By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Brandon Twp.- Residents of the Lake Louise special assessment district are asking the township to lower the rate of taxes that the township implements for special assessment districts. The township board voted unanimously to table the discussion until more research on neighboring charter townships could be done.
“Our recommendation is that Brandon Township adopt a reasonable fee,” said Dwight Woodbridge at the meeting on Monday night, a resident of Lake Louise.
The township has an administrative fee for five special assessment districts, all seven percent. The price per parcel for Lake Louise would be .47 per thousand, affecting 80 parcels.
“The Lake Louise improvement board met July 31 for a public hearing in confirmation of a new five year special assessment for nuisance aquatic plant removal.

During the meeting, may residents spoke in opposition of the seven percent administrative fee that Brandon Township wanted to charge,” said Supervisor Kathy Thurman. “This will be the first time the township will be assessing an administrative fee to administrate a Lake Louise special assessment. The residents feel their lake is an asset to the township and would like the fee to be lowered or omitted, but would also like an explanation of what the fee would be paying for.”
The township sites that the approximate total salary involved in work for the special assessment district is $3,800, for over 100 hours of work.
“It [the administrative fee] has been ongoing through the township for all the other specials for quite some time,” said Treasurer Terri Darnall. “We do the same work for all of our specials. Trust me, if you guys want to do it, bless you.”
The breakdown of work can be found on the township website under the ‘new business documents’ for the August 13 meeting on the township website.
The purpose of the special assessment district is to treat Lake Louise with both herbicide treatments and mechanical harvesting to rid the lake of invasive species such as Eurasian milfoil, curly-leaf pondweed and starry stonewort.
The total annual cost of the treatment would be around $43,000.