Grand Traverse County Administrator Dennis Aloia was right a couple weeks ago when he said the county is "... going to have to come up with a solution" to the funding crisis surrounding its failed septage treatment plant, "... and we are going to have to come up with it now."
Aloia deserves credit for taking the lead in trying to resolve the $2.5 million problem and giving it the attention it deserves.
But an Aloia suggestion to use county general fund dollars to purchase half the plant should be a non-starter.
Under that plan, the county would determine how much it will take to cover septage plant bond payment shortages for the next five to 10 years. The townships of Garfield, East Bay, Acme, Peninsula and Elmwood each would pay an amount based on their percentage of the entire number of septic tanks in Grand Traverse County and in Elmwood, which is in Leelanau County.
About 50 percent of county septic tanks fall within the remaining eight townships. The county would pay that share. Those eight townships would have the option to buy into plant ownership.
The problem is that by taking money out of the general fund, county residents who are on a sewer system -- and thus already paying for Traverse City's wastewater treatment plant -- would be forced to underwrite residents in the eight rural townships.
The payees would include all Traverse City residents and thousands of homeowners in the five metro townships who are hooked up to, and pay for, sewer service.
Aloia offered his solution as an alternative to a proposed $45 special assessment on all county septic tank owners, no matter where they live, that was floated months ago (a proposal Aloia has said he prefers).
That's a direct parallel to the sewer system payment process, an arrangement considered fair to rural townships that don't have sewers. The Aloia alternative would give those rural townships another pass, and that's not fair. County board members who represent Traverse City and metro township homeowners cannot let it stand.
County board Chairman Dick Thomas, who represents Blair, Green Lake and Long Lake townships, none of which would help pay directly for the plant under the Aloia plan, said, "If you try to do a special assessment, we'll have a civil war in the townships."
Perhaps. But declarations like that simply ignore the fact that septic tank-owning rural township residents will get as much value from the treatment plant as anyone. By October, state law will require septic owners who live within 25 miles of a public disposal facility to take their waste there; when that happens, rural septic tank owners will benefit by having the plant here. With that benefit comes an obligation to pay.
No one wanted to end up here, but the reality is that revenue estimates on which the plant was built were about twice what the plant is taking in now -- or will in the foreseeable future.
There were already estimates of a $2.5 million shortfall at the plant within a few years, but earlier this month Consumers Energy, which had been shipping millions of gallons of polluted water from the Bay View resort in Petoskey to the septage plant, said the shipments will end April 1.
Aloia has said that will blow a $300,000 hole in the septage budget for this year, "and that really means $600,000 to $700,000 next year."
We need to get this fixed, and now. But once again, the county's biggest shortfall is in leadership at the county board level. For the chairman of the board to declare that making rural township residents pay their fair share will lead to "civil war" is nonsensical and threatens common-sense solutions to a countywide problem.
Posturing and politics have been the problem from Day One; apparently they still are.
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