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Roadblock hit

County board decides it lacks authority to place proposed recycling millage on ballot

From left, Brad Austin, director of operations at the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority, and Randy Yelle, chairman of the MCSWMA Board of Trustees, speak to the Marquette County Board of Commissioners Tuesday about a proposed recycling millage. The board decided it did not have the legal authority to place the requested millage on the ballot and advised the authority to further work with its constituent municipalities on the issue. (Journal photo by Cecilia Brown)

MARQUETTE — The Marquette County Board of Commissioners decided at Tuesday’s meeting that the county board does not have the legal authority to place the proposed recycling millage requested by the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority on the Aug. 6 ballot.

The vote was unanimous, with Commissioner Bill Nordeen abstaining, and followed the recommendation of the county’s civil counsel.

Nordeen serves as the authority’s legal counsel.

“We don’t have the legal authority to put the millage on the ballot,” board Chairman Gerald Corkin said. “And they need to work with the 22 units of government that actually fund the landfill and have paid for the landfill. That’s in the intergovernmental agreement, that’s who they should be working with.”

Prior to bringing the request to the board, the MCSWMA Board of Trustees passed a proposed draft resolution supporting the county-wide millage request at a special meeting March 27.

A Northern Michigan University student sorts an empty aluminum bottle into the proper recycling bin at the Berry Events Center. (Journal photo by Corey Kelly)

The authority oversees the Marquette County Landfill, which serves residents of constituent municipalities in the county. It does not currently recycle glass and uses a dual-stream recycling system that requires rigid and fiber materials to be separated and picked up on alternating weeks. But the proposed millage would partially support changes to allow for both material types to be picked up weekly, as well as glass, officials said previously.

“If approved, the millage will allow the authority to move to a single-stream recycling program, which will include the accepting and on-site processing of glass,” a letter from authority board Chairman Randy Yelle states. “We believe a single-stream recycling program is necessary to significantly increase the rate of recycling in Marquette County and thereby extend the life of the landfill.”

The proposed millage would levy 0.1 mill, or 10 cents per $1,000 of taxable value, on taxable real and tangible personal property within Marquette County for a period of 10 years from 2019 to 2029. It was estimated to generate around $300,000 the first year. A household with $150,000 of taxable real and tangible personal property would pay $15 a year if the millage were approved.

The county board’s decision stems from its civil counsel’s interpretation of Public Act 233 and the intergovernmental agreement that was signed by the Marquette County Solid Waste Management Authority’s 22 constituent municipalities, which includes the county itself, officials said.

While the county is a constituent municipality, its role is limited to appointing authority board members in accordance with the agreement, and it does not have any existing or future financial obligations to the landfill, commissioners and civil counsel said.

“Based on what we could see in the case law, Act 233 really specifies how the authority is able to get its funding and how those constituent municipalities are able to tax,” Marquette County Civil Counsel Wendy Marcotte said. “And since the county is not a contracting party with the authority, it has no obligation to fund it. Really the act doesn’t give us the ability to put the millage on the ballot or the tax. Our ability to tax is based on the fact that we have bills to pay and since the county doesn’t have any bills to pay with respect to the authority, it eliminates our ability to help in that regard.”

Yelle said he agreed the county didn’t have a financial responsibility to the landfill, but noted that the legal opinion received by the authority board differed from the opinion the county’s civil counsel reached.

“I believe that if you choose, you could be active in this, but maybe not, I don’t know; I’m not an attorney. We have an opinion that says you can, you have an opinion that says you can’t,” Yelle told commissioners.

The other options the authority could pursue besides a millage, Yelle said, include raising tipping fees for incoming solid waste or using Sec. 8 of the Urban Cooperation Act of 1967 — which gives a county board or “agency responsible for preparing the solid waste management plan for counties with a population of 690,000 or more” to impose a surcharge of not more than $2 a month or $25 annually.

“We’re looking in three different directions,” Yelle said, including the county-wide millage.

Overall, commissioners emphasized that the authority would need to further communicate and work with the constituent municipalities on the issue, as the board determined it was not able to take action on the millage.

“You’ve got to work with these 22 units of government that are paying the bills and sell them on the idea and ask them how they would like to pay for it,” Corkin said. “If they want a millage, a tenth of a mill in their jurisdiction is just as well as the county. So we’re not saying we’re against recycling, we’re saying we’re not part of the process here.”

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