Clarity, Virtues, and Vices of the Hamlin Board

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The Hamlin Recall Clarity Hearing

On May 21, 2026, Hamlin Township came to the forefront of political scrutiny as recall petitions were considered at a clarity hearing in the morning and a contentious three-hour regular township board meeting finished off the evening.  While not nearly as monumental as the political divides that led to a revolution in this country nearly 250 years ago, the factions in the fight are being better defined as the partially written script plays itself out.

Two sides have emerged and one was playing defense in the morning's hearings.  Greg Collins, Hamlin's foremost political activist, polished his recall petitions that failed their first time around against Treasurer Susan Ptaszenski (seen above from behind) and Johnaine Gurzynski (seen below from behind) and had the county election commission review their content.

That committee consisted of county officials (Probate Judge) Jeff Nellis, (Treasurer) Andrew Kmetz, and (Clerk) Cheryl Kelly whose duties were to decide whether the language in the petition was factual and clear enough for electors to understand the reason why the recall is being done and give the recalled official an official act that could be defended against.  This actually isn't a very high bar, as the commission is not granted any type of fact-finding power and thus are acting solely on the wording and whether it is addressing a fact or expressing an opinion, the latter not being allowed.  

Collins strategy this time around was to point to a clerical discrepancy documented by a forensic auditor between the township's books and the bank's for the treasurer, and to state a claim that Trustee Gurzynski violated closed session confidentiality in a comment she made at a 2026 meeting.  These aren't strong contentions, nor are they totally fair when one looks closely at their veracity and how they never affected the township's operations.  

The commissioner's room at the courthouse would be packed with mostly Hamlin electors and officials.  They would hear Collins stick to defending his wording and giving the commissioners relevant parts of the audit and meeting minutes in support of his claims.  The defending officials would admirably claim their actions were not worthy of repudiation and that the claims made had caused no problem at all with township operations.  Three Hamlin residents (Barry Matthews, Marty Cupp, and Karen Anderson) spoke on behalf of the two under fire, Cupp speaking well of both while suggesting that the recall effort was "one man's vendetta".

In the end, on both proposed recalls, the commission had to admit that the language was clear enough to understand and defend against, reminding those present that they had no power beyond that to decide whether the reasons for recall had merit or were incontrovertibly true.  They unanimously approved both, allowing Greg Collins and others to use the petitions to get 566 verified signatures (this is 25% of the 2263 Hamlin voters voting for governor in the 2022 election) in order to get a recall election as early as November.  This will be a tall order in itself and may be a futile task if Collins doesn't have a quality candidate to run against them.

Following the hearing, this reporter was approached by the frustrated and upset husband of Trustee Gurzynski indicating he was not content with my overall coverage of Hamlin politics in this medium, especially in regard to his wife.  While I have been one of the most strident defenders of her with the allegations against her for breaking confidence that were asserted in the recall petition and in her most recent censure, he did make a valid indirect point in my reference to her and Ptaszenski being the "ski team", suggesting its use was derogatory. 

I will continue using the term much to his chagrin, but in retrospect I have been negligent in not giving the other faction in the Hamlin Board an equally descriptive 'team' name.  As the two mainstays on the other side have last names Greenslait and Genter, the natural team name incorporating the last syllable in their name is to call them the "Slaiter team".  Trustee Chris Cook would naturally be on this team because the most famous Slater of all time was named Christian.

The Hamlin Regular Meeting of May 21st

Nine hours after the hearing, the Board of Trustees would have their regularly scheduled meeting, and it turned into a three-hour symposium of classical representative democracy.  To those uninitiated to the Hamlin Township experience, they might see what went into the sausage of making public policy at a meeting like this and decline to take a bite out of it.  To others like this reporter, it just adds to the flavor of the meat in knowing the contents that were ground together and shoved into a casing for public consumption.

Two official entities were present that aren't normally around.  Township Attorney Jacob Witte (far right, in the picture above) was utilized quite a bit throughout, while two county deputies also hung around for the meeting's duration (doing nothing).  These both appear to have been additions made by the township supervisor for direct legal advice and security, respectively.  These added at least nine hours of attorney wages to the ledger, being that Witte's based in Okemos and likely helped the county sheriff get some of the $1892 in a public safety revenue sharing payment the board would approve later in the meeting.

Four would speak in the initial public comment over agenda issues, mostly about the usual topics of short term rentals and noise issues (and their frequency) with Stix rather than items on the agenda, the seven comments at the end of the long meeting would prove more interesting.

A report from the road commission concentrated mostly on planned improvements on Jebavy Drive, with a two-month rehabilitation of the bridge just south of Jagger Road starting at the beginning of June being the main topic.  Vandyke Road, connecting South Jebavy with Old 31 and running south of Family Fare Market , will be constructed starting after July and planned to be finished by the end of the year.

We would find that the treasurer was still having issues with the BS&A system and resorting to older methods that she was comfortable with.  For the first order of business the panel discussed how to disburse $1892 in public safety revenue sharing funds, figuring out that $1419 would go to the sheriff's department and $472 to the Hamlin Fire Department.

The board would decide to go with Earl Hutchison over Hannah Hawley as a transfer station attendant, with Trustee Gurzynski providing her third vote of dissent for the night (the other two during the treasurer/clerk reports).  While they would approve an $18K brining contract for local dirt roads, they would have a long impasse and table a decision on what to do with a small portion of Mavis Road scheduled for$114K in improvements amounting to widening and restoration of what's there.  Gurzynski would once again supply the only no vote for abandoning the Locust Lane right-of-way, which we learned was mostly underwater and figured in no plans for improvement by the township or county.

A motion was made to buy a tax foreclosed parcel on the corner of Beech and Tamarack, but after some discussion, trustees couldn't figure out any public purpose they could use it for so defeated the motion unanimously.  This was all done in open session, the board wisely deciding not to do what the City of Ludington would do on May 18th, inviting the seller into closed session to discuss purchasing the Foster School property.

There would be two action items that appear to be efforts by the Slaiter team to perceived threats but instead looked as if they were going against constitutionally protected activity.  The Public Property Safety Policy was not well drafted and would be hard to enforce, the Ski Team would recognize it as such, and they would be joined in the vote by Clerk Sheila Genter, who apparently recognized it as an overreaction that it was that infringed on basic rights.  If there was anything that was clear this evening is that the two teams are not always absolute.

The 'rules regarding public comment' resolution was also not well received, reducing comment times from 5 minutes to three minutes, the treasurer opining that if something isn't broke, you don't need to fix it.  This will come back, as will the transfer station policy resolution, where Trustee Gurzynski argued that the policy should use some of the lessons learned from the Summit Township transfer station (which is funded through a millage in the township).  We would later find out that Amber Township is considering entering an intergovernmental agreement with Hamlin to use Hamlin's station.

After about 150 minutes of meeting, seven constituents took to the floor to make comments.  JoAnn Arnold urged the trustees to look at potential foreclosure sites that come up for park purposes rather than whether they can profit from them (as some suggested).  Tiller Landick chided the township's transparency over Stix issues and the attempt to move comments down to three minutes.  Marty Cupp would update all on the recall petition decision made earlier that day and how much it would potentially cost the township. 

Mary Cabot talked of issues regarding the transfer station, that the supervisor was wrong for using 'unlawful' garbage bags when disposing of the town hall's garbage.  Karen Anderson would wonder why the deputies were there for the meeting and noted the board was more agreeable than usual among themselves.  Angie Felton would argue for commonsense rules for public comment.

But before Angie spoke, Glen Samson had his own gripe with the supervisor acting like judge, jury, and executioner in creating problems for his property and his choice of lighting and blight issues, which has had the township take him to court.  He was also happy that the comment rules were not passed and had they been in force, one could possibly see them enacted against him, as he was deeply critiquing the management.  

Such restrictions as part of township policy could wind up costing them a lot more than just some hurt feelings if they decide to treat criticism or label free speech as a violation of the law, while bringing two young deputies, presumably poorly trained in the matters of deescalation and civil rights as is typical at the moment, in to be paid enforcers of that policy.  

One of the bigger surprises was that Greg Collins was present the whole meeting, received some panning from officials and citizens, but had the restraint to not comment at all about his 'success'.

  The audience at the meeting learned a valuable lesson in local representative democracy that night, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And yet, the meeting ended with general goodwill and less ski and slaiter teamwork than we normally see, and with the ashes of several motions that failed because they should have.  This is a local government to be both proud and wary of.