By Mary Drier
Staff Writer
DENMARK TOWNSHIP — Did the defeat during Tuesday’s election of a bond proposal for Denmark Township’s water issue leave the project high and dry?
The proposal on the water project was placed on the ballot by referendum, which means enough signatures of registered voters were gathered on a petition to put the board’s decision to do a water project to a vote of the people. And, the people said “no.” By a 57 vote margin, voters defeated the ballot proposal for the $2.4 million water-supply system improvements bond proposal. The vote was defeated with 497 no votes to 440 yes votes.
“As to where this leaves us on this? I have no idea at this point,” said Denmark Township Supervisor Chuck Heinlein. “We are all going to have to get together to sit down and talk about it, but that won’t happen for awhile.”
According to Heinlein, the engineer is out of the country and the person from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, who has been working with the township on financing, is on vacation.
“We will have to meet with them and talk to our attorney to see what the next steps would be. We will have to see what is feasible or not,” said Heinlein noting there were a lot of “misconceptions” about the project. “I think that is why it was defeated.”
Water projects in the township have been controversial for several years.
The board started the second water project on Sept. 30, 2013, when they received a petition to create two special assessment districts to fund a municipal water project. The plan for the last project was to work with Civil Engineering Consultants, Inc., to use part of the engineering plans from the failed 2010 water project as well as the $1 million grant from the USDA the township qualified for from the previous water project, and issue $1.4 million in capital improvement bonds to finance the project.
The proposed 2010 water project was abandoned in 2012 because the cost was more than anticipated as well as the determination proper procedures were not followed. Nearly $400,000 worth of engineering, legal and other costs had been incurred on that project before it was halted in 2012 by the Michigan Tax Tribunal over public outcry over excessive costs and other issues.
To finance the first water project, the township planned to create a special assessment district; but when the project was stopped, so was the way to pay for the engineering and other expenses totally $395,000.
When the township abruptly halted the water project, Tuscola County became financially responsible because the county commissioners had pledged the county’s “full faith and credit” to financially back the project. By doing that, the county became responsible for payment of the debt when the township could no longer pay for it with special assessment monies.
In order to collect money to cover that debt, the county sued the township. The township paid $90,000 towards the debt, and then paid $306,408 from its general fund to settle an outstanding debt on an abandoned water. However, the township still owes the county about $25,000 in legal fees from the lawsuit.
“When a meeting can be scheduled with everyone, which hopefully will be sometime in the next week, we will see where we go from here,” said Heinlein.
Mary Drier is a staff writer for the Tuscola County Advertiser. She can be reached at drier@tcadvertiser.com.