Over the past year, some members of the Township Board have wanted to take over the responsibility for managing the Land Preservation Fund.  This fund has been managed by the Parks Commission since the creation of the Fund.  At the March 11 Board Meeting, the Board finally agreed to have the Parks Commission continue to manage this fund.  It was not a unanimous vote.  Supervisor Gonser and Trustee Thalmann wanted to have the Township Board take over the management of the Fund.  Treasurer Langlois, Trustees Bailey and Buxar supported having the Fund managed by the Parks Commission.

Some additional background on this issue has been previously reported on this website.  On April 1 of 2013, Supervisor Gonser had authorized a memo to be written by then Superintendent Creech to have the Land Preservation Fund taken over by the Board.  During the course of this past year, the facts came out that this was a unilateral decision by Supervisor Gonser, and not one that the Board had approved.  Fortunately due to the persistence of many citizens who have supported our Parks programs, the Board finally resolved this issue with the vote on March 11th.

At the March 11th meeting, one of our citizens gave a very clear and direct explanation why the Parks Commission should continue to manage this fund.  Here are her comments and the vote on this issue.

Why is this important to the citizens of Oakland Township?  Due to the multitude of citizens that supported the Parks Commission on this issue, we were able to get enough Board members to recognize that the many initiatives  the Parks Commission has undertaken over the years is not part of what Terry Gonser considers a global United Nations conspiracy called ‘Agenda 21’.  Continued citizen involvement is critical to preventing our Township from being taken over by a group of radical ‘Tea Party’ individuals.

For additional background information see:

Supervisor Gonser’s REAL views on trails, pathways, bike paths and environmental protection 

Trustees seize Land Preservation Assets

RIchard Michalski