What Does Cascade Township Do?

I thought it might be worthwhile to list some fo the things that the Township does.  Listed below are the things that the Township is required to do, and the additional things that the residents want the Township to do:

  

CASCADE TOWNSHIP FACTS

1.    What does Cascade Charter Township do?  The following items are required by law for a Township to provide for its residents:

·         Assess real and personal property.

·         Conduct elections (up to four per year).

·         Collect taxes for the township, schools (three districts in Cascade), county and state.  Distribute taxes to those entities as collected.

2.    What else do we do?

·         Provide fire protection service 24-7 with a fulltime staff..  Cascade cooperates with the City of Kentwood, City of Grand Rapids, Caledonia Township, Lowell Township and Ada Township for mutual aid on all calls.  Cascade operates two fire stations and a total of four fire trucks.  There are 17 fulltime firefighters and 18 paid-on-call firefighters on the department.

·         Provide emergency medical services to the Township (including two freeways).  Cascade has three emergency medical vehicles for such calls.

·         Provide police services in addition to the standard state & county patrols (the East Precinct, at a cost of over $1M is provided by in a cooperative effort by Ada, Grand Rapids and Cascade Townships through a contract with the Kent County Sheriff’s Department).

·         Partner with the City of Grand Rapids to provide water and sewer services to the industrial and commercial businesses in the Township in addition to about one-half of the residential properties I the Township. 

·         Provide and maintain five parks for baseball, soccer, lacrosse, walking, hiking, biking, picnics, disc golf and playing on playground equipment.

·         Provide construction plan review and inspection services for eight municipalities:  City of East Grand Rapids, Ada Township, Cascade Township, Lowell Township, Vergennes Township, Grand Rapids Township, Plainfield Township and the city of Lowell (starting July 1, 2012).

·         Provide planning    and zoning services for the Township.

·         Provide and maintain the building for the Kent district Library to operate from.  Many meetings rooms are also provided in the building built and paid for by the Township (with generous donations from residents).

·         Provide over 17 miles of pedestrian and bicycle pathways throughout the Township, all maintained by the Township.

3.    What does all this cost (millage rates)?

·         General Fund Millage -       0.9716

·         Fire Services -                      1.3152

·         Police Services -                  0.4591

·         Library -                                  0.3882

·         Pathways -                            0.3985

·         Open Space -                       0.2300

Total -                                     3.7626

4.    How long have we been in business?

·         Cascade Township was formally created at a meeting of the residents on April 3, 1843.  We have been successfully operating for 169 years!