Michigan villages have a fix for shortage of officials. Townships can’t use it

Rural communities are struggling to find people to hold public office
Villages are allowed to fill clerk and treasurer positions from outside their borders; Townships can’t
Several bills to assist struggling local governments are stalled in the Legislature

Since Allie Nemecek began working for the Village of Central Lake, she’s managed the 950-resident community’s finances and found grant money for a disability-accessible kayak launch and a community pavilion. She answers the phone and keeps up with the paperwork for grants from her Post-It strewn desk office at the village office, just east of Torch Lake in Antrim County.

“I love my community,” said Nemecek, 29.

She’s the type of person who likely would be an asset to rural townships across Michigan that are struggling to find government officials — if they were allowed to hire her.

Villages can hire anyone they want to serve as clerk and treasurer – Nemecek serves as both, while living 15 minutes outside of Central Lake. In townships, those critical positions must be elected from among people who live within township boundaries.

That legal distinction matters in Michigan, where some of the state’s 1,240 townships can’t find people to run for office.

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More than 75% of townships and villages report difficulty filling mandatory elected positions, according to a recent University of Michigan survey. For example, no one is running for clerk — the position that runs elections — in Hawes Township in Alcona County; Day Township in Montcalm County; Fayette Township in Hillsdale County; and Courtland Township in Kent County.

Without intervention, some officials warn of a crisis in Michigan’s front line of government that manages elections and collects property taxes.

While clerk and treasurer have historically been elected positions in Michigan villages, state laws regulating villages were tweaked in 1998 to allow villages to appoint someone for those roles. Appointed village clerks and treasurers aren’t required to be residents.

That’s been a boon for Central Lake.

“Getting a qualified individual, you have to be incredibly computer savvy to fill these grants out,” said Central Lake Village President Rob Tyler. “It’s not like you go to the grant tree and pick a grant.

“Jimminy Crickets, who are you going to find to do that up here?”

Switching clerk and treasurer to a combined appointed position allowed the village to hire Nemecek, who grew up in the village and now lives nearby.

“If we had gotten an elected official in here, it would just be (chosen by) name recognition, and they’d get here and be overwhelmed and they’d quit in three months,” Tyler said.

The Village of Garden in the Upper Peninsula is in the process of switching from elected to appointed clerk and treasurer positions. The village clerk is retiring at the end of 2026, and the treasurer had a stroke and is not able to continue.

Even in a village of 175 people and an annual budget under $400,000, both jobs are required by law.

“You can’t always get people who are fully qualified to run for office,” said Jeffrey Lefevre, president of the village that is near Fayette off Lake Michigan’s Big Bay De Noc.

The village council passed an ordinance switching those roles from elected to appointed. The village already has made hires for both part-time jobs, with starting dates in December.

Jeffrey Lefevre poses for a sign. — The Michigan Treasury helped Village of Garden President Jeffrey Lefevre switch the community’s clerk and treasurer jobs from elected to appointed roles. (Ron French/Bridge Michigan)

The candidates “both have banking backgrounds,” Lefevre said. “They live on the wrong side of the street to be inside the village.”

Some townships have found their own workaround to hire people from outside their borders.

For example, Houghton Township in the Upper Peninsula has struggled to fill elected positions. The township has an elected treasurer and clerk, but also a deputy clerk and deputy treasurer who live outside the township who do much of the work. Deputy positions are appointed by the township council and do not need to be township residents.

Two bills aimed at easing those struggles are gaining no traction in the Legislature, and there appears to be little appetite for major reforms.

A bill meant to address rural township job vacancies passed the Republican-controlled House in June but has not received attention in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

House Bill 5717 would allow townships to hire someone who is certified to run elections from outside the township if the clerk position is vacant or the clerk — who by law must be a resident of the township — isn’t certified to run elections.

A set of bills would appropriate $3.5 million to provide “back office” help with finance, human resources and informataion technology. Those House bills have yet to receive a hearing.

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