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Long Lake Township Seeking Ownership of Twin Lakes Park from the County

Long Lake Township has requested to take over ownership of Twin Lakes Park, which is currently owned by the county.

The Grand Traverse County Board of Commissioners plan to meet on Wednesday to hear more about the thoughts behind this proposal.

“It’s kind of a big deal because the responsibility of maintaining the park and the services for the public would then fall to Long Lake Township, but with that they would have the option to add programs as they see fit,” said Grand Traverse County Board of Commissioners Chair Rob Hentschel.

Back in early 2021, Long Lake Township started looking closer at their budget for new developments.

They saw Twin Lakes Park as an opportunity to better serve the community as a whole.

“The last time, our board chose not to do anything with it and this time we decided to see what more we could do with that park and add it to our parks,” said Long Lake Township Supervisor Ron Lemcool. “The whole go was to come up with something for our residents, as well as the other residents of the community.”

Last October, they sent a letter to Grand Traverse County asking to take over ownership of Twin Lakes Park.

“People love coming to our parks, we take care of our parks and we’re very proud of our park land and so we just want to add this to that,” said Lemcool.

Stretching 175 acres, the township believes there is a lot of opportunity for new, recreational activity and developments at Twin Lakes Park.

“Maybe some more camping, bring some camps back,” said Lemcool. “We are looking at possibly a potential path that goes from Traverse City through Long Lake Township to Green Lake Township, for non-motorized, it’d be nice to have something on this side of town to help our residents and Green Lake Township residents to get into town that way.”

However, not everyone is comfortable with the possible change.

Many people have questions about what cost and developments will look like.

“There’s a cost associated with running a park here and it’s costing Grand Traverse County between $40,000 and $50,000 dollars a year, historically, to maintain this program and if Long Lake thinks they can do that at a lesser cost to the taxpayers, but still maintain current or even improved services, I think that’s something we should take a look at,” said Hentschel.

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