Who in Ohio Benefits From Another Sewer District?

Do the mailed surveys seeking support for another sewer district in Indian River really have have a return address in Ohio?

The proposed new Indian River Sewer District would encompass every house, cottage, building, and empty lot not served by the existing sewer from the Indian River south to the Sturgeon River and west to Burt Lake. Hundreds of properties, some small, some large, and everyone will pay whether you gain any benefit or not. At what cost? The Tuscarora Board discussed this and the consensus was definitely more, and probably much-much more than the $8,000 REU the existing system users were charged. The numerous streets, existing utilities, lack of alleyways, and other factors too numerous to list will mean far higher costs.

 Ask any of those homeowners on the east side of Juno Street or others how much they spent to pump out a working septic system, crush or backfill the tank, and how much it then cost to hire a contractor to hook-up to the sewer. Then add the initial $8,000 per residence (REU) buy-in and the monthly sewer fee. That monthly fee has already seen the first annual increase to $27.50 per month for O & M costs in an attempt to meet USDA budget recommendations. Everyone pays every month, whether you flush the toilet or not, effectively subsidizing the year round users.

Feasibility studies often have no more accuracy than a fortuneteller looking into a crystal ball. In 2008, Fleis & Vandenbrink Engineering told Northport that it anticipated their new plant would be treating 110,000 gallons of sewage per day upon initial flow in 2008. Six years later, the average was 83,336 gpd in July 2014 and only 42,724 gpd in December of 2014.  Much like Tuscarora Township, the Northport/Leelanau Township Utilities Authority has increased fees to help offset mounting costs. Their fee went from $15,900 to $16,588 per REU in July 2014 with a 3 percent increase every year attempting to cover increasing costs and the optimistic forecasts for growth that were never realized.

Club Road Sewer Leak by Dan's Auto Repair

The Tuscarora Township Board, now dealing everyday with their ill-conceived and poorly planned sewer district wants to share the misery. The First Amendment protects our right to free speech and the right to petition our government.   Local government boards usually allow three minutes of free speech at a time unless an individual is brown-nosing some local officials and they are enjoying the public massage. Petitions work in the same way. One citizen-authored petition might garner a support of the majority of those directly benefiting and be killed by a board. 

A verbal massage of the right people, the Tuscarora Board, might gain board support for another petition seeking an unneeded and costly infrastructure project that once again benefits a select few including apparently Dave Diebel who owns the largest contiguous parcel in the proposed district. A Special Assessment District again approved and established by land area and billed by parcel.   

 Bob Kramer sucks up to the leaders

Listen as Bob Kramer, the nephew of Dave Diebel, attempts to schmooze the Tuscarora Township Board currying favor and gain support for the feasibility study with no out-of-pocket cost to the proponents. Does he ever mention new Sewer District??  

Is a Cheboygan Meijer a One in a Million Chance?

I attended a Tuscarora Township Board meeting on Tuesday night. Not my first and it will not be my last. Tuscarora has become my go-to first Tuesday of the month township meeting. There is no shortage of Tuesday night meetings with many of Cheboygan County’s 19 townships holding board meetings at the same time each month.  I attended years of Mullett Township Board meetings that included the monthly Tuesday meetings and numerous Special Meetings, some without legal notice, that were held virtually every night of the week including Saturday, Sunday, and even on a legal Holiday. You just never know when a real emergency might need immediate action and a decision by the board. The Mullett Board, despite some changes in office holders, will probably forever retain the local record for hasty and foolish decisions to spend taxpayer dollars made at Special Meetings.

There was a time when the Topinabee Development Association was dreaming large and chasing Federal TAP Grants to build the $2.8 million dollar “Green Corridor” Streetscape in Topinabee. The next year the TAP Grant application shrank to $1.2 million dollars with a “capped” local match of $200,000. Tom O’Hare, the always-present voice behind the TDA movement decided that the matching grant needed an increase over the previous Mullett Board approved amount. 

Mullett Clerk Rachel Osborn's "Pet" Project-Building the TDA's Vision

At a hastily called Special Meeting, Mr O’Hare pleaded, cajoled, and did everything except stamp his feet to get his way because his grant writer had already submitted an application for a $1.59 million dollar project. The Mullett Board uncorked the capped amount and hung the Mullett taxpayers out in the wind for a possible $259,000 match.  Like the majority of the TDA’s efforts seeking grants for porky projects, that second TAP Grant application also failed. The TDA has since scaled way back, limiting recent efforts to deforesting the village center and paving over parkland paid directly from Mullett Township funds.

The lesson learned is that nothing good ever comes from Special Meetings and that probably applies to the recent Inverness Township Special Meeting. Most of the decisions made by our township boards are recurring actions: set meeting schedules, collect property taxes, hold Board of Review meetings, brine the roads, pay the monthly bills and give themselves a raise when they think nobody is looking.

I have only attended two Inverness Township meetings. I observed enough to recognize what I know as the Dunning-Kruger effect. These social psychologists published a study in 1999:  Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. In 2005, Dunning wrote, “If you're incompetent, you can't know you're incompetent ... The skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is”. This observation is nothing new. Confucius said “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance” and 2500 years later Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”.

We have a somewhat foolish expectation that our elected officials are always going to make smart choices. Well-meaning people, like the Inverness Board, sometimes ignorant of their ignorance must still make tough choices and public decisions. Unable to prioritize or narrow the choices, they fall into a pattern of procrastination. The numerous options offered to Inverness for utility services to serve the Meijer site, the differing opinions offered from their legal counsel and input from others created the perfect storm. Two years lost forever if you are counting. It comes with a reality that Meijer’s business model may have materially changed. The big ship with 250 jobs was in port, ready to dock, and Mr Neuman and his fellow dockhands were unable to catch the tossed lines. That ship is now barely visible on the horizon. Thank God the Inverness Board were not preparing for a hurricane. Their township taxpayers would be bobbing in the water and halfway to the Atlantic Ocean by now.    

Has This Ship and 250 Jobs Sailed?

All of us are poor judges of our own competence or skills. What I observe occasionally with township boards, appointed boards and committees, and even some higher office holders are individuals who think their position sitting at a table means they are smarter. In plain language, scientific studies have determined that the stupidest among us think they are, like Yogi, smarter than the average bear.