ESCANABA — The Delta County Board of Commissioners voted during a special meeting Monday to send a complaint letter to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development about the Delta Conservation District and to explore pulling the county out of the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP).

“You can ask MDARD all you want, but they’re not going to get involved with this. They’re not interested,” Delta Conservation District Board Chair Joe Kaplan told the commissioners Tuesday.

The conservation district and the county have clashed over a variety of issues over the past few years. The latest point of contention is the district’s administration of the MAEAP program for the county lands enrolled in the program, which include all county parks and the county forest.

The specifics of the disagreement are largely unknown because there is some confusion about the course of events and the MAEAP program is guaranteed by state law to be. However, it is that confidentiality has been called into question, with Commissioner Bob Barron saying the district potentially violated confidentiality requirements and, at Kaplan’s behest, discriminated against the county as a landowner enrolled in the program.

Residents got a glimpse of the dispute Monday.

According to Kaplan, he submitted a Freedom of Information Act request as a private citizen for a map from the county of a proposed parking lot and pavilion construction project at O.B. Fuller Park that was presented by the county’s new parks manager, Steve Wery, at the Feb. 2 county meeting. The map was provided 21 days later.

It was clear to Kaplan that the map was produced by the conservation district office based on an earlier map that was part of the county’s MAEAP plan. The MAEAP program allows landowners who are out of environmental compliance to come into compliance with best environmental practices by following plans verified by the state every five years. According to Kaplan, the new map violated the county’s environmental plans.

“Our tech should not be designing maps for your development, especially if it’s inconsistent with the agreements,” he said.

Kaplan said he did not know who requested the new map’s creation, but said it could only be one of three people: Wery, Mattson, or Commissioner Bob Petersen, who served as the chair of the conservation district before joining the commission. Petersen denied requesting the map.

Regardless of the map’s origins, the discovery that a map had been produced for the county from the conservation district office resulted in an internal conversation between Kaplan and the tech, the nature of which Kaplan repeatedly told the commissioners was confidential. However, at least a portion of the conversation was told to Barron, who said Kaplan had directed the tech to not work on the county’s MAEAP unless Kaplan was informed — something Barron equated to discrimination against the county.

Kaplan said he did not recall telling the tech not to work on the county’s MAEAP plan, noting the plans had already been verified by the state.

“Your work’s already been done. There’s nothing left to do, but I’m definitely going to say to my tech, ‘you can’t be working on projects at the whim of … your former director.’ Rory Mattson has no right to come into the office and say, ‘can you make me this map?’ If that’s what happened; I have no idea,” said Kaplan.

As a result of Barron’s comments about confidentiality at past meetings, a resident, later identified as Whitney Maloney, requested the county’s MAEAP documents through FOIA. That FOIA was denied because the county was not in possession of any documents related to its MAEAP enrollment.

“That’s what you should be looking at, is how we got to this point without the county even knowing they were enrolled in MAEAP. That’s the question I think you should be asking,” said Kaplan.

Kaplan personally delivered the county’s MAEAP file to County Administrator Ashleigh Young and informed her the O.B. Fuller Park plan would violate the county’s agreements. During Monday’s meeting, the commissioners voted not to declassify the documents, at least until they could be reviewed by the commissioners.

Barron argued the fact Kaplan delivered the documents and not the MAEAP tech breeched confidentiality. However, Young said she had spoken with MDARD and there was no evidence a breach had taken place.

“We sat and discussed it. However, he’s the administrator of the program. He can have that information,” said Young, who noted that Kaplan could not openly share the specifics of their plans with the public, but that she represented the county as the landowner in their discussion.

Despite Young’s statements, the commissioners voted 3-2 to send a letter of complaint to MDARD about possible confidentiality breeches and discrimination by Kaplan. Commissioners Dave Moyle, Barron, and Petersen all supported the motion.

Following the vote, Petersen made a motion to look into what it would take for the county to withdraw from MAEAP and if there are any consequences to doing so. Only Commissioner Steve Viau voted against the motion.

“You can leave, but I will tell you, the county will be doing a first. It’ll be the largest withdraw of land from the MAEAP program ever and it would be the first or second withdraw. No one has withdrawn from the program because the program is setup to assist private program,” Kaplan told the commissioners during the final public comment period. “So if you were to withdraw from the program, you would be setting a new standard for yourselves.”