Two longstanding disputes among area governmental bodies have been settled, one by a Michigan Supreme Court ruling and the other by a settlement between the two parties.
The long battle between Coloma Township and Berrien County over the sheriff’s department desire to build a new gun range in the township ended recently when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled they would not hear the county’s appeal against the township and a number of township business owners.
The Michigan Supreme Court had agreed last fall to hear an appeal by the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department of a September 2016 Michigan Court of Appeals ruling. The Court of Appeals ruled then that the county could not operate a shooting range in Coloma Township.
The court case involving the shooting range which appears now to be at an end went on for more than a decade. It began when local business owners took issue with the sheriff’s department using the range as they said it disrupted the wineries, u-pick farms and other tourist attractions in the area.
Issues at the heart of the case included whether state law about the authority and powers of counties meant that the sheriff’s department’s need to have a training site superseded any local zoning ordinance rules.
The Michigan Supreme Court ruled last month that “On order of the Court, leave to appeal having been granted and the briefs and oral arguments of the parties having been considered by the Court, we VACATE our order of September 22, 2017. The application for leave to appeal the September 6, 2016 judgment of the Court of Appeals is DENIED, because we are no longer persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court.”
In the other case, the City of Niles and Niles Township settled the lawsuit brought by Niles Township in Berrien County Trial Court nearly three years ago.
Niles Township filed suit against the city in 2015, questioning the PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) charges the city was levying on township water and sewer rates. As a result of the settlement, Niles Township residents who get water and sewer services from the city of Niles will be paying less.
Berrien County Trial Judge John Donahue ruled in 2016 that while the city could levy the PILOT charges, they had to be related to actual costs and ordered both sides to mediation this year.
“The judge said they could do a PILOT but the rates they were charging were wrong,” Niles Township Treasurer Jim Ringler said last week. “They had no justification for the rates they were charging so we went through the process to figure out what they should be.”
Ringler said the process involved analyzing the value of city water and sewer
system assets as well as the township’s percentage of usage. The city had been charging a flat 10 percent PILOT for both water and sewer and had proposed rates of 6.5 percent for sewer and 3.1 percent for water during mediation.
The court-ordered mediation culminated last week with both the Niles Township Board and the Niles City Council voting to accept a consent agreement ending the lawsuit. The township will now pay a PILOT charge of 2.95 percent of total water rate revenue generated by the township and its customers and a four percent PILOT charge on sewer rate revenue.
“It still is an imposition on us, the township, but it’s not as much as it could be,” Ringler said. “We’re saving millions of dollars that we won’t be paying them over the life of the contracts.”
The township has 30 year contracts with the city for both water and sewer services, the water contract dating back to 2012 and the sewer contract back to 2008. The city bills township residents directly for water services while the township oversees the sewer billings to township residents.
The township’s argument has been that the city has used the PILOT as a “hidden tax” to cover not only rising water and sewer system operating costs but also to provide more money for the city’s general fund.
The consent agreement signed this week states that only the revenue generated by the township PILOTs can be transferred into the city’s general fund. Any other rate revenue from the township has to be paid into the water and wastewater enterprise funds and used to cover direct expenses of the city’s water and sewer systems.
The consent agreement does not affect the PILOT charges the city levies on other water and sewer customers including city residents.
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