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Pinecrest millage nixed from ballot

ESCANABA — Voters in Delta County will not vote on a millage request supporting Pinecrest Medical Care Facility this August. The Delta County Board of Commissioners voted to rescind its approval of the inclusion of the millage request on the August 2018 ballot during its regular meeting Tuesday.

The board had voted in favor of allowing the millage request to appear on the ballot during its April 17 meeting. This proposal originally called for Delta County to levy 0.45 mills for five years to support Pinecrest, but the suggested amount for the millage had been decreased to 0.37 mills.

The Dickinson County Board of Commissioners voted against allowing the millage request to appear on that county’s August 2018 ballot last month. As the request needed to appear on ballots in the counties that back Pinecrest with millage funds — Delta, Dickinson, and Menominee — to be successful, Pinecrest asked the Delta County Board of Commissioners to rescind its approval of the request.

“We approved the Pinecrest millage (request), but of course, it was contingent on Dickinson and Menominee County also approving it to be on the ballot,” Delta County Clerk Nancy Kolich said.

If the millage request had been supported by the counties of Delta, Menominee, and Dickinson and been passed by voters in all three counties, the resulting mills levied by these counties would have been used for “operating, maintaining, renovating and repairing the Pinecrest Medical Care Facility, and for any other Pinecrest Medical Care Facility purpose authorized by law”.

Pinecrest also approached the Menominee County Board regarding this situation. The Menominee County Board officially removed the millage request from the ballot during its May 22 meeting.

In other business, the board:

– agreed to waive the city of Escanaba’s permit fee for its solar energy project at the Delta County Airport.

– authorized a utility easement on land in Pioneer Trail Park for the Upper Peninsula Power Company with the stipulation that the county would not be responsible for personal property belonging to a person living adjacent to the land in question.

– opened three bids for work to upgrade electrical service at the Delta County Service Center and to relocate the facility’s transformer cabinets. The county received a bid of $27,272 for this work from Master Electric, Inc., a bid of $22,262 from Kobas Electric Company, Inc., and a bid of $44,600 from Billy Electric, Inc.

The county board agreed to send bids to the building and grounds committee, which will review them and prepare an official recommendation.

– approved multiple recommendations from the personnel committee’s May 16 meeting. These included a recommendation to approve an updated job description for the victim witness coordinator position, a recommendation to issue a planned 4 percent raise for Magistrate Jeana LaCarte ahead of schedule, a recommendation to approve a memorandum of understanding with the Road Patrol Division regarding training issues, and a recommendation to approve the hiring of a part-time temporary office assistant at the Delta County Airport while the assistant airport manager is out on maternity leave.

– authorized a lump sum payout of remaining leave time for former Juvenile Probation Officer Luke Hamlin.

– approved the county’s 2018 taxable value of $1,163,052,026 (an increase of 2.35 percent over its total taxable value for 2017) and the county’s summer tax rate of 5.0317 mills.

– gave Board Chair David Rivard authority to sign a resolution opposing proposed changes to the statewide septic code.

– agreed to have Strom write a letter opposing a proposed assessing reform.

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