Not since the failed police millages of 1999 has an Oxford Township Board meeting drawn such a large crowd, stirred up so much emotion and flirted with chaos as it did last week.
‘I’ll call for adjournment of the meeting ? it’s out of control,? exclaimed a frustrated Trustee Charlie Kniffen.
Between 200 and 250 residents of the Lake Villa Manufactured Home Community jam-packed the first floor of the Oxford Veterans Memorial Civic Center March 28 to ask questions, express concerns and air grievances ? sometimes all at once ? related to their increasing water and sewer bills.
‘These are homes just like a brick or a stick home is for somebody else. It’s our home,? said one woman in the audience. ‘But our incomes are much more limited than people who can afford to live in Waterstone and down on Drahner Road.?
The woman noted her mother, a Lake Villa resident living on $1,000 per month from Social Security, will be forced to choose between paying for heat, buying her medicine and paying her $113 per quarter water/sewer bill.
Residents? words, even those not shouted due to the absence of microphones, did not fall on deaf ears as the township board approved two motions which prevent their water/sewer bills from increasing ? at least for now.
By a 4-3 vote, the board approved a motion by Supervisor Bill Dunn to notify Lake Villa’s owner, Greg Christopher, that the township does not want him to collect the $19.20 per quarter capital charge to help repay the $10.7 million bond debt for water system improvements until the mobile home park is hooked up to the municipal system thereby deriving benefit from the new treatment plants and water tower.
‘It may be a year, it may be five years,? Dunn said, ‘We don’t know when it’s going to be hooked up.?
The township took ownership of and responsibility for Lake Villa’s four private wells in September 2006. Plans call for those wells and Lake Villa’s 851 units to be hooked up to the township’s main system at some point in the future.
‘Once we’re connected to the service, I don’t mind paying for it, but I do not believe that we should be paying for a service that we do not receive,? noted a Lake Villa resident.
The township board then voted 6-1 to reverse its Feb. 28 decision to adopt a new Residential Equivalent Unit (REU) schedule effective April 1 and continue using the existing REU schedule ? created by Oakland County ? for all user categories (including condos, apartments, restaurants etc.) until July 1.
‘Pull the whole thing and correct the whole thing or don’t pull any of it,? said Trustee Sue Bellairs.
An REU is a way to equate higher volume water users to single family homes, which are used as the standard. The single family residence with its value of 1 REU is the basis around which all other facilities? water consumption and sewer use is measured.
As a result of the board’s action last week, mobile homes will remain at 0.6 REU and not increase to 1.0 REU as called for in the new schedule, so sewer rates in Lake Villa will stay $37.80 per quarter as opposed to $63.
‘I feel the 0.6 (REU) is right,? Christopher said.
Over the last five years, Christopher noted water/sewer usage in Lake Villa averaged 197 gallons per day. When compared to a single family home’s daily average of 315 gallons, a mobile home’s usage amounts to about 60 percent of that (or 0.6 REU).
‘That’s what we’ve been using,? Christopher said. ‘That’s why I feel 0.6 (REU) is right.?
The board’s second motion also included direction to obtain a proposal from Giffels-Webster, the township’s engineering firm, to do a ‘proper engineering study? and use it as a foundation for determining and assigning REUs in the township.
‘It will give us a basis to go to court with anybody else that would like to contend that schedule,? Dunn said.
‘It needs to be looked at closer for us to really justify what we’re doing,? said Clerk Clara Sanderson.
Trustee Doleen Behnke, one of the architects of the new REU schedule, cast the lone vote against using the existing schedule for another 90 days.