St. Joseph Charter Township officials are growing increasingly frustrated with their neighbors to the South, and may soon break a long-standing agreement.
At their regular noon workshop meeting Monday, St. Joseph Township township officials discussed following through with the termination of a 50-year-old agreement that allows Lincoln Charter Township (LCT) use the Maiden Lane sewer line owned by St. Joseph Township (SJCT) free of charge.
The original agreement was for 30 years, and has since had to be renewed periodically. Either township can terminate the agreement with two years notice. On Dec. 20, 2021, SJCT issued a two-year notice of termination to LCT officials.
According to SJCT Manager Denise Cook, negotiations on a new agreement have been ongoing since 2017. She said SJCT wants to be paid for the use of the sewer line, especially as the township prepares for a 2024 rehabilitation project of the Lincoln Avenue Lift Station.
“Basically, we just want to recoup costs that we have within the system,” said Cook, after the regular Monday evening board meeting. “They’re getting it free. They’re the ones who should be paying the St. Joe Township, and we haven’t been able to come to an agreement yet. We’re hoping it will happen soon. … We feel like we’ve been patient and faithful and really tried to work at the agreement, but we don’t feel like we’ve gotten good cooperation.”
Compounding the issue for SJCT is several projects that have been more expensive than anticipated. At Monday’s regular meeting, the township voted to postpone three road maintenance projects that were scheduled for this year, as well as moved $65,000 from the general fund to the parks fund because to bids for the renovations at Carronde Park were higher than expected.
“I just hope we can make some progress,” said Trustee Melissa Hahn, on the sewer issue. “As we’re trimming and trying to be good stewards of our taxpayers money and our residents … to not have the money that is owed to us and to be supporting another township’s sewer cost is not a good place to be in.”
During Monday’s workshop meeting, Cook read the following statement on the Maiden Lane sewer issue:
On July 6, 2022, a joint meeting between representatives of S]CT and LCT was held regarding the then second draft agreement and the major issues to be addressed by each side across multiple agreement provisions. Between July 6 and early November, 2022, there were periodic sidebar discussions among different groups (attorneys, engineers, LCT rate consultant) to further develop select portions of the agreement. On November 2, a third draft was distributed by Attorney Mann.
Since November 2, there has been marginal progress at best and significant confusion, lack of clarity, and a seemingly lack of commitment from LCT and Attorney Mann to purposefully push this agreement through the execution stage. Furthermore, the draft distributed on November 2 still left many of the issues highlighted by JCT at the July 6 meeting unaddressed. Finally, to add insult to injury, recent attempts by SJCT representatives to inquire on the status among the working group was met with resistance and, from the perspective of most within the SJCT working group, unprofessional conduct.
The fortunate outcome of recent communications was that LCT’s rate consultant and Engineer Smaka held a two-hour phone conference on March 30, 2023. In that conversation, Engineer Smaka reported two major points needing to be addressed within the agreement were finally identified as requiring further development/ refinement, mainly related to operation and maintenance cost sharing and LCT’s reimbursement to SJCT for previously invested capital expenses in downstream infrastructure should the agreement be desired to be more perpetual, rather than termed, in nature.
Whether agreement to these key provisions elevates to and garners approval from ICT’s legal and policy / Board team remains to be seen. It should be noted these two major points are largely financial methodology based provisions and are not the only ones remaining that require refinement, most of which are more legal framework in nature.
Notwithstanding the recent history and limited progress, there still are many barriers the two sides need to overcome in order to arrive at a place that the agreement could be presented for execution. Based on past performance, progress could very likely continue to linger for 6-24 months and further deepen the incurred and unrecouped costs for service from LCT to SJCT. Such delay would also jeopardize the coordination, design and implementation efforts of the 2024 rehabilitation project for the Lincoln Avenue lift station (LS 12 – to be constructed in advance of a Berrien County Road Department project).
Without a distinctly different focused, diligent and consistent effort from Attorney Mann, LCT and SJCT representatives alike, it seems a timely positive outcome is unlikely (i.e., an executed agreement by June, 2023).
That said and absent evidence of substantial progress to the contrary, SJCT should consider taking next steps with EGLE immediately to invoke and implement the termination provisions of the 1972 agreement (which may also lead to later legal implications). Inaction will continue to be more costly to SJCT and its ratepayers in the long-run. As a reminder, SJCT issued the required 2-year notice of termination of the 1972 agreement to LCT on December 20, 2021. In the whole scheme of this ongoing saga, the 9-month period between now and December 20, 2023 is not a long time.
Please know SJCT representatives, from the onset of this discussion with LCT in early 2017, have aimed to develop a new agreement in good faith and in a timely manner. However, the historical rate of progress cannot continue. Proceeding with termination efforts is unfortunately the only option available to SJCT in absence of a final resolution and commitment to a new agreement in the very near future.
