FROST SEEKS REVIEW OF RECYCLING CENTER
County’s new administrator to ask Board to update MRF
Isabella County’s new administrator will ask the board of commissioners to take a look at the county’s recycling facility on Tuesday.
It’ll be Nicole Frost’s first major initiative as the county’s administrator, but not one that is terribly surprising.
Frost has worked in Isabella County government since being hired as deputy administrator in 2017. Overseeing operations of the Materials Recovery Facility, 4208 E. River Road, was one of her duties.
“Sitting here, I cannot hide my passion for it,” she said.
While doing that, she concluded that the MRF is in danger of stagnation. The equipment and approach to recycling remain the same it was when it was constructed in the ‘90s. The rest of the industry has moved on.
“The only thing left from the ‘90s about recycling is the guilt,” she said.
Frost said she plans to ask the county board to seat an ad hoc committee to study the facility’s future, which she hopes will lead to a feasibility study about switching from a system that accepts separated recyclables to one that accepts a single stream of materials that are separated at the MRF.
That investment would cost money, but it could also create opportunities to make money, she said. The market for recycled materials has exploded during the pandemic, and haulers are currently paying Isabella County to take recycled materials. The county bundles the plastic and cardboard/ newspaper at the existing facility and sells it.
Frost said she’d like to see if the county can shift the MRF from just a county facility but a regional hub that haulers bring materials to rather than paying for the gas to take it to Grand Rapids. That might involve recycled cardboard and plastic from other counties.
It would follow a basic hub-and-spoke model prompted by the state, she said.
This isn’t the first time
that Frost will ask the county board to look at the MRF. She did so a couple of years ago but she admitted that her voice as the deputy administrator doesn’t carry the same volume it does as the county’s top employee.
If the county — and the MRF is co-owned with Mt. Pleasant — could figure out a way to make the MRF selfsustaining, it would free up money the county is currently spending to subsidize its operations.
For this fiscal year, the county has budgeted $450,000 in its $21 million budget to help pay for the MRF.
Frost said looking at how the county pays its bills has been her primary task for the two weeks she’s had the job as county administrator.
“All things budget,” she said. She plans to say a few things about the budget to commissioners at their Tuesday afternoon meeting.
One of them will be to lengthen the amount of time that the county board has to review the proposed budget.
The county is required to have a balanced budget in place by each Oct. 1, the first day of the new fiscal year. The county is also required to hold a public hearing so the public can weigh in on the proposed budget. The county is also required to set the public hearing when the proposed budget is introduced so the public knows when it can provide its input on the proposed budget.
Frost’s predecessor, Margaret Mcavoy, satisfied those requirements by introducing the budget at the first county meeting the first week of September. The county commission would schedule a public hearing during the second county meeting the third week of September and then approve it the same night.
In truth, if anyone in the general public was aware or cared about this it would be news. No one ever shows up for the budget introduction or the public hearing on the budget.
But, some commissioners — particularly Jerry Jaloszynski, a Chippewa Township Republican from District 3 — have said that they’d like to take a more active hand in county finances, and Frost said that introducing the budget in August would provide extra time for commissioners to dive into the numbers and ask questions.
“Those members deserve information to make their decision,” Frost said.
Frost starts with work towards building a new jail and sheriff’s office progresses. Last month, the county closed on a $950,000 piece of property on the south side of where Remus Road dead ends at U.S. 127 east of Lincoln Road.
Currently, the county is working with the United States Department of Agriculture on securing a $41.5 million loan for the project. If the county can convince the USDA that their financial plan is sound, they’ll get money for it.
Part of that plan is dependant on tax revenue from wind turbines from Isabella County’s wind farms, especially from the one in the county’s northcentral area. That farm was not completely finished before the end of 2020, so this will be the first year that it is fully on the tax rolls.
It will also start depreciating rapidly.
It’s also under different ownership than it was during its construction. Apex sold it to DTE, and Frost said they won’t know until February how much DTE will claim it owes on the turbines.