At the request of the Hart City Council, City Manager Nichole Kleiner provided an update at the most recent council meeting on Feb. 24 regarding the status of the planned connection between the forthcoming Hart-Pentwater and Hart-Montague bike trails, utilizing the Safe Routes to School Program grant to connect the disparate trails. The Hart-Pentwater Bike Trail has been long under development since its inception in 2018, with anticipated collaboration between the City of Hart, Village of Pentwater, Hart Township, MDOT and Hart Public Schools.
The Safe Routes to School connection is planned to pass through the intersection of 72nd Avenue and Tyler Road, beside the north end of Hart Cemetery, South Plum Street, and behind the bus corral, connecting through to school property. In order to provide the proper grading to the proposed path, the city required approval on a temporary easement from the Hart Public School Board to begin construction. This easement was denied by the school board at their Feb. 9 meeting, coming as a “shock” to Kleiner and many on city council, as they’d been under the impression Hart Schools was in support of the project.
In Kleiner’s executive summary memorandum detailing Hart School’s involvement with the project, the City of Hart claims communication with Superintendent Mark Platt as far back as September 2018 on the project and associated grant. This timeline of communication includes, but is not limited to, a letter of support and signed Post Test Evaluation Agreement from Platt in February 2021 - acting on behalf of Hart Public Schools - prior to the City’s grant application, awarded in August of that same year.
Following significant delays on the project from 2023-2024, due to MDOT concerns regarding the Hart Cemetery passage, Platt’s final communication with the city directly came in August 2024, wherein he “stated the project had become a ‘nonexistent issue’ to him due to elapsed time and then stopped responding to further correspondence.”
According to the memorandum, while the denial does not leave the Hart-Pentwater project dead in the water, it does pose considerable issues to the connection and “requires modifications that increase cost and reduce the ability to provide the safest and most efficient trail alignment at this school interface.”
Said Kleiner of the feedback received from the school board, "We were accused of being misleading on this trail. We were accused of providing an unsafe trail,” and how Platt “started that school board meeting out (by) declaring his strong objection to this project.”
When asked for comment by the Echo, Hart Public School Board President Chad Coker wrote, “The city is using a grant from 'Safe Routes to School' as a funding mechanism to extend the bike trail from downtown Hart to allow it to continue on to Pentwater. Some of us felt that this was a disingenuous use of the grant… The city management made it clear it was going to happen whether we approved the easement or not. We tried to ask how city residents felt about it, but they didn’t offer much for answers since this whole [project] has been on and off again for many years.”
Regarding concerns for safety, Coker added, “The [path’s] route is clearly not intended to create a safe route to school, as it directs everyone to cross Tyler and 72nd Avenue, which is one of the worst intersections during the morning and afternoon school rush. Since this was titled ‘Safe Routes to School,’ we wanted the public to understand that the school has nothing to do with this project or its planning…We also wanted to understand…if this was indeed a Rail Trail extension, how were they dealing with snowmobiles in the winter(?) Would the trail be plowed or open to snowmobiles, and if it was, how is that a safe route for kids biking and walking(?)”
The proposed Safe Route has also received criticism from residents along South Plum Street, who, between the paved shoulder construction and road easement correction, could see considerable encroachment on their yards.
Kleiner said she believes, "The big misconception here is that this project has been portrayed as a ‘Safe Route to School,’ and, truly, that’s been the funding mechanism for the Pentwater-Hart Trail…we are trying to make a safe route, but let’s acknowledge the fact that this is an economic connector that will take us from Montague to Hart, Hart to Pentwater.”
Kleiner also acknowledged that the Safe Routes to School program is a common funding mechanism for municipalities with similar bike trail projects.
The question still remained for Kleiner and Mayor Amanda Klotz regarding the feelings amongst members of the city council about the project. Said Klotz, “It has been a long project, and there’s been a lot of time invested in this. I think there’s some economic value to having some connection in the city limits with the children making this route to school…I would hate for Hart to lose out on [this], because we have some obstacles I think we can overcome.”
Upon asking the council at large, Klotz received support from council members and no mention of dissent on the project.
Also at the city council meeting, a quarterly report on the Hart Energy Department was provided by Supervisor Mike Schiller, complete with photographs and videos of equipment. In the report, Schiller updated the council on current projects, such as the organization and documentation of old underground electrical cables, and future projects, including the ongoing process of updating substations to operate at higher voltages.
The council unanimously approved two resolutions - a mutual aid agreement between county law enforcement and a joining resolution regarding the transfer of parcels - and tabled one - the BS&A software migration to the Cloud - for a following meeting and discussion.
Resolution 2025-07 is a mutual aid agreement between various law enforcement agencies throughout Oceana County. This is an annual agreement between the city police department, county sheriff's office and remaining villages to allow supplemental law enforcement aid to areas outside of their jurisdiction in case of emergencies.
Resolution 2026-06 pertains to the expiration of Act 425 on March 15, which saw 28 parcels of land on Polk Road transferred from the city to Hart Township 30 years ago. In this act, owners of those parcels had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted to opt in to the city and the associated utilities. Those who did not opt in once the act expired would default back to the city, regardless. This resolution is an agreement acknowledging the expiration and transfer of the relevant parcels between the city and township jurisdictions. The transferred parcels will be reassessed on taxable value by Oceana’s Equalization Director, assessors and Hart Township.
The tabled Resolution 2026-08 was regarding the upgrading of BS&A, providers of the majority of the city’s financial and operational software, to a Cloud-based server system, an upgrade that is being mandated for all municipalities serviced by the company. The planned implementation would come in 2027, with the fee of $64,580 for upgrading spread over three fiscal years. The initial motion for approval was made by Councilmember Betty Root and seconded by Karen Thomson, but further discussion prompted by Andrew Mullen saw the council wanting to learn more about the migration process, provision of physical data backups and further financial clarification. The motion was agreed to be tabled until further information could be gathered.
Appointments of Justin Adams to the TIFA Board and Emily Sigler, Lisa Clark and Rolando Salgado were made to the HEART Board, bringing the total member counts to nine and 11 members, respectively.
During Nichole Kleiner’s city manager report, she informed the board that 2025 marked the second year in a row that the John Gurney Park Fund has been in a deficit, with a total deficit of almost $176,000. This is an issue that Kleiner suggested be discussed during the City of Hart’s upcoming department retreat on March 7, along with further budgetary discussions and capital improvement projects.
