Where will the Independence Township Board of Trustees find the additional $50,000 payment in the township’s budget to improve county dirt roads while those who live on paved Oakland County roads are told to pay more through the “Neighborhood Road Improvement Project” if they want their county road maintained? Why the double standard?
 Independence Township board members say that residents who live on paved roads that are supposed to be maintained by the county need to have “skin in the game”, while they approve spending our tax dollars on county dirt roads. Why are dirt roads in the township being treated differently than paved roads? Taxpayers want to know.
 The last time I checked the $100,000 total “skin” the township has in the county’s dirt road game now was taken from all township taxpayers, not just from those living on dirt roads.
Which leads to this question: when will the township return the $2 million dollar “skin” they took from taxpayers that can’t be used on a single road that was not listed in the road improvement millage passed by taxpayers when those taxpayers could use that money on the “Neighborhood Road Improvement Project” for their roads?
 It’s disappointing that not a single board member said a word about returning our road improvement money before they voted to approve wasting $50,000 more of our money on dirt roads that we pay Oakland County to maintain.
If Oakland County isn’t doing their job, township officials should be going after the county, and not wasting another dime of our money on roads the county is paid to maintain.
Bravo to the lone no vote cast by Treasurer Paul Brown. However, it’s truly sad to see that only one out of seven board members stood up for all of the township’s taxpayers.

Michael Powell
Independence Township