Allegan County municipalities apparently will be asked to place a 10-year millage request for $50 per household per year for recycling next year on the August primary election ballot.
The Hopkins Township Board Monday evening learned of this development and took no action yet, but it is expected to craft ballot language sometime early next year.
Supervisor Mark Evans said the request is “raising fees to accommodate costs.”
He added that townships, villages and cities will have to decide on seeking the increase or spending money on recycling with their general fund budgets.
Trustee Bob Modreske said, “That $50 is cheap. Otherwise, we’ll have to put in our own landfill.”
Many municipalities in the county now are levying a $36 suracharge per household per year.
Allegan County exports its waste to Kent County, which is expected within the next 10 years to expand into land it owns in the northwest corner of Dorr Township. There are plans to make the new facility a sort of recycling business park in which only 10% of the refuse will be customary waste.
In other business at Monday night’s meeting, the Township Board:
- Tabled a request to participate in a flood plain insurance program.
Evans said such requests have been made as many as 20 years ago, but no maps of where flooding is a problem had been made available. Now they have.
“There are a lot of properties that are going to be affected by this,” the supervisor said. “It’s going to be more costly to build (on properties in the flood plain).”
- Noted that a final agreement for fire services between the Hopkins Area Fire Authority and Gun Lake Tribe is very near.
- Learned that a drainage project is being planned for East Lake.
- Was told by visitor Ron Veenstra, “You guys are spot on and I’d like you to continue,” in reference to the township pursuing an appeal of the federal government’s decision to take into trust a parcel at 129th Avenue and 12th Street.
