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Tony Hornus & The Drain Office

Tony’s editorial on the outdated assessments is interesting.

In his article, he stated that Todd Holzhausen was pressured out of the drain office by the Board of Commissioners. Obviously he doesn’t believe the Holzhausens’ story that Todd quit due to “lack of work”. It seems like Hornus would do an editorial about unemployment compensation fraud.

Hornus has no problem tossing blame around … he went after Margaret McAvoy, the Board of Commissioners, the Spicer Group. He even took a stab at his ex-wife, who is the mother of his estranged daughters. (oh yeah, she’s the former Deputy Drain Commissioner, who was replaced by Todd Holzhausen … but you probably didn’t read that in any of his editorials about the former staff)

Tony’s entire editorial was about making Holzhausen look good. Kudos to Hornus, and maybe all of the Argus Press staff, because that’s not an easy thing to do. I wonder if, in 14 years, we’ll be getting an editorial about unemployment fraud, improper use of chemicals, abuse of the office & no-bid contracts, etc. Probably not, since Hornus isn’t married to or divorced from anyone who works for Holzhausen.

This editorial has prompted me to revisit Tina Fett’s original article ‘Can We Clear The Air? ‘ Tina’s article was published in several places, including here on this blog, at the end of September. This was before the revelation of these ‘outdated assessments.’ Here is an excerpt:

“Were there drains that hadn’t been assessed even though work was done on them several, even many years ago? Yes. Were there reasons? Yes. The most obvious one that I will bring to light here is the Youngs Intercounty Drain. Probably 10 to 12 years ago, the Drain Office contracted with Spicer Engineering to do a drain assessment district for assessment of the Youngs Intercounty Drain that owed monies to the Revolving Fund. They provided the map; the district was assessed, and the trouble began. Landowner, after landowner objected to the line of the district. The boundaries were all wrong in a certain area, or so they claimed. The Drain Commissioner, Bernie Butcher went on site and verified the landowners claims, they were right. The map was wrong. Bernie asked that the landowners all be reimbursed the taxes that they had been paid. I am not sure why, but Spicer’s were never asked to correct their mistake, but I could do nothing about that. I hope they haven’t used their incorrect district line yet again.”

Unless I am mistaken, the Youngs Intercounty Drain is the 14 year old assessment.

A drain assessment is the distribution of the cost of a drain across the affected parcels. If the assessment map is incorrect, then the costs cannot be properly billed to the landowners. I don’t know why it would take so many years to correct such a mistake. I would like to know why contention over an assessment map would delay an assessment for at least 14 years. But it is hardly a matter of something just not being billed. Let’s not pretend it is.

Another possible reason for these outdated assessments is that they are included in long-term drain assessments. This means that the cost had been assigned to the drain but then spread out over several years. If I understand correctly, this can be illustrated as such: a drain project costs $100,000 and is spread out over 5 years as $20,000 due per year. Assuming that you are 2 years (paid) into the assessment, someone could come along and say that the remaining $60,000 is two years overdue. This would explain why the outside auditor never found any outdated assessments. It could be 2 different types of accounting, where these long term assessments are not being recognized.

I don’t know if my speculation is correct; I am still investigating with what limited resources I have. But if a blogger can come up with this information, imagine what a trained, credentialed press staff could do. The Argus Press has such a staff. Where are they?

The Board of Commissioners should have honored Bernie’s repeated requests for updated computers, computerized mapping programs, and additional staff. If we do not meet the needs of our public services, and we don’t pay attention to what the government is doing, then we don’t have clean hands when problems pop up. We get the government (and the press coverage) that we allow.

I don’t want to pick a fight with the guy who controls the flow of water or the guy who buys ink by the barrel, but the people have a right to all of the information. Isn’t it bad enough that we can’t figure out who is telling the truth in the federal government and the mainstream media? We should be able to trust that our hometown paper will deliver information that isn’t driven by a personal agenda. We deserve better than that here in Shiawassee, where we live and spend our money and raise our kids. This is our town and our government, and it’s time for us to demand better than what we have.

And that is my own personal biased opinion.

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