Northwestern Michigan College officials voted to remove the Benzie County annexation proposal from the Nov. 5 general election ballot.
The Board of Trustees called a special meeting to order at 9 a.m. Thursday and unanimously voted to remove the proposal from the Benzie ballot. The board did not have any discussion and the meeting was over in a matter of minutes.
Benzie voters will not have the ability to vote on the millage levy, which would have funded college operations in exchange for NMC’s lowest tuition rates for residents. The difference in tuition would have been $122 per contact hour for in-district students versus the $261 per contact hour they pay now for being out-of-district.
Board Chair Laura Oblinger feels many Benzie residents will view this with “great disappointment.”
“It also halts the opportunity to put revenue back into the community,” she said.
The ballot language
The decision to withdraw the proposal came after a week of trying to save the initiative. NMC worked with their legal counsel, the state superintendent, the Benzie County clerk and the Board of Elections.
The problem was 15 words in the ballot’s language: “Two Benzie County residents will be added to the Northwestern Michigan College Board of Trustees.”
That ballot language, as submitted, stated that if voters approved the proposal: “Two Benzie County residents will be added to the Northwestern Michigan College Board of Trustees and an advisory board composed of local Benzie County residents and businesses will be created to advise the College how to invest in Benzie County.”
Last Wednesday, NMC’s legal counsel Miller Canfield was researching the process of adding two new trustees, according to Oblinger. In finding that answer, lawyers found a requirement in Chapter One of the Michigan Community College Act that limits community colleges formed by county lines, such as NMC, to a seven-member board.
The legal counsel originally — and inaccurately, according to NMC President Nick Nissley — looked under Chapter Three of the Act, which allows for the addition of two new board members — but that applies to other types of community colleges.
NMC, which currently has seven board members, had proposed expanding the board to nine if Benzie voters had approved the proposal. That addition to the board would have violated Chapter One restrictions.
“It went through a lot of checks,” Nissley said. “It went through our legal counsel, and we have two people within the law firm working on it. We also had a communications consultant helping us with this. Even when it made its way to the state’s superintendent’s office, they approved it.”
Nissley isn’t quite sure how this was missed by so many reviewers. “I have the same question. We are going to be digging into that ourselves.”
Within an hour of hearing about the issue, NMC was in contact with the state superintendent, who tentatively approved the striking of 15 words from the ballot proposal, according to Nissley.
Benzie County Clerk Tammy Bowers was then contacted. Bowers said the county’s attorneys initially indicated changes could be made to the ballot if it happened prior to printing, but she later said the Michigan Bureau of Elections wouldn’t let her make “substantive” changes.
“I think there is where there might be some misinterpretation,” Nissley said. “The clerk indicated that what she heard from the Bureau of Elections was different from what our legal counsel had interpreted. Our legal counsel felt there was room for the clerk to make a decision, she felt that the Bureau of Elections told her that she couldn’t.”
Changing the law
NMC is still looking to grow in the future, and that may involve changing the 1966 law that restricts the number of trustees.
Nissley, and the trustees, believe allowing the board to expand for new representatives will not only make annexation more appealing to other counties, but make a more representative board.
“Maybe we need to look at amending the Community College Act to allow for greater governance that supports the college and the community,” said Nissley.
“This isn’t just something that Benzie wants, it’s something that we want for good governance. To have a board that is made up of only Grand Traverse County, when you’re now two counties doesn’t make any sense.”
Benzie County reacts
Voters in Benzie County were mixed on the decision ever since the proposal was submitted to be placed on their ballots.
The advocacy group BEST Benzie helped initially ask NMC for an annex. Founded in 2018 under the nonprofit Grow Benzie, the group’s mission is to increase access to higher education and job specialization for county residents.
Maggie Bacon, who led the initiative, said she was disappointed voters wouldn't get the opportunity to choose annexation, but that NMC showed good faith by stepping back.
“NMC as a whole showed the integrity of recognizing that an error had been made and immediately attempting to rectify it,” Bacon said. “I certainly completely understand why NMC does not want to see inaccurate language be put on the ballot.”
Bacon said she was concerned with how Bowers came to the decision to not allow NMC to change the ballot language by removing the 15 words that mention expanding the board.
When asked, Bowers said she reached out to both the county’s lawyers and the Bureau of Elections for advice on how to approach the matter.
She said she received an email back from the Bureau at about 2 p.m. Monday which states, “once the filing deadline has passed, the only thing they can change is a typo. Anything that is substantive may not be changed at this time. Until the ballots are printed, the body that put the question on it may take it off completely by taking the same action they took to certify the wording on the ballot.”
Bacon said she’s excited to continue working with NMC to form a new approach to annexation and explore other ways of bringing education opportunities to Benzie County.
“My guess is NMC is going to spend some time thinking about different ways of doing stuff,” Bacon said. “As a local college access network, BEST Benzie might do a deep dive into (how to change) the Community College Act to make annexation easier for a county of our size.”
Mary Hutchinson shares the spirit of moving on. She’s a Benzie County resident who rallied to oppose the annexation proposal. She released a Change.org petition that received more than 400 signatures earlier this year.
Her main concern with the annexation proposal was the additional 2.057 property tax millage — which she said was too much for many residents. The millage also would have been collected annually “in perpetuity” which would’ve resulted in more than $2 million of additional tax revenue for NMC per year.
“I think NMC is a great school,” Hutchinson said. “I think most of us residents would love to see a way for them to be in Benzie County. But I didn't feel that they had the data (to justify annexation).”
In her Jan 19. column in the Benzie County Record-Patriot, Hutchinson suggested a “temporary millage increase” to fund an education foundation where all the money would go to Benzie County and would be used to offset the out-of-district tuition expenses.
NMC officials said this wouldn’t be possible under the current Community College Act, but Hutchinson said she hopes, by the next time NMC proposes annexation, that law can be amended.
Advocates for Benzie County was the other group that requested NMC propose annexation to voters. While the group never took an official stance on the measure, it helped organize a series of listening sessions with Nissley for voters to ask questions.
Jack Harnish, president of the group's Board of Directors, said the withdrawal of the proposal from the November ballot could be an opportunity for NMC officials to pool more feedback and build better relationships with residents.
“The larger question is, is NMC trying to be in touch with the needs and the feelings of residents? I really think they are trying to do that,” he said.
“When this comes back to Benzie, we don’t know, but annexation is not done for this college and trying to bring education to a broader community,” Oblinger said.
