By Bill Petzold
Editor
DENMARK TWP. — If all goes well at today’s Tuscola County Commissioners meeting, Denmark Township will have answered the $395,000 question.
At Monday’s regular board meeting, the township board passed two resolutions that provide funds to pay off the remaining debt accrued during the failed 2010 proposed water district, which was abandoned in November 2012.
Township clerk Chuck Heinlein read a letter to the Township dated January 9, 2014 from the Michigan Department of Treasury stating that all state revenue sharing funds would be held until Tuscola County was repaid. The county pledged its full faith and credit, backing the township when bonds were issued for the 2010 water project. County commissioner Thom Bardwell told The Advertiser that having the county pledge its credit on costly municipal projects is standard practice. When Denmark Township abandoned the project, the township was left with $395,000 in debt to repay to the county.
Heinlein explained during the meeting that, over the past several months, he has worked with attorneys representing both the township and the county to find a mutually agreeable solution.
The solution is to use any leftover funds from the three additional water projects currently in planning stages in the township. Township residents who still wanted city water worked with officials using the engineering plans for the failed 2010 project, while altering the project’s layout to leave out many of the residents who were opposed to the previous project and its $17,000 per unit price tag.
Forty-five percent of the current water projects’ cost are being funded by a Rural Development grant from the USDA, and the remaining 55 percent will be covered by a loan from the USDA. That loan will include $305,000 in funds that will be used to pay the county.
“We had $395,000 in debt, and then when the district got smaller — we’re working with the engineer and working with everybody else and Rural Development — we said … we don’t have all of the roads that we did last time,” Heinlein said. “So the district is smaller so we can use (a portion) of the engineering (costs), so many of the (costs of) permits, so many of the crossings, so many of the easements, so many of the right of ways, and then they figured out the number $305,000, and that was agreeable to everyone there.”
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The remaining $90,000 will come in the form of a check directly from the township’s general fund. Heinlein explained that the money comes from money intended to fund future projects and township improvements.
“What’s happening is we have the $395,000 debacle, and the township can handle $90,000 of it,” Heinlein said. “Our stance in the township is we don’t want to put another tax on the people, and if we can possibly do what we can here without imposing another tax, this is what we want to try to do. People on the other side of this thing think that everybody in the township should have to pay for this thing. Well, we want to use what we’ve got right now. …
“So we’re 90K away from this thing, so what do we do? We looked at it, and we said in good faith of the people of the township, the $90,000 is going to be funded by the taxpayers of the township, not as a special over-and-above, but (with money) they pay in every year on their taxes. It’s not a special thing, it’s just money that we were accumulating to maybe build a township hall or do another project. We just aren’t going to have that anymore.”
Heinlein said that using $90,000 to pay the county will not affect services offered to residents, but pushes plans for a new township hall farther down the road.
“We’ve been looking at a township hall before I even became clerk, because the election bureau is going to shut us down because people can’t get up the stairs here,” Heinlein said. “The insurance companies, they want us to replace the doors because they’re wood and they want all ‘panic handles’ on them.”
In addition to improving accessibility and security, other projects necessary to bring the township’s hall up to code include entrance lighting and the addition of a second chair lift to permit access to lower-level restrooms for persons with disabilities — a process Heinlein said would involve moving two staircases.
“The inevitable is going to come — it’s to the point where all of a sudden it’s going to be here,” Heinlein said. “We are not a flush township, but we try to look to the future. There’s just no money anywhere.”
In order to ensure that the township continues to receive its revenue sharing funds from the state, the township prepared a deficit elimination plan that includes both resolutions to be sent to the Michigan Department of Treasury. The plan was to be presented this morning at the Tuscola County commissioners meeting in Caro, where it was expected to be approved.
Bill Petzold is the editor of the Tuscola County Advertiser. He can be reached at petzold@tcadvertiser.com.