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Rural townships and villages face increasing trouble finding residents to run for local offices
Growing workload and increased public vitriol are making public service less attractive
Some local officials would like to leave office but no one is stepping forward to replace them
PELLSTON — Fresh from retirement from United Airlines in 1996, James Gillett returned to the community where he was born, the quiet northern Michigan village of Pellston.
He’d barely moved in when he was asked to join the village board. Within a year, he was village president. It was something to keep him busy for a year or two, he thought. In the 800-person Emmet County community that billed itself as “Icebox of the Nation,” the job couldn’t be too hard.
Twenty-nine years later, the 87-year-old is begging for someone to file to run for village president so he can retire again.
“I’ve told everyone I was not going to run for village president again,” Gillett said. “But no one has come forward.”
When no one filed by July 21, the deadline for names to appear on the November ballot, Gillett reluctantly agreed to run again for the job that pays $14,000 a year.
“People say, ‘Oh I don’t want to get involved,’” Gillett said, “but they still find time to complain about the things they don’t like.”
Pellston’s Village President Jim Gillett, 87, has spent 29 years as the Pellston village president. He didn’t plan on running for reelection this year, but after no one else filed for the seat, he reluctantly decided to run for another term. (Ella Miller/Bridge Michigan)
More than three-quarters of Michigan townships and villages have trouble finding people to fill elected or appointed offices, according to a survey by the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan. Even when there is someone to run for office, those races often are uncontested, according to the survey.
In interviews with dozens of community leaders across Michigan, officials cited a litany of reasons for the shortage: looser social connections; positions that once were billed as taking a few hours a month have grown in complexity, but not in pay. Online harassment and growing distrust of government, stemming from national politics and local turmoil over clean energy and data centers, have made even formerly sleepy township trustee positions uncomfortable.
The potential impact, muted for now by retirees like Gillett who have either stepped into offices or stayed long after they’d like to leave, should be raising alarms in Lansing, say those leaders.
Michigan township officials have far more responsibilities than those in other states.
Without reform, some communities may be left with no way to collect taxes or run elections, said Michael Selden, at the Michigan Township Association.
“What happens if nobody truly runs?” Selden said. “What do we do?”
Where are the candidates?
It’s a question being asked by more and more Michigan townships and villages.
Along Lake Huron in Alcona County, for instance, no one is running for Greenbush Township constable, Hawes Township clerk and for two of three alderman positions up for election in the city of Harrisville.
In neighboring Montmorency County, there are no candidates on the ballot for 4th district county commissioner, and those who are running “would be glad not to run again, but there’s no one behind you applying (for office),” said Montmorency County Commissioners Chair Mary Hardies. “You feel pressured to stay … just to keep the county running.”
There are no clerk candidates in Day Township in Montcalm County or trustee candidates in Wheatfield Township in Ingham County.
In Hillsdale County, no one is running for Fayette Township clerk, a position that is already vacant after the former clerk quit in frustration over a solar project. The clerk of a neighboring township is helping out for now.
“There’s a lot of stress in being a rural clerk, the pay isn’t great and it’s a part-time thing,” said Hillsdale County Clerk Abe Dane. “All it takes is a little bit of chaos and they will (resign).
“We’ve got five villages and we’ve got eight school districts and each of them has a board,” Dane said. “Right now we have a lot of open positions. It’s hard to find people.”
There are at least 14,500 elected local government positions in Michigan townships, villages, cities and school boards. The majority are part-time, with those in small, rural areas often paid under $10,000 a year.
Some larger townships pay more than $70,000, but trustees in smaller townships can make as little as $50 a meeting. Many school boards are unpaid.
Dane spends a lot of time trying to recruit candidates. “I try to tell them (that) school board isn’t a huge commitment,” Dane said. “But there’s always something people would rather do than go to a meeting.”
Fighting indifference
Community-level government matters more in Michigan than most states because of the way its system of governance is set up.
The state’s 1,240 townships assess property values, collect property taxes, run elections and provide other services in the 96% of Michigan land not inside city boundaries.
Only 20 states, primarily in the Northeast and Midwest, have townships, and many of them allocate responsibilities borne by Michigan townships to counties.
Over half (52%) of Michiganders live in townships, ranging wildly in population from over 100,000 in Macomb County’s Clinton Township to Huron County’s Pointe Aux Barques with 15 residents. A quarter of those townships are thinly populated, with under 1,000 residents.
“A lot of our smaller townships, they have a smaller pool (of potential officials) to choose from anyway,” Selden said. “And then with the political climate the way it is, and social media being what it is, it’s easier to make it less pleasant to serve.”
The same challenges exist for Michigan 252 villages, with an average population of about 1,500 and a mandated six trustees and village president.
Back in northern Michigan, Pellston has problems filling both elected and appointed positions, such as for the planning commission and the downtown development authority. To get people to serve, “it’s a lot of making phone calls and begging and trying to get people interested,” Gillett said. “And then they’ll say, ‘I’ll do it for one (two-year) term.’”
Having functioning governments in small communities can be vital to safety. For example, Pellston has PFAS contamination in some of its residential wells near the Pellston Regional Airport. The state provided $44 million for a new community water system, which is now in the planning stages. Gillett is heavily involved in the planning of that system.
“Prior to the problem with PFAS and trying to eradicate it from our wells, this was a fairly easy job, maybe five or six hours a week,” Gillett said. “Today, it is endless meetings, endless decisions. You’re dealing with state agencies, and they’re 9-5 people, so all those Zoom meetings take place during business hours. I don’t know how someone with a full-time job could do this, and not for the $14,000 a year I get paid.”
Pellston’s Village President Jim Gillett, 87, drives past a mural in downtown Pellston. (Ella Miller/Bridge Michigan)
It frustrates Gillett that so few feel the pull of public service today. “I was born and raised in Pellston,” he said. “There was a time when I knew 90% of the people in this town and knew where they lived, and I can’t say that anymore.
“People nowadays are just indifferent to their community.”
Political vitriol hits rural Michigan
Summer is when the Keweenaw Peninsula’s Houghton Township comes alive. The snow, which can accumulate to 25 feet in the winter, is finally gone. Tourists tread gingerly along the stone-strewn shores of Lake Superior. Sucker fish swim from the big lake into the peninsula’s rivers to spawn, forming a buffet for bald eagles and black bears.
Brian Imdieke, 44, Charlene Imdieke, 6, Jennessa Imdieke, 43, and Henry Imdieke, 8, of Duluth, Minnesota make a stop on their road trip at Eagle River Falls in Eagle River. It was the family’s first time visiting Michigan. (Ella Miller/Bridge Michigan)
But inside the old schoolhouse used now as a village hall, community leaders were worried in the summer of 2024. The township’s supervisor, clerk, treasurer and one of two trustees had all resigned in a period of a month. Finding replacements in a township with only 72 residents wasn’t easy. And without them, the township would not be able to hold public
