Northport trustees to refine millage ballot language for Mill Pond dam; staff to draft fallback resolution if vote fails

Trustees at the Village of Northport’s June 4 work session moved to refine wording for a planned advisory millage on the Mill Pond dam and directed staff to draft accompanying nonbinding language describing fallback actions if voters reject the measure.

The discussion followed extensive public comment. Resident Vicky Slott asked whether prior council language implied council support for replacement and whether the ballot text could be revised; Elizabeth Malek, who had submitted a draft ballot explanation, warned that the village must avoid leading voters and said, “you can't put in there that the village will remove the dam if the millage does not pass,” arguing that the explanatory box should be factual and noncommittal.

Why it matters: the dam is expensive to replace and figures cited during the meeting referenced a multi-hundred-thousand to million-dollar range. Council members said they want the question to be a straightforward financial question to voters while preserving staff flexibility to pursue grants or removal options if the local measure does not pass.

Staff described legal review already completed on the ballot question itself and highlighted the principal difference between the drafts: the ballot question wording was similar, but the explanatory box beneath the question differs in tone and in whether it suggests definitive village action. A trustee said he favored the word “may” rather than “will” in the box; staff agreed to compare the public-drafted text to the version cleared by legal counsel and suggested an additional local legal-review step.

Council debate touched on costs and alternatives. One trustee noted an engineering report published about three years earlier that recommended replacement within five years; that trustee said, "there was an engineering report that came out 3 years ago that said we should replace the dam in 5 years." Other trustees and residents pointed out that state and federal funding streams increasingly favor dam removal, and staff observed that grant opportunities could change the local cost calculus.

Council direction and next steps: without a formal vote to place the question on the ballot at this meeting, trustees asked staff and counsel to refine the explanatory “yes/no” box and to draft a separate nonbinding “be it resolved” statement that would lay out the council’s intended actions should the millage not pass (for example, pursuing grant funding or planning for removal). There were no formal final actions at the June 4 work session; the language and a proposed resolution will return to the council on June 18 for further review and for a public hearing on budget-related items.

Representative quotes from the meeting include a trustee telling colleagues, “I wanna put this to the voters, and I want it to be a financial question,” and Elizabeth Malek’s caution that ballot explanatory text must be nonleading.

The council also discussed that the Mill Pond dam project appears in the capital improvement plan (CIP) in a later year and that temporary repairs could keep the structure in place while longer-term decisions and funding are pursued.