Plymouth Township: Police-Fire Millage to Get New Language, Go Back on Ballot in Michigan

Despite a rejection from voters May 3, Plymouth Township officials are wasting little time putting a renewal and increase of the township's police and fire millage on the August ballot.

This time, however, they will take a different approach.

"We have to go back . . . unbundle the two questions," said Richard Reaume, the township's supervisor.

He said township officials would change the ballot language, asking two separate questions:

- Whether to renew the 20-year-old levy of 1.6348 mills for the combined departments' operating cost.

- Whether to increase the millage by 0.3652 mills with a Headlee tax override for a total of 2 mills per year.

The May election ballot language for the millage, which would run from 2006 to 2025, was posed as a single question. Voters rejected the proposal.

Of the township's 20,000 registered voters, there were 1,349 (42.5 percent) yes votes and 1,828 (57.5 percent) no votes.

"I'm not sure if people interpreted it as all being an increase," Reaume said.

He said he wasn't entirely surprised by the no vote, but others were. The single-question theory was the most popular explanation, but there was at least one other.

Plymouth Township Clerk Marilyn Massengill blamed voter turnout, or a lack thereof, for the failed millage renewal and increase.

"My feeling is that we needed to be doing more to get the word out," she said.

But she added that school district-related elections historically have a lower turnout.

Massengill has already begun reserving polling locations for August.

If approved, the millage would raise $3,756,613 in the first year, according to Ron Edwards, township treasurer. The annual operating costs for the fire and police departments are $8.3 million.

If the millage is not renewed, Fire Chief Randy Maycock said, 10 of the department's 28 firefighters could be cut. "We have no other places to cut," he said.

"I think everybody was taken a little bit by surprise," Maycock said. But "it's human nature -- if you don't understand it, you just say no."

He said he and Police Chief Tom Tiderington would try to educate voters, going door-to-door if necessary, to gain support.

"We're not asking for exorbitant amounts of money," he said. "We provide every bit of service for every dime they give us."

Distributed by the Associated Press