Tuesday, September 8 — 3:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Road Commission of Kalamazoo County · 4400 S 26th Street, Kalamazoo, MI 49048

How to find us

We get there by 2:45 and sit together on the left side of the room. If you are looking for us, look for the orange X.

If you would rather not walk in alone, say so when you sign up and someone will meet you in the parking lot.

About the time

This meeting is held from 3 to 4 in the afternoon, on a workday. Most people who live on these roads are at work at 3 p.m.

We’re asking the Road Commission to hold at least one evening meeting on this project so working residents can attend. If you can get there at 3, please come. If you can’t, that fact is worth putting in writing — tell them, and copy the County Board.

If you’ve never been to one

It’s a public meeting in a public building. You sign nothing at the door. It runs about an hour. Past meetings are on video at Public Media Network’s Gavel to Gavel — you can watch one before you go if you’d rather know what you’re walking into.

If you want to speak

Two or three minutes is plenty. What lands is specific and local:

• If you only say one thing, say this: “Publish the list. Tell us which trees are coming down and which ones came off, by the numbers you painted on them.” It takes eleven seconds and it is the one request at that meeting that cannot be answered with a statistic.
• Your name and the road you live on
• How many trees in front of your house are marked, if you know
• One sentence about what those trees do — shade, the school bus stop, the snow, the noise
• What you’re asking for: publish the list of trees, and put the money into rumble strips
• If you are speaking to the county commissioners rather than the Road Commission: ask why the board that appoints these five people did not hear about this project until ten months after the grant was awarded
• Ask for one thing they can actually give you: publish the list of trees, and put a written notice and appeal process in place before another tree comes down
• If someone told you your tree was diseased, say so, and say who told you and when. Then ask the board which certified arborist assessed it. That question has not been answered for anyone yet.
• Ask whether the grant application submitted to the federal government states the number of trees to be removed, and ask for a copy. It is a public document and residents have been waiting for it.
• If you know anything about the history of the trees on your road — who planted them, how long they have been there, what your family has used them for — say that. It takes twenty seconds and it is the one thing at that meeting nobody can rebut with a statistic.

You don’t need statistics. The board has the statistics. What it doesn’t have is you.

If Tuesday doesn’t work, here is everything else, smallest first