View Newspaper Gets it Wrong

The Grand Blanc View published their usual puff piece about the Township Board. "GB Township Board Mulls Millage Proposal." The article tells a nice little story about our fire department but it gets one key aspect dead wrong. "Chief Jent sounded the alarm about staffing levels after the Sept. 28 LDS Church fire. NO! Jent was HIRED to try to fix staffing levels in April 2025, and almost immediately determined that we needed four additional full-time firefighters to bring us to minimum safe staffing levels over our two fire stations. He brought his concerns to our superintendent, Mr. Liimatta, who made the decision himself to turn down Jent's urgent request and deny him the right to apply for the SAFR grant. Jent continued to raise alarms and put his request for salaries and benefits for four firefighters in the 2026 budget. His continued warnings, which Liimatta never bothered to bring to a public meeting of our elected officials, were ignored. AFTER the fire, when we did arrive understaffed, Liimatta scrambled. He placed Jent on administrative leave and installed Deputy Chief Maricle as interim chief. Maricle's first act was to issue a statement that staffing levels were fine, Chief Jent didn't understand the federal safety mandates as they applied to our hybrid full-time part-time department. The Watchdogs think it's time the Board stopped hiding behind, and protecting, the overpaid Superintendent Dennis Liimatta, and answer some hard questions about public safety in Grand Blanc Township!