A 4 to 3 vote by commissioners sees proposed budget adopted
By Barb Pert Templeton
After months of meetings, including townhalls hosted by City Manager Michael Reaves and public hearings where the people had a chance to be heard, a majority of Marine City officials adopted a balanced 2026-2027 Fiscal Year Budget.
A May 21 commission meeting had Marine City Manager Michael Reaves offering officials a proposed balanced budget with an estimated surplus of $37,478.00. Earlier this year the general fund was going to fall short by some $650,000 and Reaves had proposed a resolution to create a special assessment district that would access 5 mils from taxpayers that would provide $706,000 in funding to right the city’s fiscal ship. The commission decided to reject that resolution that would increase taxes at a May 7 meeting.
Instead, severe cuts were made across all city departments and Reaves resigned.
At the recent meeting Mayor Jennifer Vandenbossche asked for a motion to adopt the 2026-2027 fiscal year budget as presented to comply with the city charter. A motion was made by Commissioner Jacob Bryson and seconded by Commissioner Sean O’Brien. Mayor Jennifer Vandenbossche and Commissioner Trish May also voted in favor of the motion. Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick and Commissioners Rita Roehrig and William Klaassen voted against it.
Marine City resident Heather Warner, spoke during a public hearing on the city budget at a May 21 commission meeting.
Resident shares ideas for saving/raising money
At a public hearing prior to the adoption of the budget city resident Heather Warner stepped to the podium to discuss her ideas for helping the city’s financial issues.
“We need money and I need to know what you guys need money for and how we can help to raise that money,” Warner said. “I feel we should look into some volunteer programs and these are general ideas that I have but I need help and to hear yes, no or maybe so.”
The volunteer programs could include a neighborhood watch, an adopt a park program and attacking blight by knocking on doors to see who needs assistance. The city could recruit volunteer beach and park attendants that can pick up trash and monitor bathrooms too.
Marine City Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick spoke out during a discussion about the adoption of the city’s fiscal year budget for 2026-2027.
“Just some of these volunteer programs that get the city’s backing and put people together who will help,” Warner said
She also wanted to talk about fundraising, she knows the city needs money for the cemetery, or buying a police car or the infrastructure projects.
“Tell us what you want money for and let us all work together to raise the money,” Warner said.
Other suggestions Warner made where to sell raffle tickets or host a breakfast at the Guy Community Center.
“I’m throwing ideas out there, these people are here because they care, they all signed the petition they can all come out and help pick up the pieces,” Warner said.
Hendrick has major budget concerns
When adopting the budget came up on the agenda Hendrick said the commission has been given four different budgets to review and she’s made spread sheets to try and keep track of them.
“Figures don’t add up to me on a lot of the stuff, I’ve got two pages of issues, concerns, things that were missed and things that don’t add up to me,” Hendrick said. “I’m not going to go through this entire list but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on this budget.”
“I think we can make a go at this and get it fixed, it’s going to take more time and I just can’t support it the way it is.”
Marine City Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick speaking about the proposed 2026-2-27 Fiscal Year Budget.
She went on to state that every time she looked at the paper work she found something else confusing until she just finally gave up.
“I haven’t seen the budget in this shape for a while,” Hendrick said. “I think things can be done to improve it, I found quite a few things that can be corrected that will help us.”
Attempting to simply calculate employee wages from one budget to the next didn’t even add up.
“I think we can make a go at this and get it fixed, it’s going to take more time and I just can’t support it the way it is,” Hendrick said, noting that she will work hard to get it fixed but she can’t approve the budget the way it was presented.
She added that she knows there are time constraints but until she gets “better figures” she’s truly sorry to ‘say this is one of the worst budgets I’ve ever seen.”
Vandenbossche said the city charter calls for the budget to be adopted in May but they have until June 30 to adopt the budget before sending it onto the state.
Marine City resident Heather Warner, speaking during the public hearing on the city budget sharing ideas about how volunteers can help.
“Tell us what you want money for and let us all work together to raise the money.”
“Even if we approve it tonight, we know that amendments are being made to it and we can continue working on it and continue to see what we can do and as we get figures coming in we can make adjustments,” Vandenbossche said. “We just need to get something passed tonight so we can start working on it and get the presentation to the state by June 30.”
Commissioner Sean O’Brien said he wanted to recognize that the commission has given the city manager and city treasurer numerous changes and he thanked them for putting the budgets together over and over.
“We’ve had significant demands on this and we’ve come back to you guys and said change it all again and change it all again and with expectations of revenue being drastically different then it was a few weeks ago to where it is now,” O’Brien said.
Commissioner Rita Roehrig said she felt there should be more cuts and the ones she suggested didn’t bring any feedback. She thinks there are things they could do that wouldn’t affect getting rid of employees or changing their hours.
“Especially in things like office supplies, we haven’t even spent half of what they prosed last time and they’re still proposing twice as much again this year and I thought we were cutting down on paper and all those things,” Roehrig said. “I also have a lot of the same issues that Commissioner Hendrick has too, so I have my doubts about the budget.”
