Sumpter board gets proposal from magazine to tell township story

At the work/study session of the Sumpter Township Board of Trustees on May 28, publishing director Mark Fisher of Community Marketing and Publishing of Taylor gave a proposal to publish Sumpter news in the Van Buren Today magazine, “a fantastic way to tout the fantastic things that are going on in Sumpter.”
He said it could be 32, 64, 116 pages with 20,000 issues published quarterly in August, November, February, and May. It would be mailed to everyone in Sumpter Township, Van Buren Township, and Belleville.
The residents of Sumpter already have received mailing of the first Van Buren Today magazine the company put together.
He said Van Buren Public Schools Superintendent Pete Kudlak wanted this sent to everybody in the tri-community. Kudlak is transferring his district newsletter into this publication and he wants everyone to get it, he said.
Fisher said Van Buren Township paid to start the magazine in its township and the company absorbs a lot of the costs through advertising. He said they charge $350 per page to the township to put things in the magazine and $1,000 per page for advertisers. No money comes back to the township from the advertising sales.
He said he is a huge fan of content and this is a great way to announce things that are going on in the township.
When Sumpter Supervisor John Morgan started to say, “We give you $5,000…” Fisher interrupted him, saying Van Buren Township already paid. VBT pays $5,000 per quarter for the magazine, Fisher said.
Sumpter would just pay the $350 per page cost of adding advertising.
He said his staff writes stories about the area that are published without extra charge.
Fisher gave a similar presentation to the VBT Board of Trustees at its work/study session on July 16, 2018. Van Buren’s first issue was published in May 2019.
He told the VBT board, “We would go after businesses that want to advertise. We’re a story-telling outfit and won’t talk about anything bad. We’ll work with the township supervisor and get all businesses involved on a regular basis.”
VBT Supervisor Kevin McNamara said the plan was to have this magazine replace the township’s Lake Ledger, which is published only twice a year, but he would wait to see how it goes before shutting down the Lake Ledger.
He said sending the magazine by mail was a good process since they have been delivering the Lake Ledger by hand and some of the Ledgers had been thrown into yards, put into mailboxes, and not delivered at all in some areas.
McNamara said it would cost the township up to $20,000 and it would be divided up among all the departments. He said there was $10,000 in the budget and it was noted more money could be added at a vote of the board.
McNamara said he would get a half page free each issue to write his message.
Last year Fisher said there were 16 similar magazines including Canton, Northville, Livonia, Grosse Ile, Lyon (South Lyon and Lyon Township), and Wyandotte.