Clinton Township Supervisor Paul Gieleghem speaks at the Dec. 8 Clinton Township Board of Trustees meeting.
By: Dean Vaglia | C&G Newspapers | Published December 15, 2025
CLINTON TOWNSHIP — A plan to merge two township departments has seen its first major public review, but further action will take place later.
At the Dec. 8 Clinton Township Board of Trustees Meeting, professional services firm Plante Moran presented the results of its study on the potential administrative merger of the township’s senior center and recreation departments. While a prior board expressed interest in merging the departments under one department head with two assistants, Plante Moran was brought in to examine the potential effects of the merger compared to the status quo.
“The conclusion up front is that there would be a savings enabled through that, and it’s to the tune of ($202,862),” Plante Moran Senior Manager Scott Patton said. “The majority of those savings come from that position that is currently vacant (senior center director) and then there’s other services that are kind of the back-office type of functions as well … What was not on the table and what we did not do was look at service delivery itself; so the programing, zero analysis around the programs that are offered. What the public sees (during) the day would be the same under both scenarios.”
The report finds that Clinton Township is an outlier among surrounding communities for having senior and general recreation activities under separate organizations, and for funding these programs from a general fund budget rather than a millage. Recommendations from Plante Moran call for: streamlining operations between departments; restructuring the senior center’s membership policies for better data management; adopting a financial sustainability policy; working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on Community Development Block Grant obligations for the senior center building; normalizing senior center staffing to reflect operating hours; incentivize online registration for activities; and considering whether the senior center gift store and the hairstylist are necessary.
Questions from the board came down to how the combined department would handle the needs of senior and family/children-focused recreation (which would be handled by separate assistant directors and teams of coordinators) and wanting more insight from departmental employees about possible ways the merger could affect operations.
Trustees voted to postpone further discussion of the merger plan to the Dec. 22 township board meeting.
Telecommunications
Trustees voted to approve the renewal of DIRECTV’s franchise agreement to operate within the township. The vote became an opportunity to talk about the “sausage-making” of such agreements and how they affect the township.
“This is an agreement we have with all of the cable providers in our community,” Clinton Township Supervisor Paul Gieleghem said. “This is what allows us to actually build the infrastructure and hire the staff that allows us to operate a public access cable channel. As the market and streaming services change and people are cutting cable … streaming services are not paying a franchise fee, but the cable providers still have to.”
The agreement with DIRECTV continues the video service provider fee of 5% and the public, education and government channels fee of 1.5% of gross revenues or whichever rate is charged to Comcast for the PEG fee.
Trustees later approved a right-of-way access permit to Ezee Fiber Texas, LLC. The request, made under the Metropolitan Extension Telecommunications Rights-of-Way Oversight Act process for telecommunications services providers seeking to operate in the township, was previously denied at the Nov. 3 board meeting.