For almost five years taxpayers practically have begged the Grand Traverse County board, township officials and county bureaucrats to prepare for the day when the bill for the county's failed septage treatment plant would come due.
Now it has. But the county seems no closer to figuring out a way -- beyond sticking taxpayers -- to pay off the $7.8 million plant.
From almost the minute a wall collapsed shortly after the plant opened, spilling a half million gallons of waste, what we've gotten was bluster and, frankly, the stuff the plant was built to treat.
Last week CMS Energy said that as of April 1 it will stop sending millions of gallons of groundwater leachate from the Bay Harbor Resort in Petoskey to the septage treatment plant.
When the shipments end, so will the checks from CMS, which essentially has supported the plant the past few years. Grand Traverse was counting on nearly 27 million gallons of leachate and about $800,000 from CMS this year; the giant utility has paid the county nearly $2 million over the last four years.
County administrator Dennis Aloia said the county could expect a budget shortfall of $300,000 this year and $600,000 to $700,000 next year. Grand Traverse officials had (publicly, anyway) said they expected CMS shipments to continue another two years.
Even after it became clear the CMS tap had dried up, some township officials talked about finding new sources of revenue or even finding a buyer.
Garfield Township Supervisor Chuck Korn pricked that balloon. He called those hoping for new revenues "pretenders" and said it was time to stop.
"People have been playing delay and pretend for over a year now. ... No one's going to buy it, there's absolutely no upside."
Make that five years.
It was long ago established that the engineering firm Gourdie-Fraser and former Board of Public Works attorney Michael Houlihan wildly inflated estimates -- up to two times, by some accounts -- of how much waste the plant would treat and how much revenue it would create.
Years later, however, the county board was still dragging its feet on a solution, oversight was totally lacking, and there was still pie-in-the-sky talk of new revenue.
In July of last year the board barely -- on a 5-4 vote -- agreed to spend $10,000 to probe Houlihan and Gourdie-Fraser's possible financial liability.
Voting for the probe were commissioners Beth Friend, Larry Inman, Christine Maxbauer, Ross Richardson and Mike Stepka; voting no -- in essence voting to again stall any resolution -- were commissioners Addison Wheelock Jr., Larry Fleis, Dick Thomas and Bruce Hooper.
Board chairman Thomas last year refused a request from Friend, who has a master's degree in economics, to serve on the sewer and water committee and Board of Public Works, spots that include oversight of the septage plant. He instead named Hooper, who last year said he didn't think there was much support for a probe and was "really dubious about the quality of this investigation."
He apparently wasn't speaking for taxpayers.
As things stand now, the county is almost certain to raise the per-gallon septic disposal fee to 121/2 cents a gallon, the highest in the state; enact a $40 to $45 annual special assessment on septic tank owners; and once again dip into the general fund -- taxes from everyone, septic tank owners or not -- to pay the bills.
Then there's next year and the year after that ... you get the picture.
Every seat on the county board is up for election in the fall, though it's unclear who will or won't run again. However that breaks out, taxpayers cannot forget who did what during this five-year fiasco.
Accountability must start somewhere.
