Publication select ▼
CLINTON TOWNSHIP — All things must come to an end, and the Clinton Township Board of Trustees decided on July 14 that the Inclusive Playground Committee was due to its own ending.
Having opened the all-abilities playground back in April, questions had lingered about what the next phase of the playground’s advocacy committee would be. As committee chair AnnMarie Ottoy told the board, that next phase would be to “put a bow on an amazing experience that has created a lot of value for the community.”
With the committee’s primary and secondary goals completed, the committee voted to dissolve itself and donate the remaining $2.36 — after a final $600 was spent on landscaping — to fiduciary partner The Arc of Macomb.
“Thank you so much for your support over the years,” Ottoy said. “We appreciate all of it. The community, I know, appreciates it. It’s (received) tremendous positive feedback overall and we look forward to our next adventures.”
The committee was formed in 2019 and fundraised over $100,000 between 2020 and 2023 with the support of The Arc of Macomb. The final $1.47 million was raised in 2024 with the help of state legislators, the groundbreaking happening that July and construction ending that November. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on April 4, 2025.
“It’s a park for everybody, but it’s designed for those people that wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to play with others,” Township Supervisor Paul Gieleghem said. “It has been a really joyous thing for me personally, as a member of the committee, to drive by in the evening to see the parking lot still packed and to see the amount of people and kids that are out there on the playground.”
Trustees took the committee at its word, voting unanimously to dissolve it.
Ottoy said the next steps for some of the people involved would be to set up a community foundation for the township, which would aim to support the township board in filling funding gaps.
Vehicle liquidations
Trustees also approved removing several vehicles from the municipal garages.
The board first approved decommissioning the Clinton Township Police Department’s mobile command unit. Chief of Police Preston Susalla, via letter, told the board the command unit was “outdated, unreliable … has never been used for its originally intended purpose and its age and condition make it impractical for future use.”
Should the township need such a unit in the future, its partnership with Macomb County Emergency Management allows the police to use the county’s mobile command unit. While the item originally called for auctioning the unit, trustees approved the possibility of another township using it post-decommissioning.
Later in the meeting, trustees approved auctioning five vehicles from the Department of Public Services’ Water and Sewer Division. The vehicles are three trucks and vans with over 191,000 combined miles and two trailers. The department anticipates over $10,000 could be raised from the auction of the vehicles.
18 Mile generator
Trustees also approved the $468,500 purchase of a new backup generator for the 18 Mile Road booster station. The new generator, a Cummins natural gas powered unit, replaces the existing diesel powered unit from when the station was built.
The department chose to go with a Cummins unit over a roughly $80,000 cheaper Generac unit because of its experience with Cummin. The existing diesel generator is a Cummins, and a Cummins dealer is located in the township should service and parts be needed.
