If the Grand Traverse County Road Commission has any thoughts about seeking a county-wide road millage, voters in Acme and East Bay townships may have saved them the trouble.
We hope.
Despite active and well-funded "yes" campaigns, voters trashed road millage requests in the two townships Tuesday. In Acme, the one-mill, five-year measure went down 709-535. In East Bay, an identical measure was bombed 1,539 to 717.
Even more telling is that the voting took place in the two townships with arguably the worst roads in the county -- or at least the worst heavily traveled one, Holiday Road. That road, at some spots not much more than a suggestion, is in deplorable condition, with huge potholes, eroded shoulders and, most of the time, nearly invisible lane and fog lines.
Holiday's notoriety may have, in the long run, actually worked against the millage efforts. Many voters, in letters to the Record-Eagle and in exit interviews at the polls, said they worried that most of the money the millage would raise ($817,000 in the first year, with $500,000 from East Bay Township and $317,000 from Acme) would go to Holiday Road, which winds through both townships, and to other roads in the Holiday Hills area.
They clearly weren't interested in underwriting road repairs for someone else.
"We've lived in the same house for 22 years and they've never fixed our road, and while it helps people in the township, it does nothing for me directly," East Bay resident Mike Conners said.
That's an attitude the county would certainly face if the road commission goes forward with a millage request. It's easy to imagine that folks in Whitewater, Blair and other rural townships flatly rejecting a county wide millage; such a request may raise millions, but they'd worry -- perhaps rightly -- that most of it would be spent on roads in more populated areas, not in their back yard.
To tell them otherwise -- and sell them on the idea -- would be a miracle of marketing.
More widely, the thought of convincing any voters anywhere in the state to increase their own property taxes in the midst of a near depression in Michigan seems to border on fantasy.
There is no question that many county roads, like most roads in the rest of the state, are in terrible shape, and the road commission feels an obligation to do something about it. And they should.
But many Michigan -- and Grand Traverse -- taxpayers are as broke as the state, and the odds of them voting to tax themselves even more to repair roads are long indeed.
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