Leelanau County Drain Commissioner Timothy O’Non submitted a letter of resignation this week and will officially abdicate his elected office one week from today, on Friday, March 20. County commissioners grappled with O’Non’s departure and the protocol for his replacement at their executive board meeting on Tuesday. Also at that meeting, the board heard an update on a new Leelanau County child care scholarship program, which will target low-income families and is expected to kick off this summer. The Ticker has the details on both matters.

Drain commissioner

A land surveyor by trade, O’Non wrote in his resignation letter that his business has recently required more of his time, creating an untenable financial situation where he “cannot afford to continue in this role.”

O’Non ran for and won the drain commissioner seat as a Republican in the November 2024 election, beating Democrat challenger Faith Hoekstra 8,739 votes to 8,101. His election marked the first new drain commissioner in Leelanau County this millennium, as his predecessor Steve Christensen had served in the role since December 1999. Christensen did not seek re-election in 2024.

How O’Non will be replaced was a matter of some confusion and debate at Tuesday’s meeting. Early on in the session, County Administrator Jim Dyer told commissioners he believed the task of appointing O’Non’s successor would fall to the county board, though he noted he was waiting to hear back on the matter from legal counsel. Just a few minutes later, though, County Clerk Michaelle Crocker cited an MCL statute that states: “When a vacancy occurs in the elected office of the county drain commissioner, a special three-member panel, comprised of the county clerk, prosecuting attorney, and senior presiding or probate judge, shall appoint the suitable person to fill the vacancy.”

Typically, such an appointee would serve out the remainder of the “unexpired” drain commissioner term, which in O’Non’s case runs through 2028. However, Crocker said the timing of O’Non’s resignation means the position will be up for grabs as part of this year’s August/November election cycle.

Commissioner Alan Campbell mused about whether the county board should make any changes to the drain commissioner role, suggesting that a recent uptick in development throughout the county had made the office ineffective in its current form.

“I would like to know our options before we simply select a new drain commissioner, Campbell said. “The position was failing, not because of the person in it, but because the role of drain commissioner had changed so drastically in the last two years – as in, now we have drains, and 3-4 years ago, we did not have drains, and we’ve never addressed it. The position pays $21,000 a year. To really expect someone to do the job of managing those drains for that amount of money, I think is unrealistic. We’re just setting that person up for failure.”

Dyer said he would have legal counsel on hand at next week’s regular board meeting to present commissioners “with what other alternatives you might have regarding filling that office, one of which could be, in fact, eliminating the office of an elected drain commissioner, and assigning [the duties] to some other entity.”

The Michigan Drain Code does give some counties leeway to “abolish the office of county drain commissioner and transfer the powers and duties of the office to the board of county road commissioners.” However, that option appears only to be available to counties with populations smaller than 12,000 people, and therefore wouldn’t apply to Leelanau County, which had a population of 22,301 as of the 2020 Census.

Child care voucher program

Last June, commissioner Will Bunek moved that the Leelanau board “direct county administration to research and use the early childhood education millage to provide child care vouchers for children 0-6 years old.” Michelle Klein, director of personal health for the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department (BLDHD), was on hand at Tuesday’s meeting to present the child care scholarship concept BLDHD and its Parenting Communities program have been developing to meet that request. Dubbed ChildShare, the program will spend about $200,000 in early childhood education funds each year to make daycare more accessible and affordable for struggling families.

“We did some surveying of the child care providers in the county, as well as families that are using those child care providers, just to get a sense of how many kids are in care, what’s the daily cost, what would be helpful for them, what would make a significant difference,” Klein said.

Parenting Communities ultimately decided to start with a $30-per-day stipend for families that live in Leelanau County, have kids six years of age or younger who attend a Leelanau-based child care program, and meet specific income requirements.

“Looking at our numbers, we’re initially going to open up an application period for families that are 225 percent of poverty and below,” Klein said. “We’re anticipating there are about 30 or 35 children that we’re going to be able to help with this initial pot of money, so we didn’t want everybody to apply and then go through all those applications and a lot of rejections.”

Depending on how many families apply based on those terms, Parenting Communities could expand the scholarship program to a slightly higher income bracket. The Parenting Communities survey determined there are about 160 children total who live in Leelanau County and are attending Leelanau-based daycares.

Klein said provider enrollment for ChildShare will begin in April, with applications opening in May or June and scholarships starting by August 1.