Isabella County millages not successful in August

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The decline of two millage by voters this month will have a larger impact on Isabella County residents outside of Mount Pleasant city limits.

On the Aug. 3 ballot, millages failed for both the Chippewa River District Library and Isabella Road Commission.

The millage for the road commission would have paid for repairs on critical roads, which are more than one third of the roads in Isabella County, and combated the inflation-induced price increases, said Commission Manager Tony Casali.

“Asphalt has increased, fuel has increased, guardrail and re-rod has all just almost doubled in the last five years,” he said. “A ton of asphalt now costs as much as a ton of salt and that was unheard of in the past.”

Casali said without the millage income, the road commission will have to cut services.

Some of the services cut may be mowing along the road, brush cutting and frequent winter maintenance. The county may have to copy other counties across the state, which do not plow on weekends.

Residents living inside the city will not feel the pinch of these cost-saving measures as much. The city has enough money budgeted to meet their most immediate needs, said Nancy Ridley, Mount Pleasant’s finance director.

“If that millage passed then we would have had $600,000 more than we have currently,” she said. “We would have just done more projects earlier.”

The road commission is already thinking of placing this millage on the ballot again in two years.

“(Roads) deteriorate every year and they have to lessen the postings and trucks have to take an alternate route,” Casali said. “We’re going to continue to see these types of things occur. Some of (the roads) might have to be closed or narrowed.”

The road commission is expecting to earn even less money from the state as hybrid and low-millage cars become more popular, he said. These cars put the same amount of wear-and-tear on the roads, but put much less money into their maintenance.

Library’s loss

The CRDL millage would have incorporated the out-district branches and the inner branches into one library district. Currently, the inner branches provide many administrative services and pay some costs incurred by the out-district branches, said Lise Mitchell, CRDL director.

Starting Oct. 1, Isabella County residents who live outside of the library district, essentially the Mount Pleasant School District, will need to buy a library card to check out materials at the Veterans Memorial Library and the Faith Johnston Memorial Library.

“We were proposing that keeping everything together in the district is less redundancy,” Mitchell said. “It is hard to ask anyone to pay taxes, but it is hard to ask people who are paying taxes to fund others.”

The partnership, which began in January 1999, often required the in-district branches to wait 6 months to negotiate a year contract with the out-county branches, Mitchell said.

The tax would have been about $120 for the average household per year, she said. The state provides 20 cents per person to local libraries.

Coe Township will be voting again in November to see if their residents want their local library, Coe Township Library, 309 W. Wright Ave, Shepherd, to join the CRDL system.