Where are all the current events the sign was supposed to be notifying us about—the Chamber of Commerce pumpkin-fest and fall occasions?

Finally, one wonders how much notification the township is supposed to give the community of a special meeting. Although zoning ordinances are available on the website, ordinances regarding town meetings aren’t on the site—at first glance, at least. Surely, there must be a regulation that the township must be notified of such an important meeting more than 30 hours in advance. And surely notification must be more than just the digital sign—which has now gone dark, as decided at the Aug. 30 meeting—and an 8½” x 11” sheet of copy paper taped to the window or tacked somewhere on the wall of the post office.

Although the Glen Arbor Sun wasn’t there, we would have like to have been. We understand that, even with the short and scant notice, 30 citizens did show up to express their concerns. How many others, like us, would have liked to be there but never knew? Even after giving balanced coverage about the sign in two issues of our paper, we were never notified.

Clearly, Glen Arbor needs to up its game and communicate with its citizens.

Get online. Get on social media. Send out emails. Then perhaps we can all avoid such nasty surprises such as the sign no one expected, and unexpected meetings without due notice. We might even be surprised to find more people attending meetings.