By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Ortonville- The village council is under scrutiny for the amount of special meetings they have held so far this year.
“We’ve had conversations with residents, business owners as well, questioning the special meetings that we’ve had,” said Tonja Brice, council president. “I got a chance to do a little bit of research, and we’ve had 11 special meetings in seven months. In 2018, we only had three special meetings, two were for litigation and one was for grant approval.”
Tonja further stated that in 2019, there were five special meetings for the master plan, one to receive the policies and procedures, one to review the policies and procedures, IT and the manager duties, and one to discuss the president’s policy and resources, the personnel committee, the manager search and the trash hauling ordinance.

“So council has spent $3,000 on special meetings so far this year,” said Brice. “That doesn’t include Beth and Liz posting, preparing the agendas, the minutes for each and every meetings, the phones, the email communication, the DPW to deliver the trustee information, the lawyer fees due to our lack of following the policies and procedures, and so that’s another couple hundred dollars. So what I would like to do is, I would like to apologize to our residents for the moneys that are being spent, I would also like to remind all of us that our job is to provide the best possible public services, defined by the citizens, in the most efficient manner.”
This is not the first time the council has been scrutinized for the amount of spending done by the council for meetings. In 2016, residents brought to attention the amount of money spent on special meetings, committee meetings and other municipal meetings for education out of town.
“To me, special meetings are the cost of doing business,” said Dan Eschmann, president pro-tempore. “The special meetings are warranted to protect our residents and making sure that we have a full understanding of what decisions are being made, why those decisions are being made, when those decisions are being made. So from that perspective, the cost of doing business will be a little bit more when we have gaps, such as a missing village manager. If someone were to go back and find out the additional cost above and beyond the special meetings to each one of the trustees, maybe even you, Tonja, the cost would be significantly more, so is it relative to the missing village manager, maybe. Probably. That’s the cost of doing business when you don’t have a manager.”
Past village manager Bill Sprague resigned in April, with his last day being May 17. There have been three special meetings since his last day, as well as two between his resignation and his last day.
“I’m kind of in between because I do feel also that we have not been as efficient as we should at some of those special meetings” said Larry Hayden, councilman. “I think that we owe it to our citizens to, when we do call a special meeting, to make sure that we take as much time as we can during those meetings.”
Any three council members, or the village president, can call a special meeting for any reason. Council members are paid $55 per meeting and the president is paid $75 per meeting.
“I do find that in special meetings, generally, they’re there to get something done, and sometimes it’s easier to have one or two topics on a special meeting,” said Mark Butzu, councilman.