The Hopkins Township Board has lost its latest round of legal battles with the Gun Lake Tribe, as the U.S. Department of the Interior has placed the Nowak property at 129th Avenue and 12th into trust.
Tribal Chairman Bob Peters announced Tuesday, “The Nowak parcel has been placed into trust by the United States for the benefit of the Tribe. Currently, there are no pending appeals against the decision by the federal government to take the land into trust.”
The Gun Lake Tribe last year asked the federal government for permission to place two sites, land zoned commercial but used for farming, just to north of the Arnsman Excavation and Septic Services business.
Hopkins Township Supervisor Mark Evans and members of the Township Board have opposed the request and have even hired attorney Thaddeus E. Morgan of the Fraser Trebilcock firm in Lansing to do legal battle on its behalf.
Evans has asserted the township losing the parcel will result in a loss of $2,482.37 in annual tax revenue for one site and an additional $243.46 for the other.
The Township Board, as of the end of July, had spent more than $14,000 on legal fees on the issue.
Evans also contends the township is losing $4,383.19 in tax revenue annually after the Jiak Foundation camp and $416.87 at an adjacent site were taken into trust by the tribe several years ago.
The Tribe indeed paid taxes on the property for one year while making the request to have the land taken into trust, but before that it had been tax free because it was being used until 2010 by the non-profit Mel Trotter Ministries organization.
Evans, in a Township Board meeting earlier this month, produced a written communication that added up the total property tax losses and pegged them at $7,525.89 for 2018. However, the $4,800 from Jijak was not taxed after 2011, after being taken taken into trust.
Meanwhile, the township in July was awarded just shy of $19,000 for six months from the tribe as part of a revenue sharing agreement. If the Gun Lake Casino does as well for the rest of the year, the annual figure for income to the township will be almost $38,000.
The Gun Lake Casino is tied for being the third largest employer in Allegan County, with an estimated 1,200 employees.
Sounds to me like a classic case of cutting off one’s nose to spite the face. Hopkins Township has lost the tax-producing land anyway, in the case of one parcel, at the expense to its taxpayers to the tune of $14,000. Were I still a resident of HT, I would be livid at this wastefulness, particularly in light of the generosity of the Tribe since it first opened its casino. Evans, et al., should be ashamed.
Withhold revenue sharing for a couple years, plus all the other support for various programs the tribe gives the community and see how they like that. A three year could figure out that was a poor decision by Hopkins Township.