City of Northville to Devise Donor Policy After Complaints About Benches

The recent controversy over city of Northville benches and tree plaques has administrators thinking about creating a new policy about memorial donations to the city.

The Downtown Development Authority at its meeting Tuesday decided to have its subcommittee develop a plan regarding how memorials would be handled. The issue first developed after some donors were dismayed to learn their memorial benches were going to be removed as the city revamps the downtown area.

In a previous Northville Patch , donors said they were upset because they made donations toward purchasing plaques on memorial benches, which they did not want removed or destroyed. But there is no place on new replacement benches for the plaques with memorial dedications, many in the name of deceased family members. Some donors addressed the City Council about the benches and asked for them to be given to the families, which the city will do.

DDA Executive Director Lori Ward acknowledged that dealing with memorials is a complex and sensitive issue. But some of the benches that have been and will continue to be retired were sponsored in the .

The amount donated has never covered what the city has paid for them and the plaques, she said. There are currently 51 wooden benches around the downtown, some decades old and some purchased within the last five years. There are three examples of the new benches around town: one on Mary Alexander Court and two on South Center Street. The new ones cost $1,750 and donations for the old ones ranged from $80 to $1,200, according to Ward's report.

“There’s a range of what people paid for them,” Ward said.

Each year the DDA will retire four benches, purchase four new ones and offer the retired benches and plaques to the donor. The old benches are being replaced with new metal ones which do not have a place for the plaques. If  donors do not want them, the city will offer them to nonprofits or other city departments.

What happens when no one wants them also requires addressing, City Manager Patrick Sullivan said. City staff need a directive to point to that gives them permission to dispose of them when they go unclaimed.

“When you have a plaque on something, people treat it like a tombstone,” Sullivan said. “They expect it to be there forever.”

However, natural wear and tear does not make that an option, he said.

The question, Ward said, is “What does a donation get you and for what length of time?”

That is the answer the policy on donations will seek to address.

One of the ideas tossed around at the meeting was to provide the Northville Historical Society with the names on plaques, found on benches and trees with guards. Some board members also suggested that the city create a large plaque with either all the names of the dedicated, the donors or both. Some said that keeping the names, somewhere that people can see and visit, is important for maintaining a sense of community.

The DDA asked the two-person subcommittee to come up with a plan by its next  meeting in July. Mayor Chris Johnson suggested the matter go before the City Council.

"It's an emotional issue," he said. "I don't think that you should ever feel, though, that because you paid $500 30 years ago that 'my dad's name has to be there.'"