In 2019, a man from Oshtemo Township named Tom Graham began his run for the Michigan House of Representatives. Once he got involved in the race and started campaigning, he found that many Oshtemo Township residents were unhappy with the way the Township was trying to implement a sewer expansion project. The municipality had just sent a letter to some 900 residents informing them that they would have to connect to the sewer as soon as it was on the ground. Another 300 residents were informed that they had two years to connect because a sewer line already existed.
Connection privilege fees ranged from $ 9,000 to $ 14,000 depending on the road front. It didn’t end there – residents would also have to pay a contractor to physically connect their home to the plumbing, which, in some cases, he was told, amounted to more than $ 30,000. Neighbors who received the letter were outraged at the price, the mandate, and the fact that they had not heard of a sewer expansion project not even mentioned in the 7 years the municipality claims to have been planning the project.
Tom did not win his race, but he found another cause to fight for the people of Oshtemo Township.
In the summer of 2020, Oshtemo resident Tom Graham and several other residents gathered enough signatures to include the then controversial question about the $ 10,000,000 Phase I sewer expansion bond on the November 2020 ballot. Last November, the residents of the municipality rejected the Bond by a comfortable margin. This year, the municipality launched a sewer survey of its residents and 58% stated that they were not interested in connecting to the sewer, citing cost as the number one factor affecting their opinion. The municipality modified the capital improvement payment plan placing a greater financial burden on the residents of the municipality in general, passing an annual road mileage of $ 1,000,000 and a fixed connection fee of $ 5,000 for individual owners who connect to the sewer, as well as a higher surcharge for all existing sewer users. . Later, the municipality published a bond notice of $ 30,000,000 to cover phases I and II of the project.
Graham organized a second referendum petition signature campaign to get Oshtemo’s $ 30,000,000 sewer expansion bond on the May ballot, allowing residents to decide their fate. Graham recruited and organized volunteers who collected 2,423 signatures when only 1,832 were required. Graham turned the petition over to the town clerk, who rejected about half of the signatures for lack of valid notarized signatures on an affidavit that must accompany each petition. The notaries witnessed the circulators sign the affidavits and the notaries did sign the notary’s certificates, but two of them did so in a way that the clerk thought the signature was missing. In the case of one of the notaries, his printed name and signature did not match his commission request, which the law requires that they must.
The municipality believes that the invalid notary’s signature is a fatal flaw that invalidates the oath requirement of the Revised Municipal Finance Act (the statute) and thus invalidates the referendum petition.
Graham argues that a notary public is a government official commissioned by the Secretary of State and that there is a legal principle that a government official who performs his duty by mistake cannot override a citizen referendum, otherwise the government could invalidate any citizen referendum they wanted. .
Graham says: “The municipality clerk literally took away all Oshtemo residents the right to vote on this issue due to a mistake made by a government official. The government cannot infringe their fundamental right to vote due to their own mistakes. , especially since it is obvious that a notary witnessed how the circulator signed the affidavit. “
Graham argues that even if the municipality is correct and the statute must be strictly adhered to, that would create an unconstitutional undue burden on the organization collecting signatures. “The purpose of the oath requirement is to prevent fraud. Because it would require the organization to validate all signatures before taking the oath, under penalty of perjury, it is not strictly designed and is an undue burden to prevent fraud, and therefore so much is unconstitutional and the court would have to declare that the entire requirement of the oath is unenforceable. ” This argument, however, is not “mature” and cannot be brought to court until a judge rules that strict compliance actually does apply to the statute.
Graham’s ultimate goal is for the sewer expansion project to move forward, but be paid for in a way that does not remove the residents’ well-functioning septic systems. Graham reached out to the township multiple times, meeting with Treasurer Buszka and Trustee Bell, then meeting with Supervisor Heiny-Cogswell and Clerk Farmer, asking them to consider allowing residents to pay for or fund their individual section of the sewer expansion as soon as the pipes were in the ground but allowed to connect to the sewer line after their working septic systems failed. Graham showed how Gaines Township pays for its sewers, using availability rates instead of connection fees and does not issue new septic permits to residents with available sewer lines and Oshtemo proposed using Gaines as a model.
The Thomas Graham vs. Dusty Farmer case was filed in circuit court on Friday, November 19. Because this issue must be handled in court, and Tom wanted to hire an attorney to present it to the court, there will be a significant cost to address this issue. Tom has not only invested a large part of his time, but has also used his own funds to bring this to the level it is at today. You need help to fund this effort. He has informed me that any additional funds donated to this cause and not spent will be donated to the Oshtemo Residents Association. They are a non-profit organization that, coincidentally, is also suing the Oshtemo Township because of its belief that the fees they charge to people connecting to existing pipes violate the Headlee Amendment to the Michigan Constitution.
To help Tom Graham fund legal expansion for this cause, not just for himself but for many other residents of Oshtemo Township, visit: gofundme.com/f/helptomfightoshtemo
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