The Marquette Township Board at its March 19 meeting unanimously directed its planning commission to draft a zoning text amendment for an existing stormwater ordinance.

The amendment would create a mechanism by which the township could levy money owed to the MCRC for the correction of drainage issues on a property owner on their tax bill.

Township Manager Randy Girard said there has been an “ongoing inquiry in problem areas” in the township where residents or homeowners fill in established drainage ditches in the public right-of-way adjacent to their properties.

“It alters the drainage course and it affects, perhaps, their drainage, but more importantly their neighbor’s drainage or somebody on the next street,” Girard said. “It is the major problem with maintaining our roads, it is the runoff, it is the water flow. It was designed as a ditch system to divert the water to the logical places that should get off to creeks and rivers and streams within the township.”

A drainage area near a driveway on Center Street in Marquette Township is pictured. (Journal photo by Lisa Bowers)

Under Michigan law, the road commission is authorized to order a property owner to remove any material that the owner placed in the right-of-way that interferes with proper drainage, Marquette Township Attorney Roger Zappa told the board, but they are not a “taxing entity,” giving them no means to recoup funds if property owners refuse to pay for work the MCRC has completed.

The option to add the expense to property taxes would be used as a last resort to reimburse the road commission after it had fixed a drainage issue caused by a property owner filling in a ditch, failing to put in a culvert during driveway construction or other encroachment to township stormwater drainage, Zappa said.

He said prior to doing any work, the MCRC would notify the property owner of the problem and give them 30 days to correct it.

“If they do not, the road commission can step in and do the work. The road commission then has to send an itemized statement of what that expense entailed and the property owner, again, has a period of time to pay that,” Zappa said. “This is essentially a last resort mechanism that hopefully would be used very seldom, but in those limited circumstances. The objective is, in a perfect world, this will get accomplished and fixed long before it ever gets to a lien on anyone’s tax bill.”

He said MCRC would have to prove that it had taken all the required steps before requesting the lien on a property tax bill, which would technically be done by the township.

Trustee Dave Wiegand, who also serves on the township’s roads committee, said the process addresses the issue without requiring a large influx of money from taxpayers.

“There were basically two options,” Wiegand said. “There was an option to address the half a dozen problem properties basically within Trowbridge that are causing some drainage issues, or put a drainage system throughout Trowbridge. One addresses the property owners that are causing the problem, the other has a $10 million price tag on it. So, it seemed the lesser of two evils to have the problem properties taken care of and resolve the drainage issue, or all the residents to come up with money to put in a drainage system.”

Trustee Pete LaRue said the mechanism is not meant for routine maintenance of the township’s stormwater drainage system.

“This is not what people might think … the sand and the leaves come down to the culvert on the corner and they’re plugged up,” LaRue said. “This isn’t for that, it’s for if someone covers up (the culvert, or) … they don’t want a little gully in their yard for the drainage system out front. They cover it completely and cause other problems. But, for the residents, you don’t have to worry about it. If … (a) culvert gets clogged up with sand and leaves and stuff like that, that’s still the responsibility of the road commission.”

The planning commission must submit a draft of the proposed zoning text amendment to the township board for approval before the process is implemented.