MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - Ingham County and Meridian Township's residents got to put their pens to paper--when it came to ideas regarding the county's trail system at a meeting last Thursday.

Residents were given the chance to voice how their tax-payer dollars would be spent.

I'm very glad that fellow voters in the county voted to pass the millage last year," said Mike Unsworth, a Meridian Township resident. "I'm also very happy that we have the opportunity to give our input. "

"So, it's a mix of really I would really wait, having the natural areas kept kind of intact but make it easy to get between them rather than running big cement, road-like trails through the parks," said Leslie Kuhn, a Meridian Township resident.

"I'd like to see less improvements made to the trials, said John Flaherty, an Ingham County resident. "I'd like to see anything that's pavement now, taken away. Put it back to dirt."

"I've lived here 25 years in Meridian Township, and I supported the local town millage, and I voted for this county millage to try to bring connectivity to the Greater Lansing region," said resident Leonard Provencher.

However, representatives from the township say the meeting could have gone in a more productive direction.

"To me it missed the whole point, which was how to spend the millage," said Phil Deschaine of the Meridian Township Park Commission. "How to expand the current trails system, I think you get off track. Our Parks Director Luann Maisner has been very specific in a letter she wrote to them saying here's the township's five priorities. That wasn't even discussed tonight. and that's what really bothered me about the meeting."