By Greg Chandler
Zeeland Record
A deeply-split Zeeland Township Board on Dec. 16 narrowly approved a significant increase in the salary for the township treasurer.
The board voted 4-3 to raise the salary of Treasurer Melissa Veldheer from $42,000 to $59,750, following considerable debate on the work Veldheer has done for the township, both statutorily required in the treasurer’s role and additional work she performed that is not required for the position, such as helping prepare budgets.
The vote came on the same night that Township Clerk Kate Kraak submitted her resignation after 10 years in that position. The board approved restructuring of the clerk’s responsibilities, moving functions such as maintaining the township’s general ledger and overseeing elections to township employees, leaving the elected clerk’s main responsibility being a voting member of the board. The board also voted to reduce that position’s salary to $15,450.
Under state law, an elected official’s salary cannot be cut in the middle of a term unless that office’s responsibilities have been reduced and that official agrees to the reduction. Kraak agreed to the salary reduction prior to submitting her resignation letter.
Veldheer has held two different roles with the township – as an employee and as an elected official. A former finance director in Holland Township, Veldheer began doing work as a contract employee in finance for Zeeland Township in 2012.
In July 2019, Veldheer was appointed treasurer following the resignation of Tim Barkel. She ran unopposed for her position in 2020 and was re-elected in 2024, defeating challenger Dustin Boven in the Republican primary.
Veldheer is currently being paid out of two different pots of money – one for her statutory duties as treasurer and the other for work that is not specifically part of the treasurer’s responsibility, such as helping prepare the township budget. The non-statutory work was being performed in accordance with a resolution that was approved by the board in August 2019 where Veldheer would “continue to perform the duties of Financial Manager as performed in her contract employee position.”
As part of her non-statutory responsibilities, Veldheer also assisted with workers compensation audits, assisted staff with water and sewer connections and special assessment billings, and preparing year-end reports to minimize the township’s audit expenses, according to the resolution document.
Veldheer was paid $42,000 for the treasurer’s duties this year and $19,665 for her finance department responsibilities, according to township documents.
That situation led Township Attorney Ron Bultje to issue a legal opinion about the current structure of Veldheer’s pay and responsibilities.
“To the extent that the additional duties in the board resolution of 2019 are non-statutory duties, those duties are up to the board to take away, give to anyone what they want and to adjust the treasurer’s additional compensation accordingly,” Bultje said.
“In terms of receiving the money in, paying the money out, monthly financial reports, monitoring the accounts, etc. – those are all statutory duties. Whether those are duties paid per the (salary) resolution that we’re looking at now, or whether those statutory duties are paid per the additional money paid per the 2019 resolution, that doesn’t matter. They’re statutory duties. Statutory duties stay with the treasurer unless the treasurer says ‘I’m giving them up,’” Bultje added.
Veldheer said she had tracked her hours over the past year and detailed where she performed work outside of her statutory duties as treasurer. She shared that information with Township Manager Josh Eggleston and Trustee Kerri Bosma.
“I spent somewhere between 30 and 40 hours assisting Josh with budget preparation and (capital improvement projects) … I’m also taking back bank reconciliations that the clerk was previously doing, and if I spend an hour to an hour and a half every month (handling that responsibility), that’s about 18-20 hours,” Veldheer said. “We’re going to go to biweekly payrolls, so instead of 13 payrolls (a year), I’ll be reviewing an extra 13 payrolls in a year – I could spend an hour or so on that.
“So instead of spending 30-40 hours helping Josh on CIP and budget, I’m not going to do that, but I’m also taking on 30-40 hours of other statutory duties (that I hadn’t been doing). I feel like it’s a wash,” Veldheer added.
Had the board continued to pay Veldheer out of the two separate pots of money, she would have received a 2.9 percent cost-of-living wage, raising the pay for her treasurer duties to $43,218 and the non-statutory duties to $20,665.
“I’m asking those two numbers that were budgeted … for $63,883 (total), I’m asking for my wage resolution as treasurer that covers all my statutory duties that I will be performing,” Veldheer said. “I would not be doing the non-statutory items of budget and CIP. That’s Josh. If the board chooses somebody else to assist him, that’s up to the board.”
Supervisor Tom Oonk objected to Veldheer’s request to combine the numbers for her new salary, citing what the board had discussed regarding reduced responsibilities and salary for the clerk position earlier in the evening.
“The other assigned duties were as an employee. When we first started, you weren’t the treasurer, you were an employee,” Oonk said. “When you became treasurer, we continued with some of those things. You were doing those things as an employee – our treasurer wasn’t doing them.”
“We had the employee bucket and the treasurer bucket, and now all of a sudden, it’s one bucket, and I’m having a real hard time with that,” Oonk added.
In response, Bultje said that Veldheer was performing statutory responsibilities of the treasurer’s job well before she was ever appointed. He also said “the list of duties in that (2019) board resolution are predominantly statutory duties.”
“I think there was confusion which started before she was even appointed (treasurer), and was exacerbated when she was appointed and there were two buckets, and the statutory duties and non-statutory duties ended up flowing from one to the other when they shouldn’t have, but they did,” Bultje said.
Kraak also voiced opposition to increasing the treasurer’s salary. She said last year, the board had discussed trying to keep the clerk and treasurer salaries the same.
“One of those duties was bank (reconciliation). I’ve done that for 10 years,” Kraak said. “Now, you’re taking it on, you want the treasurer to be paid more for that duty. I have a bit of a problem with that. That was never a statutory duty of the clerk.”
Kraak made the motion to approve a cost-of-living wage for the treasurer to $43,218. Bosma offered the amendment to raise the pay to $59,750, based on the additional statutory responsibilities Veldheer was taking on in exchange for dropping the non-statutory job duties.
Both the amendment and the final motion passed on 4-3 votes. Voting in favor were Veldheer, Bosma, and Trustees Dave Barry and Scott Beute. Oonk, Kraak and Trustee Jeff Salisbury voted no.
Applications are still being accepted for the clerk’s position. As of the Dec. 16 meeting, no applications had been submitted. The selected applicant can run for a two-year term in this year’s election and then again in 2028 for a four-year term, when the term is reset to the normal candidate schedule for township offices.
Applicants for the clerk’s position must be residents of Zeeland Charter Township. Interested parties are asked to submit a completed board and commission application – the link to the application can be found on the township website at zeelandtwp.org. They can also forward a resume to the attention of Eggleston at 6582 Byron Rd., Zeeland MI 49464, or by email at josh.eggleston@zeelandtwp.org.
Zeeland Record
A deeply-split Zeeland Township Board on Dec. 16 narrowly approved a significant increase in the salary for the township treasurer.
The board voted 4-3 to raise the salary of Treasurer Melissa Veldheer from $42,000 to $59,750, following considerable debate on the work Veldheer has done for the township, both statutorily required in the treasurer’s role and additional work she performed that is not required for the position, such as helping prepare budgets.
The vote came on the same night that Township Clerk Kate Kraak submitted her resignation after 10 years in that position. The board approved restructuring of the clerk’s responsibilities, moving functions such as maintaining the township’s general ledger and overseeing elections to township employees, leaving the elected clerk’s main responsibility being a voting member of the board. The board also voted to reduce that position’s salary to $15,450.
Under state law, an elected official’s salary cannot be cut in the middle of a term unless that office’s responsibilities have been reduced and that official agrees to the reduction. Kraak agreed to the salary reduction prior to submitting her resignation letter.
Veldheer has held two different roles with the township – as an employee and as an elected official. A former finance director in Holland Township, Veldheer began doing work as a contract employee in finance for Zeeland Township in 2012.
In July 2019, Veldheer was appointed treasurer following the resignation of Tim Barkel. She ran unopposed for her position in 2020 and was re-elected in 2024, defeating challenger Dustin Boven in the Republican primary.
Veldheer is currently being paid out of two different pots of money – one for her statutory duties as treasurer and the other for work that is not specifically part of the treasurer’s responsibility, such as helping prepare the township budget. The non-statutory work was being performed in accordance with a resolution that was approved by the board in August 2019 where Veldheer would “continue to perform the duties of Financial Manager as performed in her contract employee position.”
As part of her non-statutory responsibilities, Veldheer also assisted with workers compensation audits, assisted staff with water and sewer connections and special assessment billings, and preparing year-end reports to minimize the township’s audit expenses, according to the resolution document.
Veldheer was paid $42,000 for the treasurer’s duties this year and $19,665 for her finance department responsibilities, according to township documents.
That situation led Township Attorney Ron Bultje to issue a legal opinion about the current structure of Veldheer’s pay and responsibilities.
“To the extent that the additional duties in the board resolution of 2019 are non-statutory duties, those duties are up to the board to take away, give to anyone what they want and to adjust the treasurer’s additional compensation accordingly,” Bultje said.
“In terms of receiving the money in, paying the money out, monthly financial reports, monitoring the accounts, etc. – those are all statutory duties. Whether those are duties paid per the (salary) resolution that we’re looking at now, or whether those statutory duties are paid per the additional money paid per the 2019 resolution, that doesn’t matter. They’re statutory duties. Statutory duties stay with the treasurer unless the treasurer says ‘I’m giving them up,’” Bultje added.
Veldheer said she had tracked her hours over the past year and detailed where she performed work outside of her statutory duties as treasurer. She shared that information with Township Manager Josh Eggleston and Trustee Kerri Bosma.
“I spent somewhere between 30 and 40 hours assisting Josh with budget preparation and (capital improvement projects) … I’m also taking back bank reconciliations that the clerk was previously doing, and if I spend an hour to an hour and a half every month (handling that responsibility), that’s about 18-20 hours,” Veldheer said. “We’re going to go to biweekly payrolls, so instead of 13 payrolls (a year), I’ll be reviewing an extra 13 payrolls in a year – I could spend an hour or so on that.
“So instead of spending 30-40 hours helping Josh on CIP and budget, I’m not going to do that, but I’m also taking on 30-40 hours of other statutory duties (that I hadn’t been doing). I feel like it’s a wash,” Veldheer added.
Had the board continued to pay Veldheer out of the two separate pots of money, she would have received a 2.9 percent cost-of-living wage, raising the pay for her treasurer duties to $43,218 and the non-statutory duties to $20,665.
“I’m asking those two numbers that were budgeted … for $63,883 (total), I’m asking for my wage resolution as treasurer that covers all my statutory duties that I will be performing,” Veldheer said. “I would not be doing the non-statutory items of budget and CIP. That’s Josh. If the board chooses somebody else to assist him, that’s up to the board.”
Supervisor Tom Oonk objected to Veldheer’s request to combine the numbers for her new salary, citing what the board had discussed regarding reduced responsibilities and salary for the clerk position earlier in the evening.
“The other assigned duties were as an employee. When we first started, you weren’t the treasurer, you were an employee,” Oonk said. “When you became treasurer, we continued with some of those things. You were doing those things as an employee – our treasurer wasn’t doing them.”
“We had the employee bucket and the treasurer bucket, and now all of a sudden, it’s one bucket, and I’m having a real hard time with that,” Oonk added.
In response, Bultje said that Veldheer was performing statutory responsibilities of the treasurer’s job well before she was ever appointed. He also said “the list of duties in that (2019) board resolution are predominantly statutory duties.”
“I think there was confusion which started before she was even appointed (treasurer), and was exacerbated when she was appointed and there were two buckets, and the statutory duties and non-statutory duties ended up flowing from one to the other when they shouldn’t have, but they did,” Bultje said.
Kraak also voiced opposition to increasing the treasurer’s salary. She said last year, the board had discussed trying to keep the clerk and treasurer salaries the same.
“One of those duties was bank (reconciliation). I’ve done that for 10 years,” Kraak said. “Now, you’re taking it on, you want the treasurer to be paid more for that duty. I have a bit of a problem with that. That was never a statutory duty of the clerk.”
Kraak made the motion to approve a cost-of-living wage for the treasurer to $43,218. Bosma offered the amendment to raise the pay to $59,750, based on the additional statutory responsibilities Veldheer was taking on in exchange for dropping the non-statutory job duties.
Both the amendment and the final motion passed on 4-3 votes. Voting in favor were Veldheer, Bosma, and Trustees Dave Barry and Scott Beute. Oonk, Kraak and Trustee Jeff Salisbury voted no.
Applications are still being accepted for the clerk’s position. As of the Dec. 16 meeting, no applications had been submitted. The selected applicant can run for a two-year term in this year’s election and then again in 2028 for a four-year term, when the term is reset to the normal candidate schedule for township offices.
Applicants for the clerk’s position must be residents of Zeeland Charter Township. Interested parties are asked to submit a completed board and commission application – the link to the application can be found on the township website at zeelandtwp.org. They can also forward a resume to the attention of Eggleston at 6582 Byron Rd., Zeeland MI 49464, or by email at josh.eggleston@zeelandtwp.org.
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