This Leelanau Retiree Wants to Make Sure Local Residents Are 'Getting Their Voices Heard'

Dave Rozanski fears too many members of the Leelanau County community are being left out of important conversations, about everything from cost of living to housing to farmland preservation. This past summer, he founded a new initiative called Leelanau Together, with the goal of creating a “connector vehicle” to get as many voices heard as possible.

Rozanski, who recently closed out a career doing sales and marketing for major tech companies, quickly found himself twiddling his thumbs after retirement.

“I realized, I can’t just sit still and not do anything,” he laughs. “I found myself asking, ‘What’s the next chapter in my life?’ And I thought, just based on what I'm hearing going on in the community, starting this Leelanau Together effort might be a good use of my time, experience, and background.”

What Rozanski has been hearing, lately, has been a lot of turmoil. Housing shortages, rising property taxes, general cost-of-living crises, farmers struggling to turn a profit, small businesses unable to find or keep staff, debates about overdevelopment and loss of rural character, and plentiful upheaval at the county government center: all these issues and others have been weighing heavily on Rozanski’s mind.

Compounding those worries, he says, is Leelanau County’s large, spread-out nature. Unlike the neighboring Grand Traverse County, Leelanau lacks a Traverse City to serve as its central hub. The result, Rosanski notes, is a series of townships and villages that can sometimes feel fragmented or disconnected. And while Rosanski has made a point, since retiring, of attending as many local government meetings as possible, particularly in his home community of Cleveland Township, he fears many residents – thanks to busy work and family obligations – don’t have the same ability to engage.

“I'm not quite sure how many of the people who live here are really getting their voices heard, about what they want to have Leelanau to look like in the next 10 to 20 years,” he says. “That was the impetus for Leelanau Together.”

But what exactly is Leelanau Together? Rosanski says he’s still figuring it out.

One idea is to be the host organization for an ongoing series of town hall events, which would convene local stakeholders for conversations about the county’s most pressing challenges and how to solve them. Another possibility is launching a podcast series to take those conversations virtual – and ideally, viral. Topics, Rosanski says, could include things like housing and how to remove barriers that are making it harder for builders to build; or local businesses and how to support them through challenges with seasonality, staffing shortages, and rising costs.

Rosanski also sees promise in turning the Leelanau Together website into the county’s central calendar for local government meetings. Right now, he notes, there is considerable inconsistency in how timely and detailed different townships are in their posting of meeting notices, agendas, packets, and minutes – an issue that can make it all too easy for local residents to overlook key decisions until they’ve already been made. Making that information easier to find, he thinks, could significantly increase engagement with local politics and policymaking.

“I think it’s got to be frustrating for these township officials, who show up to their meetings and then see there are only one or two constituents in the audience,” Rosanski says, noting that many of the Cleveland Township meetings he’s attended this year have been sparsely attended. “The meetings I’ve gone to, the officials have been very welcoming in hearing our voices and asking what we think, as we’re sitting in the audience. I think the more people that can attend these things, the more comfortable they would probably feel about what’s going on in their own townships. And then they wouldn’t be so aggressive when they find out last minute what’s going on.”

While he expects Leelanau Together will grow, mutate, and evolve as it moves forward, Rosanski says the goal will always be about getting more people engaged in local political and social conversations.

“You’ve got to show up in this county, or your voice won’t get heard,” he concludes. “Too often, I think, we’re having people from outside the county making decisions for us – whether it’s politicians in Lansing, or outside developers, or political activists. It should be local people making those conversations happen. Leelanau Together is about pushing that end goal.”