The Exit Interview: Trudy Galla Enters Her Last Days As County Planning Director

It’s surely the end of an era for Leelanau County: Trudy Galla, who has been employed by the county since 1988 – and who has served as its planning director since 1996 – announced last month that she would be retiring from the role. This Thursday, November 30 will mark Galla’s last day in office – though, she says she’ll be staying on with the county tying up loose ends until January 19.

Ahead of her last day, the Leelanau Ticker sat down with Galla to get her recollections and insights from a sprawling 35-year career.

Ticker: What do you see as some of your top accomplishments from all these years?
Galla: One is writing the successful grant to develop the county’s first-ever website. 

Another is working with the EPA, Elmwood Township, the county treasurer, Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), the state, the county, and environmental consultants for the successful resale of two Brownfield sites – the former Grand Traverse Overall Supply site and the former Norris School site – to a new developer, Grand Traverse Regional Arts Campus (GTRAC). The Overall Supply site was considered a Superfund site, or one of the dirtiest Brownfield sites in the nation. The former Norris elementary school of 40,000 square feet now enjoys 100-200 visitors each day and the building is completely full with artists, businesses, and daily activities. These properties generated no tax revenue for many years and now have a 2022 tax value of $2.7 million. 

I’m also proud of working with county officials and state legislators to develop a unique ‘flat fee’ to fund recycling and other waste diversion programs. This fee is placed on the tax bills and is now an available funding mechanism for all communities across the state who wish to pursue recycling funding options. Establishing this fee involved traveling to Lansing and testifying in committees in order to advance Leelanau County’s request for a flat fee funding option, instead of a millage request which would be based on taxable value of properties. The county’s program has been funded with the flat fee for over 17 years. 

Ticker: Do you have any notable regrets or things that you think were missed opportunities from your time serving as planning director?
Galla: No. I say that because I live my life knowing that we make choices and then have to follow that particular path. There’s no sense looking back and wishing you would have done something differently. Go forward with your choice and make the best of it.  

Ticker: How has the job evolved since you first stepped into the role?
Galla: Technology has really changed the way we complete our tasks. When I started, we did almost everything though copies and mail. Mapping was done on mylars and then run through the ammonia machine to burn copies. If a new parcel split was recorded, you had to go back and update the map by hand and follow the same process to make new copies. Technology has sped things up, but it also requires constant attention to changes and training, because you have to stay up to date on new software and tools.   

Ticker: What were the big challenges, concerns, or priorities in the early days?
Galla: When I started with the county, the planning office had two major challenges: Creating a new citizen-driven master plan for the county; and redoing the entire addressing system county-wide so that everyone was on one system. 

At the time, we had several different addressing schemes – or, in some places, none at all! There were PO boxes, rural routes, addresses from the Consumers Power grid, addresses given out by the post office, and areas where no addresses were assigned. We selected the Consumers Power grid and then renumbered the remainder of the county to match that system. The addressing took over two years, and the general plan and all the pre-planning took about four years. 

Other priorities were to move the cartography/mapping from a hand-drawn system to a digitized system, and work to get uniformity across the county with zoning regulations. The zoning is separate for all 11 townships and 3 villages, and there is still not a lot of uniformity across the county. Each municipality has its own unique challenges, and each zoning ordinance is unique to that jurisdiction. But there are still opportunities to work together and provide similar regulations across municipal borders. 

Ticker: What are the most pressing issues your successor will be inheriting?
Galla: The biggest priority – if it remains in the planning office – will be the development of the mandated Materials Management Plan (MMP) for waste disposal and diversion. That is a three-year planning process mandated by the state that will either be done as a single-county plan, or a multi-county plan. It’s a large time commitment and will be a heavy workload.

Other priorities for the department will be completing the tasks currently underway, such as the EPA assessment grant, re-monumentation, updating the Capital Improvement Program, and new changes to electronics collections in 2024. There will be 12 collections spaced around the county in four different locations, and the household hazardous waste collections will no longer take electronics or shredding. 

The Leelanau General Plan will also be nearing the five-year review and update process soon. 

Bottom line, there are many tasks and projects, and my predecessor will need to step in and keep things running smoothly. I have plans to leave lots of printed instructions and a chart showing what’s been done, what’s in process, and what needs to be completed on a monthly and annual basis. I’m confident the staff will move forward in a strong and successful manner.    

Ticker: If you had to give the next county planning director one piece of advice, what would it be?
Galla: ‘Begin as you mean to go on.’ That’s what I was told when I accepted the planning director position, meaning you can’t wait six months or a year to decide what type of leader you will be. You need to make that decision on day one and dive in. 

Ticker: Leelanau County is a big, sprawling place with lots of villages and townships that have their own identities and priorities. What's one thing you see as a strength of this composition, and what's one way you think the disparate pieces of the county could better collaborate to build toward a bright shared future?
Galla: The unique villages, towns and recreational spaces are what make up the beauty of this county and why people love to visit and live here. The uniqueness of this area provides many different opportunities for citizens to find an area to live that matches their needs. But it can also be a challenge, as we tend to look just to our municipal borders and not much further. Maps show boundary lines, but there are no such lines on the ground, so looking beyond our borders allows us to collaborate and cooperate on similar issues. 

Ticker: What do you think Leelanau County will look like in 10 years?
Galla: I recently attended the Michigan Association of Planning conference and listened to speaker and author Alan Mallach – he wrote a book called Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World – talk about the declining population around the world. That population decline is not something that is going to level off or even be reversed in a few years, so it’s very likely the county will continue to see an increase in the elderly population, and a decrease in youth. Those shifts are going to have a huge impact on our schools and our businesses as they try to retain and attract youth to this area. Since COVID, we have also seen rural areas become more attractive for vacations as well as secondary homes, and there is also much talk of climate migration, or people moving out of areas of severe weather and drought conditions. So, the county may see some migration, which could offset declining population numbers. Time will tell.