The actions of the Cannon Township Board during the 2024 General Election have raised ethical concerns among residents of Cannon Township.

The Board made a decision to distribute an issue of the publicly-funded township newsletter, the Cannon Communicator, to every household in the township one week before Election Day and during the period in which early in-person voting was taking place. This newsletter is developed, printed and mailed to township residents by the Township Office using taxpayer dollars.

In a prominently placed introductory article, Supervisor Steve Grimm chose to extensively feature only the current board members who were in a competitive race for their elected positions (against two additional non-incumbent candidates). He chose to use a taxpayer-funded newsletter to promote these board members' political philosophies and a selection of past achievements, and then have it delivered directly to residents' homes when local voters were actively making decisions for township-level positions on their ballots.  

Further, Supervisor Grimm and the Board refused to respectfully and adequately address these concerns when they were raised by numerous Cannon Township constituents during the Township Board meeting on November 25, 2024. At the meeting, Supervisor Grimm stated that he wrote the article because the Township Office received several phone calls asking for information about the incumbent trustees, and he felt compelled to address it. Subsequently, he and the Board used township funds to distribute this information via the newsletter during an active election. He also suggested that his constituents' concerns were not worthy of discussion, because “only six people” wrote a letter to the township about it. 

We, the undersigned Cannon Township residents, formally express our disagreement with the use of the Cannon Communicator in this way during an active election period.  It is not the role of the Supervisor or any member of the Township Board to use a publicly-funded newsletter to assist incumbent board members with campaign communication efforts during an active election. We request that the Board refrain from distributing the newsletter or similar print/digital communications using Township resources in a reasonable time period before or during future elections (including absentee voting, early voting and Election Day time periods).