North Kent News

Courtland Township issued the following announcement on Dec 21.

Winter seems to be upon us although as I am writing, the sun is shining, and temps are near 50. Not bad for mid-December in Michigan. I hope that everyone is doing well and staying healthy amidst our continuing pandemic. I have a few things we have been doing over the past several months I wanted to pass along.

We have completed another construction and maintenance season for our local roadways. We continue to dedicate much of our budget to improving our roads and paving the unpaved sections. This year we were able to do the following:

• In cooperation with Nelson Township, we paved 16 Mile Rd from Shaner Ave to Myers Lake Ave.
• 13 Mile Rd from Myers Lake Ave to Ramsdell – Chip Seal
• 15 Mile Rd from Northland Dr to Ritchie Ave – Chip Seal
• 10 Mile Rd from Wolverine to Myers Lake Ave – Chip Seal 
• 12 Mile Rd from Northland Dr to Courtland – Chip Seal
• Ritchie Ave from 15 Mile to 16 Mile – Chip Seal
• Indian Lakes Rd from Ritchie Ave to Northland Dr – Chip Seal
• Also, from MDOT, on 14 Mile Rd are the passing lanes installed from Redmond Ave to Ramsdell Ave in both directions.

Another area that we are dedicating resources to is our parks. Our parks committee has been looking for different ways we can use the township property to benefit our residents. Pickle ball has become a very popular sport for people of all ages, and it was recommended to the township board to install new courts. We have just approved the construction of 8 pickle ball courts that will be located near the pavilion behind the township office. We have just added a Gaga ball pit near the playground (compliments of Brendan Cranmer's Eagle Scout Service Project). If you have any suggestions for our parks' areas, please feel free to contact us. We will continue to work on making improvements in the coming years.

We continue to host Spring and Fall cleanup days for our residents. We encourage you all to take advantage of these opportunities to get rid of unwanted items. There is no charge for this service. The dates for 2022 are May 20-21 and October 7-8.

The township boards of Algoma, Cannon, Courtland, and the City of Rockford Council are in the beginning stages of exploring different possibilities for the Krause Memorial Library. Over the past few years, we have had representatives meeting with Kent District Library staff to address the need for expansion of the Krause Memorial Library building. KDL has determined that our library should be about 25,000-30,000 square feet to serve the members of our community for now and several years into the future. Unfortunately, the tax dollars collected by the millage for KDL are not able to be used for construction. This means that we must come up with other means to fund any addition to the current library.

The boards of each municipality were recently presented with information to start looking at other solutions for this issue. It is estimated that we would need to raise 8 million dollars to fund the expansion.

Some options to consider could be:

• Levy another millage for construction of the expansion
• Use township operating funds and private donor contributions (an assessment was done to determine the amount of support we might expect and determined we could probably get about 2 million in donations)
• Create our own district library separate from KDL, levy a tax millage to cover the building and operations for the library

We are early in the process of gathering information on the different possibilities. As more information is available, we will be conveying that and scheduling additional meetings to receive public comments. Click here to view the PowerPoint that was presented at the Special Meeting. Please let us know your thoughts by contacting us through the website. We appreciate any comments you may have.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Matt McConnon

Original source can be found here.