Michigan has 1,240 townships. Each township has at least five board members. We're talking about at least 6,200 township officials. But in northern Michigan and some other rural parts of the state, where the population is relatively low, nobody's running for these jobs.
Ron French at Bridge Michigan has been reporting on the challenges facing these small units of government. In the series of stories below, he and his colleagues tell us about an 87-year-old village president, the Fife Lake vote where villagers considered doing away with the village itself and how Michigan townships still operate under a model developed before the Civil War.
- Rural Michigan in crisis: Too many governments that too few want to lead
- Facing money woes, Michigan villages mull extreme solutions: ceasing to exist
- Other states shrink local governments. Michigan law preserves archaic ‘mess’
Reporting for this episode by Ron French, Elizabeth Dunham and Justin Hinkley, all of Bridge Michigan.
Producer: Austin Rowlader
Editor: Steve Junker
Host: Ed Ronco
Music: Blue Dot Sessions