Waters Road Development

A Grassroots Movement

We are residents of Pittsfield township, MI. We live in Hawthorne Ridge, Arbor Creek and Boulder Ridge (next to the Target). We have seen enormous amounts of development in our neighborhood in the past 6 years.

Now another developer, Robertson Brothers, plans to build a 60+ unit development on a plot of land that previously has now 3 single homes. We worked hard with the developer to come up with an alternative plan at the same location that would allow them to build the same number of units but which would significantly reduce the impact on our neighborhoods.

How? By swapping the locations of a planned future park at the corner of Waters Roard/Oak Valley Drive that already belongs to Pittsfield township with the planned development.

The Google-Form "Referendum"

The developer submitted two site proposals to the planning commission for evaluation. However, the supervisor's office usurped the powers of both the planning and park commission and conducted a Google Form referendum in March 2021 that was (supposedly) only advertised in a virtual township meeting on March 9, 2021 and on a website of the township that outlines the status of the park.

This process was conducted as a referendum between March 9-31: the township pledged to implement the majority opinion.

We lost the referendum 60 to 62 votes and the supervisor asked Robertson Brothers during the week of April 26, 2021 to proceed with the existing plans before informing the residents of our neighborhood about the outcome.

After filing a FOIA request we received redacted data with time stamps and street name of each vote and found out the following (see our report for details):

1) Our neighborhoods voted overwhelmingly in support of the "swap" with 73% support.

2) We lost because of 26 votes from the Lake Forest neighborhoods - almost all of them against the swap.

These neighborhoods are 2-3 miles away from the park. No other Pittsfield neighborhoods more than a mile away voted in any significant numbers. Nobody from Lake Forest neighborhoods spoke at the public meeting and nobody from Lake Forest areas voted during the first 2 days of the referendum. The Lake Forest all came in concentrated clusters on 9 days. This suggests that the referendum was selectively publicized by someone with significant organizational resources.

3) The referendum was changed midway through on March 11 after we complained to the supervisor that the initial wording was highly biased and confusing. Our analysis of Google Form data shows that support for the swap from our own communities increased from 50% to 73% after the wording change. The chance of this happening at random is 5%. The size of the effect is large enough that it would have changed the outcome of the vote.

We believe that the supervisor's office of Pittsfield township has actively undermined our grassroots movement - by usurping the powers of the planning and park commission, by conducting a biased and defective referendum with changes in the wording midway through and by allowing the vote to be manipulated through selective advertising of the Google Form in communities with no impact from the planned development.

We do not believe that a Google Form referendum was the proper way to deal with our proposal. By bypassing the expertise of the planning and the park commissions the supervisor's office has sabotaged our grassroot efforts.

Thanks to our complaints, the board of trustees transferred responsibility for the park planning on May 12, 2021 from the supervisor's office to the park commission.

We are delighted!

But this is not enough. We demand that the township initiates communication with Robertson Brothers and asks for more time for the park commission to reconsider the "swap" option. Otherwise, the park commission will have nothing left to decide.

YOU can help us by reading our report and by writing to the trustees and the township supervisor!

Email theTrustees, Planning and Park commissions and the Supervisor

You can also join our Google Group for updates.

Further Background

In 2019 Pittsfield township purchased land at the corner of Waters Road and Oak Valley Drive. This land was supposed to be developed as a park.

On November 5, 2020, Robertson Brothers submitted a concept plan to the planning commission which outlined a dense development of 70 homes on three plots of land along Waters Road - between the future park and Hawthorne Ridge subdivision. Residents of Hawthorne Ridge reached out to the developer after the planning committee meeting and suggested that they submit two site plans to the planning commission:

Robertson agreed to this proposal and submitted plans in February 2021. A virtual township meeting was held on March 9, 2021 when the township supervisor, Dr. Mandy Grewal, announced a Google referendum that would be held from March 9 to March 31, 2021. After

complaints that the initial wording of the referendum was biased the township changed the wording midway through the referendum on March 11, 2021.

On April 30, 2021, Dr Grewal sent a letter to residents at Hawthorne Ridge announcing that the swap was rejected with a 60:62 vote. During the week of April 26 the developer was told to pursue development of their 3 parcels as they had originally planned.