The Dorr Township Board Thursday night adopted the 2021-22 fiscal year budget, but it was a couple of tweaks proposed by Trustee John Tuinstra that got the most notice.

Tuinstra used his favorite device, amendments, to engineer the transfer of $15,000 in township officials’ salaries to the Roads Department. However, his motion to move $5,000 more out of the library budget didn’t even get a second.

The proposed budget called for the annual salaries of the clerk, treasurer and supervisor to be increased by 34.7% to $40,000 to bring them more in line with neighboring municipalities. But Tuinstra and three colleagues who voted with him nipped that in the bud by approving the transfer of $5,000 from each of the salaries to the budget item named Roads Department.

“I feel strongly about roads because that’s how local people connect with government,” Tuinstra explained.

He was supported in voting for the move by Trustees Dan Weber and Chandler Stanton and Clerk Debbie Sewers, who stood to benefit by more than $10,000.

So now the clerk, supervisor and treasurer each will be paid $35,000 per year.

It was a different story on the library.

“They passed a millage that was fairly generous,” Tuinstra said of the Dorr Township Library Board.

Tuinstra was widely criticized by library officials a year and a half ago when he very publicly and vigorously worked against the library millage request in a special election. He wasn’t shy about letting people know he opposed the six tenths of a mill tax increase.

But Supervisor Jeff Miling defended the library’s plans to give employees raises.

“These people have been working there for 10 or so years at minimum wage,” Miling said. “We’re not paying enough.”

The supervisor added that he wonders if there is a morale problem at the library, which lost its newest director after less than two months on the job. Dorr Township Library has had three library directors in the last four years.

The township’s fiscal year budget, adopted unanimously, includes about $1.264 million in expected revenues, about $1.358 million in expenditures and a fund balance of $1.148 million, a slight decrease from a year ago.