www.mlive.com $2.00SUNDAY, MAY 23, 2010

IN TODAY’S PRESS: $187 IN SAVINGS(Exact value could be more, depending on delivery area)

Let’s be friends on Facebook: tinyurl.com/fangrpress

INDEXAdvice/Puzzles .........I3-4Automotive Ads ..........D1Business ....................... G1Deaths ......................... B8

Entertainment ..............E1Jobs ...............................F1Lottery..........................A2Opinions .................... A20

Real Estate Ads ........ H&GRegion .......................... B1Sports ........................... C1Weather ..................... B12©2010, The Grand Rapids Press

Logie is among a growing chorus of community leaders who argue for consolidation.

“It’s got to happen; it makes too much sense,” he said.

West Michigan’s local governments spend $700 million a year . Trimming 5 percent of their costs by consolidating would save $35 million, he argues.

In January, Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell made local government

consolidation the keynote of his State of the City Speech.

“The greatest gift we could leave for our grandchildren would be a consolidated government,” Heartwell said.

With more than 150 joint ventures already in place among local municipalities, Heartwell argues it is time for the next step: consolidating the county into one city.

SEE LINES, A8

WHERE DO WEDRAW THE LINES?

IS IT TIME TO TAKE SOME PLACES OFF THE MAP?

FIFTH IN A SERIES

With local government units all short of money, the Michigan 10.0 series explores ways to provide services more efficiently.— Paul M. Keep, editor

WHAT POLICY MAKERS ARE

SAYING:

“You will have your 1,775 cities, villages and townships forever. In short, you cannot become a unified government, but you can learn to act as one.” — David Rusk, author and urban policy consultant

“Where I could see it happening is not necessarily the consolidation of governments, but consolidation of services ... that would unilaterally reduce the cost of government.”— Sandi Frost Parrish, Kent County Board chair

“ I think it’s fair to put (consolidation) on the table. I’ve discovered ... when you begin to look, you find people who can coalesce with that you did not expect to find.” — Walter Brame, president of the Urban League of Grand Rapids

“I think what sounded like a crazy idea as recently as a few years ago is being talked up, and people are thinking it is more viable today than it used to be. We dream the impossible here and get it done.”— Kurt Kimball, retired 22-year Grand Rapids city manager

COUNTIES, CITIES, TOWNSHIPS, VILLAGES,

SCHOOL DISTRICTS ...

“We believe it would begood business practice to

identify possible duplicationof efforts and opportunitiesfor cost-saving measures outof consolidating some areas

of government. ”— Carlos Sanchez, executive director,

West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

WHAT OUR READERS ARE SAYING

JOIN THE CONVERSATION:MLIVE.COM/MI10

MORETownships argue they keep government local, �

accountable and affordable, A9A LOOK AT ADVANTAGES OTHER CITIES SAW IN CONSOLIDATION: A8

PRESS PHOTO/REX LARSEN

Town and country: An aerial view looking northwest over downtown Grand Rapids shows a clear division between urban and rural areas. The multiple, sometimes overlapping, political boundaries are clear only when looking at a map.

BY JIM HARGER

THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS

To run the U.S. government, American voters elect 537 politicians to serve in Congress and the White House.

Former Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie is fond of noting that West Michigan voters elect 637 politicians to run the cities, townships, villages, libraries and schools in Kent County and eastern Ottawa County.

Are that many people and organizations needed to keep government responsive at a grass-roots level? Or do they add costs and ineffi ciencies that could be avoided by consolidating ?

CHILL OUT WITH HOT ACTSRock, rap and country’s best: our summer concert lineup. E1

2-DAYS ONLY50| OFFa gallonon fuel Save 50¢off a gallon on fuel when you spend $100 on groceries

SAVEFriday, May 28 or Saturday,May 29.

See store for details

3703

252-

01

A8 SUNDAY, MAY 23, 2010 THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS

CONTINUED FROM A1

Heartwell and a group of suburban mayors are backing bills in the Leg-islature that would allow them to by-pass some of the obstacles to regional consolidation in current state law.

The Kent County Commission’s chair, Sandi Frost Parrish, a Cas-cade Township Republican, and her predecessor, Roger Morgan, a Rock-ford Republican, also have backed Heartwell’s plan.

Parrish said she wants to preserve townships but also wants to explore ways cities and Kent County can low-er the cost of government through consolidation of services.

Meanwhile, former Grand Rapids City Manager Kurt Kimball is working behind the scenes to explore merg-ing Grand Rapids and Kent County governments in some form, perhaps modeled after consolidations in other metro regions across the country.

“A lot of it has to do with the Michi-gan economy and the shrinking tax base,” said Kimball, who served as city manager nearly 22 years. He is explor-ing consolidation ideas with Michael Jandernoa, former chairman and CEO of Perrigo Co. and co-founder of a lo-cal venture capital group, and other business leaders.

“I think what sounded like a crazy idea as recently as a few years ago is being talked up and people are think-ing it is more viable today than it used to be,” Kimball said.

Local advocates of countywide con-solidation say Grand Rapids could go from the 114th largest U.S. city to 23rd, between El Paso, Texas, and Milwau-kee, Wis.

Last Monday, Kimball and Jander-noa participated in a Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce event featuring Stephen Goldsmith, a for-mer Indianapolis mayor and leading expert at Harvard University’s Ken-nedy School of Government on re-gional consolidation .

Chamber President Jeanne Engle-hart said she expects to see action on consolidation sooner rather than later.

“I think the interest is there, I think the political capital is there,” she said. “I think you’re going to see some peo-ple step up to the plate.”

At this point, there is no single blueprint .

While Heartwell would like to see Grand Rapids and its neighboring cit-ies explore consolidation, Logie is pushing a “metropolitan rebate” that calls for the state to reward communi-ties that consolidate.

Kimball’s group wants to explore ways Grand Rapids and Kent County could join forces — as was done in Indianapolis and Louisville, two key stops on the tour when Michigan lead-ers explore regional models.

Louisville: Lessons for GRIn some ways, Louisville is like

Grand Rapids on steroids.Instead of rapids on the Grand Riv-

er, Louisville is near rapids along the wider and deeper Ohio River.

Instead of two freeways meeting near a downtown “S-Curve,” Louis-ville has three freeways that merge at its “Spaghetti Junction.”

Like Grand Rapids, Louisville has an attractive and vibrant downtown, only larger with taller buildings. It also has an elegant historic neigh-borhood near downtown but, again, bigger and older.

Instead of following Division II and Division III colleges, their sports fans cheer for the University of Louisville, a Division I powerhouse in basketball, football and baseball. Louisville also is home to the fabled Kentucky Derby.

Proponents of city-county mergers say part of Louisville’s metropolitan heft is due to the city’s consolidation with Jefferson County, approved by voters in 2000.

The merger between Louisville and Jefferson County vaulted it from 67th to 16th largest U.S. city. The offi cial population leaped from 256,000 in 2000 to more than 713,000 in 2008.

“The lesson learned is that we should have done it in the late ’60s” says Mayor Jerry Abramson, who regularly hosts visitors from other U.S. cities to showcase their success-ful merger.

Friendly and outgoing, Abramson earned the nickname “Mayor for Life” after serving in the job for 13 years during the pre-merger era and then as mayor of the combined city-county after the merger.

Since the merger was fi nalized in 2003, Abramson’s administration has been busy blending city and county departments that duplicated each other.

Mayoral spokesman Chad Carlton said costs were cut by 10 percent in the first 18 months and another 10 percent since then. The number of people on the public payroll has dropped from 7,000 to about 5,000, Carlton said.

Early on, Abramson combined city and county police forces under a new management structure that put more

police offi cers on the street and more civilians in desk jobs.

To win union approval, the com-bined police force got the county’s higher pay scale and the city’s higher level of health care.

While the solution was costly, it also fulfi lled their promise to make public safety a priority. The city is now completing a countywide emer-gency dispatching system .

Other merger possibilities remain untouched. There are still 20 inde-pendent fi re departments throughout the county, most of which are funded through local taxing districts.

Abramson said offi cials won over voters and local offi cials by stress-ing the benefi ts without threatening existing power bases in surrounding towns.

“When you look around the city, it was not obvious where you have the city and where you go out into the county,” he said.

“That’s how we framed the issue. It was a communitywide concept, not a city or county concept.”

Abramson said he learned to deal with the fact some of the 83 cities and towns in the county wanted to stay out of the new city’s borders.

“Go ahead. Be a little city and deliv-er a better level of services,” Abram-son said he challenged them.

Those small units have represen-tation on the Metro Council, the 26-member legislative body that gov-erns the city and county.

The campaign to adopt the merger succeeded after three previous at-tempts failed — one in the mid-1950s and two in the early 1980s.

Political strategist Michael Shea said merger proponents knew they could sell voters on the effi ciencies and advantages of a merger. But they had to develop strategies to deal with

each of the small objections that could cumulatively defeat the proposal.

Shea, a Republican who now con-sults for other communities eyeing consolidation, including Kimball’s group, said surveys indicated resis-tance from elderly voters who feared changes in their routine.

“If you want to tick off a 70-year-old, change the day of their garbage collection,” Shea said.

Indianapolis: Midwest pioneerChris Cotterill, chief of staff to

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, was not yet born when the city merged with Marion County to form “Unigov,” the moniker for the new power structure.

But he is clear on the impact. Cot-terill points to new sports arenas and convention centers as he looks over the busy downtown from his corner offi ce on the 25th fl oor of the city-county building.

Without Unigov, city leaders argue they could not have made the giant leap from a Midwest state capital to the 13th largest city in the U.S., with nearly 800,000 residents.

Unigov began in 1969 when the po-litical stars aligned in the city, the county and the Legislature. All were occupied by Republicans who went along with then-Mayor Richard Lu-gar’s plan to leapfrog past the city’s corn-fed image.

Lugar, who went on to become Unigov’s fi rst mayor and now is the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate, is considered a “transforma-tional fi gure” in the city’s history as a result, Cotterill said.

Still, the merger did not happen easily or overnight. The city police and county sheriff ’s department op-erated separately for 35 years before fi nally merging in 2005. Tax assess-ing was combined under the county in 2008.

There are still nine townships and four independent cities in Marion County. Some offer fi re services, emer-gency dispatching and “poor relief” services. There are a host of small township boards offering services that sometimes overlap with Unigov.

Ballard, who has labeled his latest efforts to advance further consolida-tion as “Unigov 2.0,” has said he will not attempt to merge the county’s schools or incorporate the indepen-dent cities.

But there is no debate about turning back, Cotterill said. “I think the debate of whether Unigov was successful or not ended a long time ago.”

The reality in MichiganGrand Rapids faces some obstacles

not seen in Indiana or Kentucky. The Michigan Constitution does not have some of the permissive language found in those states.

In Kentucky, all who work in the city of Louisville pay an “occupation tax,” even if they live in Indiana. City residents don’t pay the tax if they work outside the city.

Not so in Michigan, where cities that levy income taxes can charge only half the rate for nonresidents who work in the city. City residents who work outside the city still pay the full rate.

The difference may seem subtle, but Kentucky’s law removes an incen-tive for urban fl ight while Michigan’s law encourages high-income workers to live in low-tax havens.

In Indianapolis, townships were allowed to continue existing as India-napolis spread out to deliver urban services the townships were not set up to deliver.

Indiana townships still deliver most fi re services, provide parks and rec-reation services, maintain cemeteries and “poor relief” funds.

Historically, when a Michigan city expanded its borders through annexa-tion, it usually did so at the expense of an adjacent township.

Annexation took away a township’s tax base, voters and boundary lines, making the township government less wealthy, less populous and politically weaker.

Michigan’s winner-take-all an-nexation process bred generations of distrust between city and township leaders .

One of the only successful city-township consolidations in Michigan history occurred in 1982, when Battle Creek and Battle Creek Township residents voted to merge.

The impetus? Kellogg Corp., the area’s largest employer, demanded the merger or threatened to pull up stakes. The move would have thrown local residents out of jobs and disrupted the housing market for a generation.

Kenneth Verburg, chairman of the state’s Boundary Commission, grew up in Wyoming and witnessed fi rst-hand the annexation wars that broke out in the 1950s between expansion-minded Grand Rapids and growing Wyoming Township on its southwest border.

Verburg, 77, recalls how a Wyo-ming Township offi cial once blocked Grand Rapids from annexing the former Kelvinator factory on Clyde Park Avenue SW by moving his son into a mobile home on the property, which otherwise had no residents.

SEE MERGE, A9

CONTINUED FROM A10

LINESSHRINKING TAX BASEIS ONE MOTIVATION

Louisville, Ky.

With more than 700,000 residents, Louisville, above, is the nation’s 16th largest city.�Voters approved merging Louisville city and Jefferson County in 2000; merger was completed in 2003.�Combined city-county government saves taxpayers $700,000 a year by eliminating overlap.�The 26-seat Metro Council governs the city and county, including semi-independent municipalities.�

Consolidation elsewhereIn 1968, Jacksonville, Fla., merged with most of surrounding Duval County. It’s now the 13th largest city in U.S.�Nashville, Tenn., has a city-county government that includes seven smaller municipalities in a two-tier system.�In 1982, Battle Creek city and township merged after Kellogg Corp. threatened to move.�

IndianapolisWith nearly 800,000 residents, �“Indy” is the Midwest’s 3rd largest city and 12th largest city in the U.S.

City government merged with �Marion County in 1970 to form “UniGov.”

City and county police �departments did not merge until December 2005.

UniGov includes four “excluded �cities” whose residents also elect city council members and a mayor to represent them on the county level.

Townships still exist, some offering �fire protection, emergency dispatch and “poor relief.”

SOME LESSONS TO CONSIDER FROM INDIANA AND KENTUCKY

LIFE IN THE BIG CITIESA LOOK AT HOW CONSOLIDATION WORKED IN OTHER AREAS

GRAND RAPIDSCity property tax: 8.3709 �mills *Total property tax: �29.7817 mills **Property tax admin. fee:�1 percentCity income tax***:�1.5 percent for residents, 0.75 percent for nonresidents State income tax: 4.3 �percentState sales tax: 6 percent �

* INCLUDES: Library millage, refuse

collection, promotion and advertising.

** INCLUDES: State education tax,

Kent County ISD, Community College,

Interurban Transit Partnership, Kent

County operating, jail and senior

millage; assumes residence in Grand

Rapids school district and homestead

property tax exemption.

*** NOTE: Increases to this rate July 1.

GAINES TOWNSHIPTownship property tax: �1.752 mills *Total property rate: �25.7828 to 27.6063 mills, depending on the school district **Property tax �administration fee: NoneLocal income tax: None�State income tax: 4.3 �percentState sales tax: 6 percent �

* INCLUDES: .872 mills for township

operations and .880 mills for district

library

** INCLUDES: State education tax,

Kent County ISD, GR Community

College, Kent County operating,

jail and senior millage; assumes

homestead property exemption.

LOUISVILLEState property tax: $1.33 �per $1,000 of assessed value*Jefferson County: $1.28 �per $1,000 of assessed valueCity of Louisville: $3.764 �per $1,000 of assessed valueJefferson county schools: �$5.760 per $1,000 of assessed valueLocal income tax: �Averages 1.75 percent State income tax: Ranges �2 percent to 6 percentState sales tax: 6 percent�

INDIANAPOLISProperty tax rate:�1 percent of assessed value* for residential property; 2 percent for rental property; 3 percent on commercial propertyLocal income tax:�0.7 percentLocal sales tax: 1 percent�State income tax:�3.4 percentState sales tax:�6 percent

SOURCE: www.citydata.com and local tax assessors

A look at how tax systems compare betweentwo West Michigan communities and Indianapolis and Louisville

*NOTE: Assessed value in Kentucky and Indianapolis reflects market value,

unlike Michigan, where assessed value is equal to 50 percent of market value.

2 miles

GRAND RAPIDS

WALKER

GRANDVILLEJENISON

COMSTOCK PARK

ADA

CASCADE

WYOMING KENTWOOD

EGR

INDIANAPOLISSPEEDWAY

LAWRENCE

BEACH GROVE

CUMBERLAND

2 miles

GRANDRAPIDS

CHARTERTOWNSHIP

Mileage may varyThe Grand Rapids area, right, is governed by more municipalities than the larger and more populous Indianapolis, below.The capital of Indiana underwent a countywide consolidationin 1970.

THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS SUNDAY, MAY 23, 2010 A9

CONTINUED FROM A8

That forced a vote in which the su-pervisor’s son cast the deciding vote against annexation, Verburg said.

In 1959, Wyoming Township be-came a city, allowing it to fend off fu-ture annexation forays by Grandville and Grand Rapids.

Similar blockades went up on other sides of Grand Rapids. In 1962, Walker Township became the city of Walker and in 1967, Paris Township became Kentwood.

To the north, Plainfield, Grand Rapids and Alpine townships became charter townships under a 1947 state law that gives them more power to fend off annexation.

Verburg, who spent much of his career at Michigan State University dealing with annexation issues, said few attempts to form regional govern-ments have succeeded because of the

zero-sum game that pits townships against cities.

“I think what we need to do is iden-tify the common interest and see if we can work it out together,” Verburg said. “If we could get the townships and the Municipal League together and get them thinking about how we could live together instead of apart, then maybe we could make some headway.”

Those obstacles became evident fi ve years ago when Muskegon Coun-ty leaders created One Muskegon, a public-private initiative that formed with the goal of creating greater co-operation among the county’s 28 local units of government.

They hired David Rusk, a leading national urban policy consultant to advise them on the process. A similar effort in the mid-1980s had faltered, and they wanted to try again.

Rusk, who also worked on a failed effort to merge Spring Lake and Fer-rysburg in the mid-1990s, concluded they would not be able to break up the “little boxes” into which the state con-stitution had put local governments.

“You will have your 1,775 cities, vil-lages and townships forever,” Rusk told One Muskegon leaders. “In short, you cannot become a unifi ed government, but you can learn to act as one.

Resisting change“The basic condition everywhere

is that citizens are very conservative about changing their form of govern-ment, preferring ‘the devil we know’ to the ‘devil we don’t know,’” said Rusk, adding that “three out of four city-county consolidations have been rejected at the polls.”

Nowadays , Rusk has been

encouraging planners to develop “Communities of Common Interest” that will fi nd ways to work together without inciting border wars.

Greg Northrup, president of the West Michigan Strategic Alliance, said his group pushes for collaboration rather than consolidation.

“Centralized or decentralized, each of them have their pros and cons de-pending on what you’re trying to do,” said Northrup, whose group tries to foster collaboration among eight West Michigan counties.

One project is getting communities to participate in a “reverse auction” process to purchase commodities such as road salt or paper products.

Those kinds of “best practices” could yield the same results as con-solidation without going through the political turmoil, he said.

Birgit Klohs, president of The Right

Place economic development pro-gram, said she doesn’t push for con-solidation, but would like to see more of the “acting as one” approach.

When she pitches the local labor market to potential new employers, Klohs wishes she could tell them that land-use regulations, site inspections and tax incentive policies are uniform across West Michigan. While each municipality takes pride in what it has to offer employers, the prospects don’t care, Klohs said.

“They want a good place to do business; they want uniformity,” she said.

“We need leaders to rally people around the idea of what do we want our future to look like,” Klohs said. “How do we want to leave this place for our children and grandchildren?”

E-mail: jharger@grpress.com

MERGE EVEN WITHOUT UNIFIED GOVERNMENT, CONSULTANT SAYS, ‘YOU CAN LEARN TO ACT AS ONE’

BY JIM HARGER

THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS

T o make his case for townships, Gaines Township Supervisor Don

Hilton reaches into his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill and four pennies.

“In Gaines Township, when you pay a dollar in taxes, you pay less than 4 cents to the township,“ says Hilton, laying the currency on top of his desk.

It’s a familiar routine for Hilton, the township’s silver-haired leader. He has been supervisor the past 18 years; before that, he spent 30-plus years on the township’s zoning and planning boards.

Hilton also is a longtime board member with the Michigan Town-ships Association, the state’s leading opponent of regional consolidation.

Township advocates say there is a reason more than half of Michigan’s residents live in its 1,240 townships. Life is simple and affordable in a township, they argue.

“People in Michigan really like to have a government they know and trust and they can be assured will be accountable to them,” says Larry Mer-rill, director of the Michigan Town-ships Association.

“You don’t get accountability and responsibility by making government bigger,” Merrill said.

If township residents need a sewer line or police protection, they can count on their township to provide it. If they don’t need it or can pay for it themselves, the township is less likely to force it on them.

National real estate studies suggest neighborhood quality, proximity to work and family and the quality of local school districts play a larger role in home locating decisions than local tax burdens.

Nonetheless, Hilton argues his four pennies provide all the services residents want or need on the south-ern edge of Grand Rapids’ suburban frontier.

To the south and east of the town-ship offices lie rolling green farm fi elds and woodlands. From his win-dow, Hilton can see an old country schoolhouse that has been updated into a suburban residence.

North and west lie new housing de-velopments and a bustling retail cen-ter that sprang up at the Kalamazoo Avenue exit of the South Beltline ex-pressway, which cuts across the north-ern sections of his township.

Thanks to the freeway and the spreading growth of greater Grand

Rapids, Gaines Township’s popula-tion jumped from 14,553 in 1990 to an estimated 24,352 in 2008 — a 67 percent increase.

The township’s metal-roofed head-quarters at 84th Street and Kalamazoo Avenue SE is sparsely appointed. The remainder of the 80-acre site includes a stormwater retention pond and a walking path that is popular with dog owners and stroller-pushing moms.

Hilton oversees a full-time staff of 13 — a fi re chief, three full-time fi refi ght-ers, an engineer, a building inspector, two planning and zoning enforcement offi cials, a sewer and water employee, a township clerk, a treasurer, his as-sistant and a receptionist.

Last year, the township hired its fi rst

full-time superintendent for $60,000 a year. But the township board fi red him in February on a 4-3 vote, citing poor chemistry with existing staffers.

By city manager standards, Gaines Township got a bargain. In nearby Grandville — with 16,718 residents — the city manager, Ken Krombeen, is paid $100,957.

Hilton, who went part time and saw his pay cut to $35,000 a year when the superintendent hired on, said the board has not decided if it wants to try another superintendent or put him back in charge of day-to-day affairs.

The lower level of Gaines’ head-quarters is staffed by a Kent County Sheriff ’s Department substation that provides police protection to the

county’s four southern township.The offices, which the township

leases to the county for $44,000 a year, houses 22 patrol deputies, two detectives, two patrol sergeants, a lieutenant and a clerk.

Gaines Township pays the sheriff ’s department $450,000 for 20 hours of patrol services daily — the largest single item in its $2.7 million general fund.

Like 48 percent of the townships in Michigan, Gaines Township partners with two neighboring townships to provide fi re protection from stations in the unincorporated communities of Cutlerville, Byron Center and Dutton.

Water and sewer services are de-livered to neighborhoods that need it from the neighboring cities of Wyo-ming and Grandville.

While advocates of regional gov-ernments point to Indianapolis and Louisville, Merrill points to the Min-neapolis-St. Paul area, where cities and townships share the bounty of regional growth through tax-sharing agreements that keep their local units intact.

Merrill also points to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Toronto, Ontario, where efforts to consolidate have foundered.

Township critics say township of-fi cials are hanging onto the vestiges of an antiquated system. Former Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie calls town-ships “a 220-year-old anachronism.”

Critics point to the township’s 6-mile-by-6-mile layout and note those dimensions were chosen so citizens could vote or fi le legal papers within a day’s horseback ride.

Despite townships’ horse-and-car-riage roots, Merrill and Hilton argue, they do not have fl aws that warrant their demise.

“The city of Grand Rapids was put on the Grand River because we were using waterways as transportation,” Merrill said. “Does that make Grand Rapids an anachronism?

“The real issue is their desire to have more power. A regional govern-ment would be much more powerful than these individual local govern-ments,” he said.

“Then you would get to call the shots not only in your backyard, but you would get to call the shots in other backyards, too.”

E-mail: jharger@grpress.com

BY JOHN AGAR

THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS

SAUGATUCK TOWNSHIP — By consolidating three governments in this small Lakeshore community, taxpayers would save $2.2 million a year.

For R.J. Peterson, owner of Tower Marine: “There is no downside.”

He’ll soon fi nd out if others agree. A grass-roots committee plans to poll residents this month to gauge interest in merging the city of Saug-atuck, City of the Village of Douglas and Saugatuck Township. The next step would be circulating carefully

worded petitions asking the state Boundary Commission to consider consolidation.

Peterson said the proposal makes sense because the entities are so con-nected, and the governments serve so few people. The township has about 3,000 residents, with 1,200 in each city . A single government could have a louder voice on state or federal issues, such as harbor dredging, he said.

In Peterson’s case, with businesses in all three municipalities, he would not have to go before “all three boards, and all three planning committees, to do anything.”

Travis Randolph, chairman of the eight-member committee studying the proposal, said the group is trying to determine every angle of the pos-sible consolidation. Separate studies have already shown signifi cant sav-ings without sacrifi cing services.

A study by Plante & Moran PLLC showed that consolidating , based on

2007 spending, would cut total costs from $4.78 million to $2.58 million.

Already, the cities share a police department, and the fi re department covers both cities and the township. Schools and recreation programs are shared, too. But issues such as police service in the township, currently handled by Allegan County Sheriff ’s Department and state police, would need to be resolved.

Randolph said fi nancial savings are not the sole consideration. Some resi-dents probably want to maintain the identity of their communities. In the township, with both urban and rural areas, board members recently spoke against consolidation, according to meeting minutes.

If consolidation goes forward, con-sultant Jim Storey expects the area to be a city, rather than a township. If township voters balk, it is possible the cities could become one.

Once the petition process is

completed with review by the bound-ary commissioners, voters in the mu-nicipalities would have to approve.

According to the Plante & Moran study, consolidation would result in $936 annual savings for the owner of a $200,000 home in Saugatuck. In

Douglas, savings would be $767, while township residents would save $72.

No one should spend the money yet. The process would take a couple of years.

E-mail: jagar@grpress.com

PRESS PHOTO/MARK COPIER

Connected: The Blue Star Highway bridge across the Kalamazoo River links the communities of Saugatuck, foreground, and Douglas.

Tale of 2 cities, plus a townshipSome say it’s past time

to join three governmentsof Saugatuck-Douglas area

SUCH A BARGAINTOWNSHIPS CITE COST AS PART OF CASE AGAINST MERGING

LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TOUT TRUST AND ACCOUNTABILITY

PRESS PHOTO/KATY BATDORFF

Pennies on the dollar: Gaines Township Supervisor Don Hilton is fond of telling residents they pay less then 4 cents of every tax dollar to the township.

Peter Luke column: Is there political will in Michigan to achieve change?Seeking change: Local mayors are pushing for exemptions from state laws that block cooperative pacts.

Q&A: Former Michigan State University professor Kenneth Verburg, above, who has plenty of experience

dealing with annexation issues.

COMING TUESDAY

Join us at mlive.com at 11:30 a.m. for a live online chat with policy experts and Press staff who developed this

installment of Michigan 10.0. Joining the talk will be Larry Merrill, executive

director of the Michigan Townships Association, and retired Grand Rapids

City Manager Kurt Kimball.

ABOUT THIS SERIESJANUARY

What will it take to get Michiganworking again?

FEBRUARYIs it time to pay the toll for roads?

MARCHIs selling natural resources a solution?

APRILTax changes could eliminate our

deficit, but at what cost?

MAYIs it time to take some

communities off the map?

JUNECan our cities ever be cool? Alook at stopping “brain drain.”

JULYDo tax incentives bring new jobs?

AUGUSTDoes Michigan need553 school districts?

SEPTEMBERAre labor unions the problem?

OCTOBERTime to tear up the state constitution?

Miss an installment?Go to mlive.com/mi10

COMING MONDAY