During its Feb. 12 meeting, the Western Michigan University Board of Trustees trustees voted unanimously to approve a memorandum of understanding that is the first step in transferring ownership and management of the Asylum Lake Preserve to Kalamazoo County.
An MOU is a document to create a formal agreement between two parties — in this case, that's WMU, who currently owns the land, and the county, which is seeking to own it.
While addressing the board, WMU Vice President for Government Relations and External Partnerships Jeff Breneman said the vote to approve the MOU is only the first phase of the land transfer.
“Step two would be the negotiation of an interlocal agreement which will probably take a few months and there would be more input during that process. After that is in place, the idea would be to go to the state to pass legislation that would provide us a deed, something that we don't have," Breneman said. "They conveyed the property to us, but didn't provide a deed. When we get that deed, we could actually deed the property over to the county."
In his address to the board, Breneman said the preserve has been "really valuable" as a research asset for WMU, but also pointed out that the university must use its own funds to manage it. Breneman also said that a recent state budget recommendation to slash all funding for public universities would mean more tuition money would have to be allocated to maintain the preserve.
"This is why we have to focus on our core educational mission as much as we can and in every way possible, because every dollar that we would be using to support this preserve — if a 0% budget comes from the state next year — would be coming from student tuition dollars. And certainly we think we should be focusing those on student success," Breneman said.
During the public comment period, a member of WMU's facilities management landscape division team wrote to the board with concerns that the county would be unable to maintain the preserve to the same standard as WMU — highlighting several of the unique species that exist in the preserve.
"What is the county's knowledge of Oak Savannahs, the boundaries and topography of the property itself, including the beaver population, a keystone species, as well as its staffing levels and proposed maintenance plan to maintain and exceed the level of stewardship?" the comment read.
Jan Van Der Kley, Vice President of Business and Finance, responded to the comment, saying the university believes the county will be able to maintain the preserve to a similar standard.
"The county is actually going to entrust it to their park group, and their parks group already manages a preserve such as our preserve and know that they will be also complying with the declaration of conservation restrictions," Van Der Kley said. "So I do believe with the MOU and then ultimately the interlocal agreement between the two, the care will continue to be high quality and in line with the current restrictions."
Former Asylum Lake Preservation Association Vice President Lauri Holmes also addressed the board with concerns about language in the MOU that refers to the area as a park rather than a preserve.
This is concerning to us because a preserve is not the same as a park. A preserve is preserved for animals and plants and a park is a place for human beings to enjoy nature," Holmes said. "Even if there began to be boats out on Asylum Lake, the birds, the mammals, the beavers, the muskrats, and maybe even the fish, that won't be their own home anymore. So, a perfectly innocent thing that a park person would do, could be damaging to a preserve."
However, Breneman said that language can be changed during the next steps of the process.
“I think in the inter-local agreement we could even further define that it's going to be a preserve and not a county park," Breneman said.
According to Breneman, the entire multi-phase land transfer process may take several months to finalize.
During the meeting the Trustees also voted on several other action items, including the approval of a lease renewal between the City of Battle Creek and the WMU College of Aviation that will allow the college to continue operating out of the Battle Creek Executive Airport.
The trustees also elected a new chair and vice chair at the meeting — Alan Turfe was elected chair of the board to replace former chair Shelly Edgerton, and Trustee Kelly Burris was elected vice-chair.
