Corunna votes Monday on parks plan, traffic order it hasn't posted

Corunna's City Council meets at 7 p.m. Monday at the lower level of the Community Center, 457 Emma Drive, and the two biggest items on the agenda come with no paperwork attached.

At 7:10 p.m. the council opens a public hearing on a Parks and Recreation Five Year Plan. Later in the same meeting, under Items of Business, members are set to vote on that plan — and on something listed only as "Consider Traffic Control Order 243."

The agenda does not say what the parks plan proposes, which parks it covers, or what it would cost. It does not say which street, intersection or stop sign Traffic Control Order 243 affects, or what the order would change there. The agenda as published lists no supporting documents, and it does not state where a resident could read the draft plan or the order before the hearing. A traffic control order is the mechanism a city uses to make a traffic rule enforceable — a speed limit, a stop sign, a parking restriction — so the practical effect of No. 243 falls on whichever street it names.

That matters for the hearing most of all. Under the council's own rules printed on the agenda, each person gets one opportunity of up to three minutes during a public hearing, and comments "shall be relevant to the subject for which the public hearings are held." A five-year parks plan is also the document the state looks for when a city applies for recreation grant money, which makes it the kind of plan a resident would want to read before the three minutes start running.

A third item, "Consider DWSRF Summary Tracking Amendments," is listed with no figures. DWSRF is the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, the state's low-interest loan program for water system work.

The consent agenda covers minutes of the Oct. 5 regular meeting and vendor disbursements for Sept. 18 through Oct. 1. No total is given on the agenda. The communications list at the back includes c2ae progress reports, legal expense tracking for June through September 2026, and minutes from the Community District Library, the DDA's Sept. 29 special meeting, SATA and the Youth Sports Commission.

This is the second straight Corunna meeting where the public business is easier to find than the public record. The Current reported that the council's Sept. 21 agenda put a Public Act 33 fire special assessment district, a budget amendment, a Historical Commission loan and two equipment buys in front of members, and the city has still not published the outcomes of those votes.

What happens next: the hearing opens at 7:10 p.m. Monday, Oct. 19, at 457 Emma Drive, with the votes on the parks plan, Traffic Control Order 243 and the DWSRF amendments to follow in the same meeting. The agenda lists the council's next regular meeting as Monday, Nov. 16 — four weeks out, so anything held Monday waits a month. We will report the vote counts and the street named in Order 243 once the city releases them.