At Monday night’s regular meeting, the Cassopolis Village Council voted to present the police badge of the late Gary McGrew to his wife, village president Dianna McGrew, to place on his tombstone.

This will take place at the next regularly scheduled meeting on April 13.

Gary McGrew volunteered with the police department for 30 years, serving as a range instructor among other roles. He passed away Feb. 25.

Police chief Frank Williams made the motion following a moment of silence in McGrew’s honor.

“We want to do whatever we can to honor Gary,” Williams said. “He really did a tremendous job for us.”

Also at the meeting, the board heard comments from two community members.

Kathleen Knoth, a village resident who moved here from northern Michigan, voiced concerns about the conditions of sidewalks around the village. She requested first that the village consider spreading more salt on the sidewalks in the winter to combat the inches of ice that accumulates.

She also requested that the village take action to reduce the overgrowth of shrubbery along the sidewalks. Not only does the shrubbery make walks more unpleasant, but it also attracts bugs, she said. Knoth had to receive emergency medical attention three times last year because of bug bites from her walks around the village.

Bianca May, a 1972 Cassopolis Public Schools graduate and third generation Cassopolis resident, asked the village for assistance in the Summer Enrichment Program sponsored by Our Father’s Family Keeper Ministries, which she co-founded with her husband.

May said she started the program in part because, while volunteering in the schools, she saw how many students enter high school with reading abilities far below what they should be for their grade levels.

The six-and-a-half-week program is a summer school that employs qualified teachers to work with students four hours a day, Monday through Friday. Students develop their academic skills in the first part of the day and participate in other enrichment exercises in the later hours.  A highlight of the program is the service learning component in which students will identify a need in the community, come up with a solution, and enact a plan to rectify it.

“We’d like to see them get outside of the village and into businesses — seeing what’s out there,” May said. “They may not know what’s possible. We want to develop them so that they can come back here to retire with some money saved and pass this on to the next generation.”

President Dianna McGrew said she personally was on-board with the program.

“Youth are our future,” she said.

Trustee Cynthia Ash , May’s sister, also voiced her approval.

“A good educational system is a big draw for people to come into the community. This program is a win-win for the village,” she said.

The program needs a village council member to volunteer for three hours a day, two days a week for the duration of the program to make sure that all the community services activities are legally acceptable students may hopes to have 200 kids in the program. To learn more, visit the website at ourfathersfamilykeeper.org.