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ST. JOSEPH — Berrien County Commissioners have approved their night meeting schedule for the spring and summer. The county board will hold four night meetings in May through August.

      While the county board held one of their night meetings in Niles last year, this year’s night meeting schedule does not include a night meeting in either Niles or Buchanan.

      The newly approved schedule does include meetings at two south county and two north county locations. The night meetings will start at 6 p.m. and will not include committee of the whole or individual committee meetings.

The May 1 meeting will be at the New Buffalo Township Public Safety Building and the June 4 meeting will be at 19 North Froehlichs in Three Oaks. The July 10 meeting is scheduled to be at the Watervliet Charter Township Hall, while the Aug. 7 meeting will be at the MSU Extension Office outside Benton Harbor.

The night meeting schedule was part of a meeting resolution approved by the board Thursday. It also states the dates the board will not meet due to a fifth Thursday of a month or a holiday. The fifth Thursday dates are May 29, July 31 and Oct. 30. The holiday dates are July 3 prior to the July 4 holiday and Sept. 4 during Labor Day week.

The schedule was approved without comment from the board but was commented on by a resident in attendance. Adolph Peltzer of Hagar Township attends most county board meetings and continues to ask for more night meetings during the year in order to attract more residents to the meeting.

Weekly county board meetings are held on Thursday mornings at the Berrien County Administration Center in St. Joseph and are streamed on YouTube. The offsite night meetings are not available remotely.

In addition to setting the night meeting schedule for the year, county commissioners approved a number of items at their meeting Thursday including updating three county policies, adding a staff member to the prosecutor’s office, updating the Register of Deeds fee schedule and authorizing a speed study for a Berrien Township intersection.

The three policies updated were for solicitation on county property, political activity of employees and public speaking.

The solicitation update prohibits the posting of signs and ads or the distribution of flyers on county property that isn’t directly connected to county functions. People also cannot solicit for signatures on petitions with in 30 feet of public entrances to county facilities.

The political activity policy adds language where elected officials cannot ask or allow a public employee to engage in political activities during working hours, wear badges or pass out campaign materials. In addition, no political signs, ads or flyers can be posted or distributed on county property.

The public speaking policy update delineates that statements made by elected officials, employees and citizen committee members are their own and not that of the county in general. The policy does not apply to public statements expressly authorized by law, the county board or elected officials.

The complement staff change in the prosecutor’s office is for an additional evidence clerk/audio visual specialist to handle a growing amount of evidence that has to be processed.

The register of deeds fee schedule update adds fees for online searches to bring the office into line with other register of deeds offices and practices around the state. There will be a $1.50 fee per submission through the land records management software vendor and $1 per page for purchase of online search results.

The speed study will be done by the Berrien County Road Department for the Berrien Township intersection of Range Line Road, Snyder Road and Lake Chapin Road. Traffic in that area has increased in recent years and the intersection has seen a number of accidents.