Letter to the editor: Higgins Lake Lyon Township Officials

One of the eligibility requirements for being a township Supervisor is to reside in the township where you hold that office. In Lyon Township this has been dodged by Mr. Larry Maduri, the current township Supervisor. Instead, since arriving out of the blue into the township to run for Supervisor, he has resided in Gerrish Township for the majority of his tenure. Mr. Maduri is also registered to vote in Lyon Township. He needs to vote where he lives, not where he pretends to live.

At the recent private septic system ordinance meeting that he hosted at the Roscommon High School auditorium, Mr. Maduri was asked if he lived in Lyon Township –- he replied “yes”. He was also asked if he owned a private septic system in Lyon Township – he replied “yes”. I didn’t believe him then and consider those public responses to be untrue. Yet, the Lyon board continues to ignore this problem and looks the other way.

This subject has been addressed with the township clerk, Mr. Doug Schnell, who blows this off as not applying to Lyon Township. I suggested that Mr. Maduri’s participation in deliberating and voting on township business is inappropriate, making the ordinances and policies Maduri touched null and void. Maduri came into office in 2022 and in the interim has resided outside of Lyon Township for most of his tenure as Supervisor.

If there is an obscure legal loophole out there that allows non-residents to occupy township offices, we need to put a stop to that immediately!

I suggested to Mr. Schnell that this should be investigated in an on-the-record business meeting of the township officers. He declined, but offered zero information about Maduri’s office eligibility status. It is difficult to believe that they are unaware of this disregard for residency. 

According to public records, in October 2023 Mr. Maduri even changed his US Postal Service address to Gerrish Township. He was absentee months before that according to credible sources. He ended up serving for less than a year before rehoming himself and domiciling in Gerrish Township. He is not running for re-election as an incumbent for Supervisor, but that is irrelevant to his continued official influence in a township that he doesn’t live in.

We shouldn’t elect people who don’t live here and who see these jobs as merely steppingstones to other opportunities. Mr. Maduri publicly promised to oppose the STEP sewer when running for Supervisor and then dawdled and reneged after he got enough votes to be elected. 

The incumbents on the township board seem complicit in ignoring Mr. Maduri’s eligibility for holding his post and are ignoring requests to deal with this in a formal township board meeting. I can only conjecture that they believe this would be detrimental to their support for the STEP sewer and private septic ordinance and raise serious questions about the propriety and legality of Maduri’s influence on shaping and promoting other issues. 

Now, he has his hands all over the short-term rental ordinance near approval by the same people who gave us the STEP sewer project. Why should we allow this kind of behavior? This is simply more of the same  unilateral decision making that has smudged the board incumbents’ performance and cancelled the meaningful participation of township citizens. 

Who is Maduri working for besides himself? Along with the other township officers, he approved reducing their work hours, reducing township office hours, increasing their pay and outsourcing other services – all without public approval. They even want to axe the township library! Less work, more pay and less public oversight. We can do better by un-electing incumbents and putting better people in those jobs who work for us, not special and self-interests.

This behavior may be a violation of the surety bonds that are required of all elected government officials in Michigan. The purpose of such mandatory bonds is “to protect the public from financial harm if the public official commits fraud or otherwise abuse their position of power.“

Mr. Maduri should resign today, and other decisions that he participated in should be reviewed and nullified accordingly to when he bailed out of living here. As far as voting here in Lyon Township — if he does so as a non-resident that is voter fraud.

Phillip Robinson
Lyon Township
Higgins Lake