Heat doesn’t stop the fun at park party
Countdown to Barry County Fair begins
Michigan Ave. bridge project on schedule
See Story on Page 3
See Editorial on Page 4
See Story on Page 16
THE HASTINGS
VOLUME 159, No. 28
BANNER Devoted to the Interests of Barry County Since 1856
PRICE 75¢
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Amber waves of corn NEWS BRIEFS are not a pretty sight Pierce Cedar Creek hosting chamber tonight The next Barry County Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours will be at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute July 12 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Guests will tour the facilities and sample food options. Pierce Cedar Creek Institute, a nonprofit environmental education center, provides visitors with an exposure to diverse habitats, including wetlands, forests, marshes, streams, lakes and prairies. The institute is set on 661 acres of preserved land and offers a place to have business meetings, retreats, staff dinners, volunteer appreciation events or other functions. The institute is open to the public yearround and free of charge at 701 W. Cloverdale Road. Visitors may explore more than seven miles of nature trails. The business after hours events are the second Thursday of every month from 4:30 to 6 p.m.
Charlton Park gas and steam engine show returns The 41st annual Charlton Park Gas and Steam Engine Show will return to Historic Charlton Park Friday and Saturday, July 13 and 14. Guests will see the history of engines in the making, including steam boats, tractor parades a working sawmill and more. Demonstrations will include shingle making, wheat threshing, hay baling and the 1890 Corley Sawmill in operation. Guests can enjoy tractor parades, sweet corn cooked with help from a Westinghouse steam engine, strolling the historic village, riding in a steamboat and even a spark show Saturday evening. More tractors and steamers are expected this year than ever before, said Director Dan Patton. Show hours are 8 a.m. to dusk, with the tractor parade at 2 p.m. each day. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children. For more information, call 269-945-3775 or visit www.charltonpark.org.
Fountain series to welcome Tony LaJoye Trio July 13, Fridays at the Fountain Series will feature the Tony LaJoye Trio, whose unique sound consists of a fusion of pop, jazz, blues and rhythm and blues. Members include LaJoye of Hastings, Traverse City bassist Stu Ford, and WestMichigan drummer Matt Gibbons. Fridays at the Fountain concerts take place on the Barry County Courthouse lawn from noon to 1:30 p.m. In the event of rain, concerts are moved to the community room at Hastings City Bank, 150 W. Center St.
Open house planned for Barney Hutchins For 24 years, Barney Hutchins has almost always been the first person in the door and the last one to leave at Thornapple Valley Community Credit Union. The fact that he was CEO of the company made his dedication even more inspiring to those who worked for him. Hutchins will join the ranks of the retired Tuesday, July 17, following a special open house in his honor to be held from 2 to 5 p.m. at the credit union’s office at 202 E. Woodlawn Ave., in Hastings. During Hutchins’ tenure as CEO, TVCCU nearly tripled its assets from $5.3 million to $15.7 million, opened a branch in Delton and added more than 35 new services for members.
by Bonnie Mattson Staff Writer The amber waves of grain Katherine Lee Bates referred when she penned “America the Beautiful” in 1893 were describing the wheat fields of the Midwest, according to historians. The amber waves of grain beginning to appear in mid-Michigan are not such a beautiful sight to area farmers, said Tim Spitzley of Lake Odessa. According to Spitzley, this is the worst summer drought he has seen since 1988, the year before he began farming. Spitzley has 850 acres of corn and 470 acres of soybeans planted. “Soybeans are a little more tolerant of the dry weather,” said Spitzley. “We have a bigger window to wait for rain where they are concerned. We need rain within the next 30
days, and we can probably salvage those crops.” The corn is a different story. Planting was off schedule this year for most farmers. The weather warmed up early enough to get some corn planted in April, but the rest of the planting was late due to the amount of rain in late April and early May. Many farmers finished planting later than usual. The dry weather threatens to create losses of 50 percent for the corn planted early and already beginning to tassel. The later corn may be salvaged with a considerable rain, since it has not all pollinated yet, said Spitzley. The corn planted this year has been geneti-
See CORN, page 15
Lake Odessa farmer Tim Spitzley stands in the spot where the corn was over his head in 2010. It is barely waist high today. (Photo by Bonnie Mattson)
City extinguishes request for smoking ban in parks by Sandra Ponsetto Staff Writer Smokers will still be able to light up anywhere in Hastings city parks. Last month, members of the Barry County Tobacco Coalition requested the city ban smoking in some, all or parts of city parks. After lengthy discussions during two previous meetings, the council, with Mayor Bob May and trustee Dave Jasperse absent, voted unanimously against granting the coalition’s request. In their initial presentation to the council, coalition members said they were requesting the ban because parks are places where young people often gather for sports and other recreational activities, and they did not want youths to see adults smoking, associate smoking with having fun and later become smokers themselves. While several members of the council said
they applaud the coalition’s anti-tobacco campaign and goal of preventing young people from ever lighting their first cigarette, they could not support the ban. “I personally do not smoke; I don’t think anybody ought to smoke,” said Trustee Bill Redman. “I think if we put this in effect, it is going to be unenforceable, No. 1 ... I think this is something we should just leave alone. I don’t think we, as a city council, should tell people they can’t smoke in a city park ... [Smokers] are citizens. They pay taxes like everybody else does.” Trustee Don Bowers agreed. “I have the same frame of mind,” he said. “Most of the places that have banned smoking, all they have done is pushed them outdoors where the kids can see them. Pennock Hospital for example, if they had a no-smoking area, then they wouldn’t be on the side-
walk out front and the kids wouldn’t see them ... That is one of the big things I heard ... I can’t legislate anymore against people that have a right to do what they want to do as long as they pay their taxes and they are citizens of here. Trustee Waylon Black backed Bowers and Redman. “I’m against a complete ban of smoking in parks because it tramples on peoples’ rights,” he said. “We don’t have a right to tell people ‘you can’t smoke here, you can’t smoke there.’ Even if we were to enforce designated areas for smoking, it won’t be long before the same group, or another group, comes before the city council trying to get us to completely abolish that. So, it is absolutely ridiculous.” Trustee Dave Tossava said he agreed with his fellow council members, and while he did not like being exposed to secondhand smoke,
he said he did not feel a smoking ban in city parks could be enforced. Trustee Barry Wood asked City Manager Jeff Mansfield whether smoking was allowed on other city property. Mansfield replied that smoking was prohibited in city-owned buildings and vehicles but was allowed outdoors on city property, except on the collective city hall and public library campus. Bowers made the motion, seconded by Redman, to deny the request. Later, during the public comment portion of the meeting, Dr. Robert Schirmer a member of the coalition and medical director of the Barry-Eaton District Health Department, said he appreciated the council’s consideration regarding the ban and hoped that some time in the future the council would reconsider instituting a ban.
Conservation report encourages county commissioners by Doug VanderLaan Editor All Barry Conservation District Director Joanne Barnard would have needed to make her annual report at Tuesday’s county commission meeting any more vivid and picturesque would have been a kayak paddle and a duck call. “The recreational side of what goes on in Barry County — though we may not see it all the time — does make an impact,” said Barnard, pointing out that a local canoe livery is bringing in 300 to 400 people per weekend day to float down the Thornapple River. “That river, even though there’s hardly any water in it now, is being enjoyed by people.” As are a host of other projects the Barry Conservation District either has underway or has planned for the future that Barnard highlighted in her report Tuesday. Of particular interest were three wildlife preservation initiatives, one a pheasant restoration project, the second, a wetlands project near Nashville that is dramatically increasing the duck population, and the third, an effort to aid fish passage by removing the Morgan Dam, replacing sinking culverts with a bridge and inventorying fish passage barriers. The pheasant program began in 2011 by bringing together 15 landowners, including the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute, to improve habitats in an effort to restore the pheasant population. This year, the conservation district helped start the county’s first pheasant cooperative, only the fourth such group in the state, which took the name Pritchardville Cooperative. “These folks are not all hunters, they just miss pheasants in Barry County,” said Barnard. “They’ve already put in about 150 volunteer hours in cleaning habitat areas and just making a huge difference. They’re looking forward to having a kids field day this fall or next spring, depending on how well our planting project goes.”
The Nashville Floodplain Westland Restoration Project has involved the development of 16 acres of prairie land, planting 250 trees, removing invasive species, and, later this fall, removal of stumps from the river. “It’s an awesome duck area,” said Barnard. “It already had a semi-decent duck population, but the numbers are increasing because we have a lot more shallow water areas and we hope to even improve that with wetland scoop-out areas and some habitat plantings in those floodplain areas.” A cooperative project with the Barry County Road Commission at Highbanks Creek started out as a plan to remove the Morgan Dam, but evolved into a larger effort to replace road culverts sinking into waterways and impeding fish passage. Culverts on Lawrence Road are being replaced with a bridge as part of a $600,000 project funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the county road commission. Barnard highlighted a number of additional cooperative ventures in which landowners, volunteers and donors are involved, including a streambank restoration initiative at Quaker Brook being funded by a $25,000 MillerCoors grant and involving the partnership of the Thornapple River Watershed Council, the County Drain Commission, the DNR and the DEQ. Inventory mapping of fish passages, urban runoff, bank erosion and placement of data on interactive mapping websites are also in development. Barnard ended her presentation with an update on the Aug. 6 to 11 Thornapple River Expedition, a first-time tour of the entire length of the Thornapple River for which over 100 canoeists, kayakers and tubers have signed on from all over the state and even outside the state. The tour, which will travel from Vermontville to Ada, begins with a bus tour of the river’s headwaters near Charlotte and one of the largest wetland restoration efforts currently underway.
“Joanne and her staff do an enormous amount of work that just goes under the radar ... This is a great deal for a lot of people throughout the county and even beyond the county. It’s a great showcase and I’m very proud of it.” Commissioner Jeff VanNortwick
“Joanne and her staff do an enormous amount of work that just goes under the radar,” summed up Commissioner Jeff VanNortwick. “And we don’t publicly take the time to thank them. This is a great deal for a lot of people throughout the county and even beyond the county. It’s a great showcase and I’m very proud of it.” In other business, the board: • Held a public hearing on the closeout of Barry County’s Michigan Community Development Block Grant Project which helped fund the construction of the Finkbeiner/Crane Road Bridge connection between Whitneyville Road and M-37 in Middleville. Heather Smith of the Barry County Road Commission staff reported that the project is complete and that not all of the $800,000 awarded for reimbursement through the grant was returned to the county due to MDOT’s allocation of funds toward portions of the project that had been covered by the grant application. “There was nothing I could do about it, and I’m not very happy about it,” said Smith of recovering just over $400,000 in reimbursed funds through the CBDG grant. Smith also was asked for reasons that a traffic light was not installed at the Crane Road-M-37 intersection. “MDOT requires a certain amount of traffic data to warrant a traffic light going in, and they have been monitoring it,” replied Smith. “We at the road commission would have liked
a light there but, unfortunately, we do not have the authority to put a light in.” • Approved the appointment of Joy Mulder to serve a three-year term on the agricultural preservation board. • Approved the appointment of Craig Stolsonburg as county commission representative and Jeff VanNorwick as alternate representative to a one-year term on the agricultural preservation board. • Approved a revised fee schedule for requested land information services to bring the county closer in line to neighboring counties and to market expectations. • Approved a $9,100 contract with Netech Inc. for a countywide network security assessment, with funds to be paid from a federal grant deposited to the data processing fund. • Approved the expenditure of up to $3,000 for a space consultant to determine the best use of the courts and law building to be paid from the building restoration fund. • Voted 8-0 to appeal an EPA reimbursement denial of a $612 bill for cleanup service in April of a methamphetamine lab. • Approved commissioners’ monthly payroll of $7,628 which, Commissioner Robert Houtman told fellow commissioners, is an approximate 24 percent reduction in compensation made prior to budget-cutting moves such as moving the commission’s committee meeting business to a committee of the whole format. “It means we’re doing more work in less time for less money,” pointed out Houtman. “For anyone on benefits, those costs have gone up, but we were running in the $9,000 to $10,000 range, and now we’re in the $7,000 range.” The monthly pay includes per diem pay and mileage only, said Barry County Administrator Michael Brown. The board meets next for its committee of the whole meeting Tuesday, July 17, in its chambers at the Barry County Courthouse beginning at 9 a.m.