Fennville fills two city commission seats
FENNVILLE After brief interviews Monday, the Fennville City Commission appointed two residents to fill the seats of a pair of commissioners who resigned.
Morgan Bolles and Erik Almquist gave up their seats to move out of the city. Elected officials must be residents.
Dan Rastall and Brenda Langston were selected from four applicants.
Rastall, a former mayor of Fennville, was appointed to serve out Almquist s remaining two and a half years, and Langston will finish Bolles term, which ends in November.
The city s process for appointing commissioners came under scrutiny after Bolles appointment in late 2019, when The Sentinel and other media outlets reported his involvement in the far-right Proud Boys group.
FENNVILLE A city commissioner who brought controversy and a national media spotlight to Fennville due to his ties to the far-right Proud Boys group has resigned and moved out of the city.
A second commissioner has announced plans to resign later this month, also due to a change in residence, meaning the commission is searching for two new commissioners.
Ex-commissioner Morgan Bolles applied for a seat on the Fennville City Commission when a commissioner resigned in late 2019.
After his appointment, The Sentinel reported on photos of Bolles attending a Proud Boys rally in Lansing in September 2019, including one in which he is holding the Michigan Proud Boys flag and displaying a white power hand gesture, which led to calls for Bolles to resign.
FENNVILLE The Fennville City Commission on Monday withdrew a ballot proposal to amend the city charter and canceled the city s May election, after the state of Michigan rejected the proposal language.
The proposal to amend the city s charter was the only item on the May 4 ballot for Fennville residents, so there will be no May election in the city.
City Administrator Amanda Morgan said in mid-March the city received word from the state there were issues with the wording of the proposal. The state attorney general s office and the governor s office review all proposed city charter amendments.
The proposal was three words over the 100-word limit for such proposals, and the proposed amendment to the city charter called for levying taxes on the assessed value of property in the city, when it should have said taxable value, according to the state.
FENNVILLE A city commissioner who brought controversy and international media attention to Fennville due to his ties to a far-right organization called the Proud Boys is expected to leave public office early.
According to Fennville city administrator Amanda Morgan, Morgan Bolles has not submitted his resignation, but he made the city commission aware Monday, Feb. 15, he would be resigning from the commission sometime this spring due to plans to move out of the city. City commissioners are required to live in the city limits to hold the office.
Bolles was appointed to the Fennville City Commission shortly after the November 2019 city elections in which he ran as a write-in but failed to win a seat to replace another commissioner who had resigned that same month.