GUEST COLUMN: And Now for the Facts About the Chardon Township Road Levy
I am writing this letter to the residents of Chardon Township to correct the misinformation presented by Mr. Danzig in his letter to the editor last week.
I will address every point with the facts so you can make an educated choice on Nov. 8.
When I first took office in 2006, the township had considerable carryovers in the General Fund and Road and Bridge Funds. There is no such thing as a “Rainy Day Fund” in township budgets.
At the same time, the township was doing minimal maintenance on our roads, culverts and ditches, buying used parts to repair our trucks and equipment, and the road crew was plowing the trustees’ driveways.
Also during this time, our property values were steadily rising, the township always had a considerable amount of new construction and there were proceeds from inheritance taxes, all of which increase revenues.
Since 2006, property valuations in the township have been reduced by over 5 percent, new construction is almost non-existent, we no longer receive inheritance tax and the local government fund was reduced to balance the state budget.
Meanwhile, our existing road levy millage remained at 2 mills since 2002.
We do now carry a small amount of debt, which I will go into detail about later.
Our current road crew, led by Superintendent John Washco, has been trying to catch up with many years of unperformed maintenance and neglect. This work is essential to the longevity of our roads, and it won’t happen overnight.
We currently have an inventory of roads reaching the end of their useful lives at same time, all of which are non-through streets and not eligible for state assistance. We can blame the prior boards of trustees and engineering standards or we can set about a plan to repair them, and this proposed levy gives the residents an option.
Mr. Danzig tried to imply that the Trustees did not know the costs of the projects listed on the informational handout. That is simply not the case, as we have internally generated the cost of each project based off of current engineer’s guidelines we obtain from the County Engineers.
The Robinson Road Stabilization project is the only one with an Engineers Estimate because we applied for a grant for it last year. This project, by the way, would be unnecessary if the prior board of trustees, the ones with the large “rainy day fund,” hadn’t went against the advice of the County Engineer and installed the retaining wall when the road was paved in 2005.
The township did incur debt two years ago when one of our roads, as the County Engineer put it, “exploded” over the winter. We were faced with either putting $50k to $75k into the road until we could save the money for reconstruction, or take out a low-interest loan (3 percent) from the state and get the project done. We chose the latter, and as it stands right now will end up paying the loan off next year with less than $5k in interest. I believe we made the right choice.
Mr. Danzig’s comments about the salt shed were almost entirely untrue. It was true the prior Trustees and road superintendent did not practice proper salt storage. I can only assume they didn’t want to touch their rainy day fund. Everything else Mr. Danzig said was false.
We did publicly advertise for bids both through legal notices and trade publications. This was a design-build project, and we received (4) bids from (3) different contractors, all for different designs each with their own merits. We chose one and proceeded to contract with that company, all in public meetings. The total costs was initially $268k and there were two change orders, which reduced the overall cost to $262k.
The statement saying we wasted “at least $200,000” is ludicrous.
In regards to the comments about the park, I find it in stark contrast to the public reaction I have received from my fellow residents. We acquired and built that park entirely with inheritance tax monies, some of which was received by the very estate that previously owned the land. The park is heavily used and is an asset to the township.
It would also give us a place to build something like a fire station in the future if the need were to arise, something the township has always lacked.
And yes, we allocated $100k to the park fund last year during budgeting, but only spent about a quarter of that.
And lastly, in regards to health insurance we implemented a couple of years ago, we are very proud of the monies we have saved with the new arrangement. Our agent helped us craft this plan to battle against the large increases in older style policies.
And, by the way, at the same time we started this plan each employee started paying 15 percent of their monthly premiums, and the plan does include a prescription card like almost all plans do today.
In closing, I ask any resident who has any questions, now or in the future, to call me at 440-286-1655, email me at browntrustee@gmail.com or feel free to come to our meetings at 7 p.m. on the first and third Wednesdays of the month.
Michael Brown
Chardon Township Trustee
