Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


Genoa Township is exploring creating a phone app for the community.

The Board of Trustees discussed the topic at Monday night’s meeting.

It was brought up by member Todd Walker. He said building upon the board’s previous discussions of how to improve community outreach, he’s been researching what other municipalities are doing and came across both the “My Brighton” and “My Howell” apps. Walker said he thought it would be a good step to explore a “My Genoa” App.

It would feature things like upcoming events, election information, board meeting agendas and minutes, but people could also sign-up for alerts.

Clerk Janene Deaton commented that the township’s webpage already has everything on it and to create a whole new platform could be a waste of a lot of money and create more social media work.

Treasurer Robin Hunt stated the apps might be better tailored for cities with big events, which they don’t have that in the township. Hunt questioned how much they need and who will maintain all of the sites but added that if Walker digs into this and finds something that could work, then great.

Supervisor Kevin Spicher commented it could be beneficial if something is going on such as traffic delays or fires etc. With some of the construction coming up, he said it could be another way to reach out to people and let them know what’s going on.

Walker stated he’ll be doing more investigation and wants to learn more about the differences between the webpage and the app, and explore whether this is something they want to do or not. He said “if there’s minimal cost and minimal maintenance…why not?”