Author: Bob Yager

Questions about Oakland Township Taxes?

Bob Yager

We recently got our Winter 2021 tax bill. This sometimes raises questions. There are many answers to be found by exploring these three places:

Oakland Township website:

Treasurer’s Page and sub pages – (Go to http://www.oaklandtownship.org/, then Township Departments, then Treasurer’s Department at bottom of menu) – There is a vast wealth of information here including explanation of tax rates, assessments, challenging assessments, millage ballot language that was approved by voters. and nuch more

Property Information Page ( click on picture icon at bottom left of township website home page- history of several years your taxes and anyone for whom you have an address, name or property I.D., also past sales date

County website

Oakland Property Gateway https://gis.oakgov.com/PropertyGateway/Home.mvc – click on property outline on a map to find tax I.D. for any property, use that in Property Info above to find owner and taxes

Oakland Township Library Board Draft Meeting Minutes for November 18, 2021

Bob Yager

Minutes

Click to access 631466934.pdf

The Oakland Township Library Board consists of 6 elected members, elected on a non-partisan ballot every four years. They administer about $900,000 in Fund 271 which comes from dedicated millages. See page 15 of the most recent budget for details –

Click to access 21-22%20Final%20Budget.pdf

See their webpage for details. The following 5 paragraphs were copied from that webpage:

Regular meetings of the Oakland Township Library Board of Trustees are held quarterly at the Oakland Township Hall, 4393 Collins Road, on the following Thursdays at 7:00 p.m: “

Oakland Township does not have its own library, however, it does have an elected Library Board of Trustees that administers a dedicated, voted millage for library services. The 1.000 mil is comprised of two millages, originally 0.8000 and 0.2000 which have been Headlee reduced to .6212. With this millage, the Library Board currently provides full library services for Oakland Township residents by contracting with the Rochester Hills Public Library. All residents of Oakland Township and all persons employed at an establishment located in the Township are eligible for a library card and full library services.

The Library Board is comprised of six residents of Oakland Township who are elected to 4 year terms (at the same time) in the General/Presidential election year. The office is NON-PARTISAN and members do not receive payment for service. Terms of the current members are effective through November, 2024.

Oakland Township Library Board
Michael Tyler, President
Andrew Parker, Vice President
Marisa Kallie, Secretary
Mercedes Wirsing, Member
Mark Gerhard, Member 
Henry Carels, Member   

Regular meetings of the Oakland Township Library Board of Trustees are held quarterly at the Oakland Township Hall, 4393 Collins Road, on the following Thursdays at 7:00 p.m: 

Why Are Ohio Roads Better?

Bob Yager

In my opinion because

1 – They give responsiblity for Township Roads to the townships. There are also State Roads and County Roads.

2 – They don’t have county road commissions, just county engineers reporting to the county commissioners, who are just 3 in number, not 21 like Oakland County has.

Recently, Barbara and I visited Hocking Hills State Park and the surrounding area. It is south of Columbus,, Ohio. We were last there 45 years ago with our two young daughters. The area is very hilly with beautiful caves and rock formations as the glaciers did not make it that far south. The Yager’s lived in Hocking County when they came from Ilsfeld, Germany in 1817. On the journey we encountered zero potholes from the Ohio Border to our beautiful rented cottage ($125 per night, Barbara knows how to find them). Our destination was in Hocking County, population 28,000 (2020 census). These was not one gravel road. Every country backroad we drove on was very sound asphalt pavement; no potholes or patching.

Here is backroad, Big Pine Road, on the way our rented cottage. Sound asphalt pavement, Google-earth does onto go all the way to our cottage, but road was the same quality.

This is not a prosperous area. It’s too hilly for much agriciulture. The industry was coal mining and brick-making. Now, its mostly tourism.

Roads in Oakland Township are the Responsibility of Road Commission for Oakland County

Bob Yager

I felt that a recent discussion of roads at the 11/9/21 Board meeting may have incorrectly left residents with the idea that our Township Board has major responsiblity for roads in Oakland Township.

All the roads, except private ones in certain housing developments are totally the responsiblity of Road Commission for Oakland County.

https://www.rcocweb.org/275/RCOC-Officials

Their work is paid for from state gasoline taxes and some grants and whatever they can extract from townships. They constantly say that they have insufficient funds.

What causes confusion is that they will only grade a gravel road. If you want any gravel added to the road or any dust control chemicals added the township must pay for that. You see money for those two items in the township budget every year, although not always well identitified

If you want a road repaved, such as our Bear Creek Court was about nine years ago after about 35 years of service, the homeowners along the road must pay by creating by a special assessment district (S.A.D.). Ours was S.A.D. 14021, A YES vote of 51% of our 20 homeowners was required. Cost was $166,530 for resurfacing with a layer of apshalt our quarter mile long cul-de-sac. Each home paid from $7782 to $8327 depending on lot frontage on Bear Creek Ct. We we allowed to pay over ten years.

Hills of Oakland at Adams and Dutton went through this process a few years ago and I understand it was more like $20,000 per home.

The township kicked in $25,000 for each project.

In some “developments” called Site Condomimiums (a land concept, not an apartment-like condo as you may be thinking of ) in our township the roads are totally the responsiblity of the homeowners and not the county or township.

I have no idea how, if ever, the badly deteriorated portion of Gunn from Rochester Road and east will every be repaved. But I fear it will never be unless the Township agrees to pay the Road commission a huge sum of money or it is done by an S.A.D. as our road was.

Road Commission for Oakland County is totally independent of the Board of County Commissioners, except that the County Commissioners appoint the three Road Commissioners.

https://www.oakgov.com/boc/Commissioners/Pages/default.aspx

The RCOC three commissioners can make their decisions without any approval of the Board County Commissioners. Other counties, like MacComb for example, make their Road Commission accountable to the Board of County Commissioners. If you read RCOC minutes, they never seem to every reject a suggestion put to them by their people.

RCOC asking what roads the township would like paved is somewhat odd as they should be monitoring road conditions and traffic levels to see if paving is needed.

The Road Commission has a system (link below) where you can make them aware of a problem. Some say this works others say it does not.

https://www.rcocweb.org/FormCenter/Contact-Us-4/Contact-Us-Form-43

Michigan Township Association – Township of Excellence Program

Bob Yager

This program intriques me. I may visit Delta and Spring Lake townships to see how “excellent” they are as the only holders of this award from 1240 Michigan Townships covering 96% of Michigan’s land area.

https://www.michigantownships.org/twpofexcellence.asp

Click to access toe_application_brochure_form_resolution_checklist_dec_2017.pdf

Former Trustee Maureen Thalmann mentioned this award in Board comments January 13, 2015. I never heard another mention since then.


“Trustee Thalmann mentoned……….
She further spoke that she is working towards Oakland Township receiving the award for Excellence in Townships.“