VBT Supervisor: We’re handling crazy things happening every day

At the beginning of the Sept. 5 regular meeting of the Van Buren Township Board of Trustees, Supervisor Kevin McNamara said he felt like he should bring up something about what’s been happening.
“This is a great place to live, but with the MiG, floods, three tornados we know of, another apartment fire today, and again today a guy with a gun. It was a hostage situation.
“It seems like every day we’re getting a crazy thing happening. Mother Nature seems to be coming after us with a lot of equal demands,” he said.
Supervisor McNamara said he had to bring it up and couldn’t help mentioning it.
Trustee Donald Boynton said with the supervisor mentioning things during the month of August, he wanted to say that he attended the fire department’s critical situation training with Norfolk Southern railroad. Attending were EMS units, hazmat teams, FBI and other units and they worked on communication and putting out fires on trains.
“Hats off to Chief McInally and Fire Inspector Andrew Lenaghan,” Trustee Boynton said of the training.
“I am going to finish out the conclusion to this. Of all the natural disasters we had, we responded really well. Nobody got hurt. Fire, nobody got hurt. MiG went down, blessing from God, nobody got hurt.
“We did have a shooting in Belleville the other day. What people don’t seem to know is that we almost caught these guys before they got to Belleville. They pulled off the freeway and got on Belleville Road in a stolen Jeep and it dinged right into our dispatch.
“We immediately put out cars looking for him and Belleville found him, tracked him out Huron River Drive to Haggerty, but we picked it up to pull him over. But he took off running and we were running after him and started getting calls about the shooting in Belleville and we realized we probably had the guy who did the shooting.”
McNamara said he got away, but the police in that area all know this community in Inkster of apartments and condos where they seem to run to because there are a maze of places to hide. He said they ditched the car and police got the gun.
“We got the car, hopefully filled with prints,” McNamara said, noting the state police lab will look at that. “Everyone who does anything bad in VBT, they get caught … I can’t think of a single major crime where they haven’t gotten caught … We are as technologically advanced as anyone around and as bad as things are, we’re doing a good job and handling it very well. I just want people to know that.”
In other activity at the 38-minute, Sept. 5 meeting, the board:
• Held a moment of silence for the late Sharon Richendollar, an educator, and Bob Mytych, advertising director for the Independent newspaper;
• Approved a resolution setting the 2023 tax rate request: 0.8935 mill for township operating (reduced from the 1 mill allowed due to Headlee) and 6.3528 mills for public safety, a total of 7.2463 mills. Real and personal property value for 2023 is $1,330,744,804 and the tax amounts to $9,642,976. The public safety millage was approved by voters in 2016 and expires Dec. 31, 2023;
• Approved selecting Davenport Brothers Construction, the lower of two bidders, for the French Landing Dock renovation project for a total of $616,900. This increases the budget amendment from $925,000 to $1,025,000. Originally budgeted for the dock was $525,000 and the project came in $91,900 over the projected project budget. The remaining $8,100 expense will cover construction administration for the project, which is expected to be completed this year;
• Approved a $50,423 agreement with Norfolk Southern Railroad to construct Iron Belle Trail Section J rail crossing on E. Huron River Drive, as originally approved by the board on Nov. 12, 2022. The cost is reimbursable from grants;
• Approved the alternate dates for the July and December Board of Reviews during the week of the third Monday in July and during the week of the second Monday in December, with meetings posted pursuant to the Open Meetings Act;
• Approved the supervisor’s reappointment of Aaron Sellers to the Board of Zoning appeals with a term to expire Dec. 1, 2026;
• Approved transfer of ownership of parcel 83 022 99 0010 to Kassem Allie. The township in 2014 acquired two parcels from the Wayne County First Right of Refusal. In 2018, Wayne County Corporate Counsel contacted the township saying an error was made and one parcel was to be deeded back to the rightful owner. The county failed to facilitate the necessary paperwork and the matter was addressed in June 2023. Allie will reimburse the township $5,782.16 and Wayne County will pay for and record the deed due to the error;
• Approved stormwater maintenance agreements with Kenworth Trucking and Hampton Manor;
• Approved paying Wade Trim engineers $98,394.92 to provide professional engineering design for the Belleville Road Reconstruction Project, which is expected for 2025;
• Approved purchasing two F-150 trucks for the Water and Sewer Department fleet for $95,196.64; and
• Heard resident Vickie Gregory say she was surprised to learn recently that residents are now having to pay for trash pickup. She said the residents should have been notified and Supervisor McNamara told her the many ways the township had sent out the information to the residents, including publication in the Independent, the newspaper of record.