SUPERVISOR’S CORNER

I want to thank all of you who have taken advantage of the house number signs that we have available for free to our residents. Many of you have stopped by over the past month and picked-up a sign for your yard. As I have written, these greatly enhance the ability of our emergency medical responders to locate you when help is needed. If you do not have a green and white house number sign in your yard or driveway please stop in and see Pat or myself. Many houses do not have mail boxes with numbers as you don’t live up here or use a PO box, so these signs become crucial. It also helps the package delivery companies find you.
I want to expand a little bit on a topic from last month -Township funding. More specifically, where we get our funding from and how secure is our funding source given the current budget climates that we hear about. The bulk of our revenue comes from two sources. The largest is from constitutionally protected revenue sharing from the 4% sales tax collected on every non-food purchase in Michigan. This has no connection to the state budget and cannot be changed by the legislature without a constitutional amendment which the voters in the state would have to pass. This accounts for about 45% of our yearly revenue. Another 26% comes from the property taxes that we all pay each year in December, which is directly tied to property values and again cannot be impacted by our legislators, only our local voters. Another 12% comes from our fees for services like tax collection and graves and zoning permits. An additional 11% is received from the rents and event fees for the use of our township facilities like the hall rental and our tenants at the resource center and the plaza. The final 6% is from franchise fees collected from charter and interest on our funds. As you can see from this list, we are more dependent on the economy such as sales, uses and property values that any legislative agenda or influence. Most of our finding is pretty secure as a source and fairly insulated from the political climate. That doesn’t mean that we don’t carefully watch our expenditures and revenues as shown by our recent audit which complimented our board on their diligent oversight of our budget and spending.
As I wrote last month, a survey is crucial in understanding your property lines and location as it relates to the properties around you. Almost all parcels have at least one line that fronts or encroaches on a power line and/or road. These power lines are allowed by use of a right-of-way(ROW). These are the same type of property as a road ROW. In fact many road ROW’s allow utility(power,water,sewer,cable,telephone,etc,) to use their property to service the parcels that front the ROW. These utility ROW’s can range from 100’s of feet wide to 15’ as a path or alley. Roads are typically 66’ wide ROW’s with the power poles usually at the very back of the ROW. A power line ROW can be as narrow as 20’ or as wide as 99’. Regardless of their width, it is important to pay attention to their location as it relates to your parcel. If you plant a tree or shrub in the ROW, even though it is your yard, if the plant gets too large and is near the lines, the power company can come in and trim and possibly remove the plant without any recourse on your part. So pay attention when planting around power lines, think about the mature plant and how large it may get in the future. You may come up some weekend and find your beautiful tree or shrub missing.
If you are interested in helping with the planters downtown contact Hale Garden Club , PO Box 174, Hale, MI 48739 or call Bev Mason at 989-305-8823. Wanting to find a way to get and stay in shape, consider a membership at the Community Center and Eagle Point Plaza. You can come and enjoy pickleball at any time, yoga, cardio drumming, fitness training, walking or some more intense TOWANDA. So stop in and see Roma about a membership. We have family rates and business/group rates also. We would love to see you. When you’re here stop in on Tuesdays to the Plainfield Township Historical Museum. They also have genealogical workshops, so stop and ask about the next event. As always if you ever have any questions, comments or concerns regarding our community please contact me. I am in the office Monday – Friday 7:30 – 4:00 at 989-728-2811 or my cell at 989-984-7073 or by email supervisor@plainfieldtwpmi.com.
Fred Lewis – Supervisor Plainfield Township