The Sun and News, Saturday, March 16, 2024/ Page 5Yankee Springs board declines to vote on
revised Second Amendment resolution
Greg Chandler
Staff Writer
For the second time in
three months, the Yankee
Springs Township Board
declined to pass a resolution
supporting the Second
Amendment rights of its res-
idents to keep and bear
arms.
This time, the matter
didn’t even come to a vote.
The board Thursday dis-
cussed a revised resolution
proposed by the executive
committee of the Barry
County Republican Party
that states “the Second
Amendment to the
Constitution of the United
States of America affirms
that it is the natural, God-
given rights of the people to
keep and bear arms, and
protects Americans against
any infringement of this
right.”
However, no one on the
board made a motion to
approve the resolution, so it
was never voted on.
“I think that this motion
... this resolution, was cre-
ated by a local political
party, and I feel that’s where
it belongs,” Township Clerk
Mike Cunningham said.
“I do think it’s appropri-
ate for a political party to be
taking up (such a resolu-
tion), but I don’t think it is
for the board. It’s appropri-
ate for individuals on the
board, too, if they wanted to
do whatever to support it,”
Cunningham added.
Township Trustee Dave
VanHouten said he could
see problems with passing a
resolution of this type.
“We, as a people, we can
vote and put the right people
in office to make the right
choices and what we feel are
the right choices. We have
the courts,” VanHouten said.
“As a township, I would
hate to think that every time
we didn’t agree with some
laws that we are going to
have to (pass) resolutions
against them ... I think it’s
pretty obvious — we’ve
sworn an oath to the
Constitution, that’s not
going to change.”
The executive committee
of the Barry County GOP
has been calling on the
county Board of
Commissioners and local
townships to adopt resolu-
tions supporting the Second
Amendment in the wake of
new state gun control laws
that went into effect last
month.
The laws, which were
approved last year by the
Legislature and signed into
law by Gov. Gretchen
Whitmer, include measures
requiring gun owners to
securely store their firearms
and establishing universal
background checks for gun
purchases. They also include
a so-called “red flag” law
designed to prevent people
who pose a risk to them-
selves or others from pos-
sessing a gun, and another
law keeping people convict-
ed of domestic violence
from owning guns for eight
years after their conviction.
“Our state’s governor and
Legislature have demon-
strated their intent to pass
legislation that would
infringe upon the rights of
the people,” said DaveLaansma, a GOP precinct
delegate from Yankee
Springs who recently filed
to run for a county board
seat, reading from the reso-
lution language.
The Yankee Springs board
in December 2023 voted 5-
not to adopt the original
Second Amendment resolu-
tion offered by the county
GOP executive committee
with some on the board calling
the resolution “symbolic.”
“I told you we’d be back,”
GOP precinct delegate Jim
Hooker said. “We weren’t
going to give up, we were
going to re-word (the reso-
lution).”
The township’s legal
counsel, the law firm of
Bauckham, Sparks, Thall,
Seeber & Kaufman, cau-
tioned the board prior to the
December vote about adopt-
ing the resolution. While
acknowledging that the
Second Amendment does
apply in the township, it
wrote in an opinion that the
township has no jurisdiction
over gun legislation.
“The township should be
hesitant to be seen as
attempting to interfere with
lawful actions carried out by
state and federal authorities
with regards to gun legisla-
tion,” the attorneys wrote in
their opinion.
Eight Barry County town-
ships have passed Second
Amendment resolutions,
either in its original form or
the revised version –
Thornapple, Irving,
Prairieville, Baltimore,
Assyria, Castleton, Maple
Grove and Johnstown,
Laansma said.“We feel strongly that all
these townships getting onboard with this would be a
strong encouragement to (thecounty board) to complete
their job,” Laansma said.Yankee Springs Township Hall addition
damaged when struck by runaway car
Greg Chandler
Staff Writer
A little more than a year
after construction was com-
pleted on a 1,700-square-
foot addition to the Yankee
Springs Township Hall,
some cracks have been dis-
covered in the addition’s
north wall as well as the
drywall inside the building.
But township officials
say it’s not because of poor
workmanship or shoddy
materials.
They recently discovered
the building was struck by a
car that had been left run-
ning and was not in park
after the driver got out of
the vehicle to use the recy-
cling bins at the north end
of the hall property.
“We had the construction
company and the engineer-
ing company come out, and
they looked at it, and it
looked like it was impact
(damage),” Township Clerk
Mike Cunningham said at
Thursday’s Township Board
meeting. “We had no
knowledge of anything hit-
ting the wall.”
The cracks were discov-
ered in late February,
Cunningham said.
Cunningham found secu-
rity video footage that pro-
vided the answers to the
mystery. Video footage
taken on Jan. 1 showed a
car stopping about 50 feet
from the north wall of the
addition after using the
recycling system, and the
woman who was driving
got out of the vehicle “with
the intent to put something
in the garbage can.”
However, the car was
apparently left running and
was not in park,
Cunningham said.
“The car moved away
under power towards thebuilding with the driver in
pursuit. The driver fell,
the car went over the curb,
down the slope and hit the
building with enough
force to cause drywall
cracking inside and brick
and mortar cracking in
about a 15-foot-wide sec-
tion of the exterior wall,”
Cunningham said.
The driver involved in
the incident came forward
about an hour before
Thursday night’s meeting
and spoke to Cunningham
about what happened. The
woman suffered a broken
leg when she fell trying to
get back in the car and the
wheels ran over her leg,
Cunningham said.
“We know who did it.
There’s no damage to that
car. That person didn’t
know there was damage (to
the building),” he said.
The driver got back in thevehicle and was able to
drive back up the slope and
go home before she was
taken to the hospital for
treatment of her injuries,
Cunningham said.
The accident has been
reported to the Barry
County Sheriff’s Office and
a claim was filed with the
township’s insurance carri-
er, with a claim estimated in
the $5,000 to $10,
range.
Mugen Construction, the
contractor that did the work
on the addition and renova-
tion of the township hall,
says it has enough brick left
over from the project to
repair the brick damage,
with the repair expected to
take two days to complete.
The wall framing will be
inspected when the wall is
opened up for drywall
repair, possibly next week,
Cunningham said.“We don’t know if there’s
any significant framing
damage, but I’m guessing
not,” Cunningham said.
The township moved into
the expanded office spacein January 2023, allowing
Mugen Construction to then
begin work on renovating
the original township space,
including the meeting room
where the board meets.Cracks were discovered in the north wall of the
new 1,700-square-foot addition of the Yankee Springs
Township Hall. The damage was caused by a vehicle
colliding with the wall. (Photo by Greg Chandler)