At its 2016 annual meeting Aug. 15, the Barry County Farm Bureau again called for the Barry County Commission to repeal, without delay, a Barry Eaton District Health Department regulation called TOST. The organization’s membership has passed a resolution urging the repeal at most of its annual meetings since the 2007 adoption of the controversial regulation.
TOST, short for Time of Sale or Transfer, requires testing of private water and septic systems of properties by BEDHD approved private evaluators before they are sold or transferred in Barry and Eaton counties. If a system is deemed “failed,” it must be repaired or replaced before the sale.
The resolution said the bureau would support the inspections if the seller felt it was beneficial, the buyer wanted it or the lender required it.
“The Barry Eaton District Health Department has historically chosen to follow a pattern of using an arbitrary and capricious method of enforcement in regards to various parts of the TOST regulation, for example, refusing approval of small diameter wells passed by the private evaluators in the field, and requirements that raised beds use washed sand and not allowing installation during certain times of the year,” the resolution charged.//
If the premise for TOST was accurate, that private well and septic systems were a health risk to the people of Barry County, then all water and septic systems would have to be inspected every year, according to the bureau. However, some are inspected multiple times with sales or transfers, with inspections each time, others not for 50 to 70 years, the resolution read.
“Much of the older housing in Barry County has lost value and is being abandoned because it is cost prohibitive to renovate the house and upgrade an already functioning system,” it said.
Older citizens face their assets being drastically reduced when selling to move to retirement homes and younger families on limited incomes can’t buy and rehab older homes in their price range, forcing them out of the Barry County market, according to the resolution.
“Barry County’s population is being limited and/or reduced, the tax base lowered and the economy harmed…the TOST regulations have become to Barry County what the Small Business Tax was to Michigan,” the reaffirming resolution read.
