By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Ortonville-At the regular meeting of the village council on Monday night, the council voted to adopt rules of procedure 5-2.
Council members Coleen Skornicka, Mark Robinson, Dan Eschmann, Pat George and Mark Butzu voted in favor of the rules of procedure while Larry Hayden and president Tonja Brice voted against them.
Members of the council had worked on the rules, starting in 2018, and one of the continual sticking points was descriptions of the committees within the village, particularly the description of the planning commission. Descriptions were taken from the Village Law Handbook, which was not how the original draft read. The previous draft was a combination of excerpts from the Village Law Handbook and the Michigan statutes.
“Now we’re back around where we’re completely throwing out what we worked on,” said councilman Larry Hayden.

The Village Law Handbook is a summary of the Michigan Statutes which state what municipalities and their committees do.
“I’ve spend hours working on this, I told you the reason we reworded it,” said Eschmann.
“It was taken word for word out of the Village Law Handbook, there wasn’t excerpts just taking little pieces. Otherwise, you could change the words and the whole meaning by taking little pieces and putting them in there, and that’s what was happening. So, instead, I took exactly what the Village Law Handbook stated and put it word for word so there was no bits and pieces taken so it wouldn’t be taken out of context.”
The descriptions for most committees are labeled as purpose and scope, and though the planning commission description is not labeled as such, it does reference the Village Law Handbook directly under the description. The new rules and procedures will be available on the village website within the next few weeks.