COLLABORATIVE PROJECT. Based on our shared belief that the Township, when prompted by their own surveys, would wish to take action to make Hartland more business friendly, we proposed a collaborative project with Hartland Township. We (Kuhn, Parshall, and Crouse) submitted a Proposed Workplan to Supervisor Fountain and Commissioner Colaianne in March of 2018.. That plan can be viewed here: HBA_HARTLAND WORKPLAN – DRAFT 2018_03_17 . What we had expected was that Fountain and Colaianne would schedule a meeting to discuss and possibly agree on a collaborative project.
NO RESPONSE. When there was no response, we followed up with a letter to Fountain and Colaianne on June 6th: JOE BILL LTR 2018_06_06 . Again, we received no response. Again – we waited. We considered carefully how to proceed – concluding that a letter to the Township was in order. After Board approval – on 9/28th a letter was sent to each member of the Township Board – in an attempt to get their attention: 2018_09_28 FINAL Board Letter w_Attach.
RESPONSE FROM TOWNSHIP SUPERVISOR. On _______, we received an email letter from Supervisor Fountain listing a variety of what he considered business friendly accomplishments: Business and Development Friendly items from May 15 Fountain . Of note, there was no reference to the project workplan we had proposed. We concluded that this was in fact the Township’s collective response to our proposal – there would be no collaborative project.
CALL TO THE PUBLIC ON OCTOBER 16TH. Having been ignored in our request for a joint project, Tom Parshall and Frank Crouse decided to attend the Township Board meeting on October 16th. Of note: this was our first and so far only public discussion of the HBA and its objectives. The outline of our presentation is attached – and was respectfully presented: 2018_10_16 Call to Public Combined. What occurred during that brief presentation can best be described as anything but respectful. Judge for yourself. You can see the video here (Frank and tom @ 1:30 Township response @ 29:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHj8zy_ZGHw
SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT TO MEMBERS. Keep in mind – this was the very first time we had EVER gone before the public to make the case for the HBA! Always, we had carefully edited our posts to the HBA website; we had met privately with individual Board Members, and with the members of the Township’s committee. Two members of the Board (Fountain and Coliaianne) made a point of attempting to paint the HBA as “deplorable”. After taking some time to consider what had happened, a Report to Members was prepared: 2018_10_16 Supplemental Report to Mbrs. This report is also included as a separate post.
The conclusion of this report to members is critical, in that it means a total change of direction from our previous approach:
Change of Direction – Based on the open hostility demonstrated by the Township, the position tentatively adopted at our last meeting has been confirmed: that our focus has to shift to recruiting new Township Board members – by converting some current members to openly supporting a more business friendly posture, AND by recruiting new members who would run on a “Make Hartland Friendly Again!” platform.