The following represent only a small portion of collaborative ventures throughout the state.

Service sharing projects:

• A consortium to deal with the ash borer problem; the Conference of
  Western Wayne has a committee on this and many other areas have joint projects
  
• Taylor provides an animal shelter for itself and two other communities
• Taylor is the only city with a compost site in Wayne County
• Oakland and Wayne both have incinerator authorities—at least in parts
  of those counties
• Grand Rapids and Wyoming have a biosolids agreement—jointly building
  a plant to make pellets for production of fertilizer, etc.
• Water and sewer authorities in several counties
• Kentwood and Wyoming working together on a wood chipper
• Shared training of public safety officials
• Combating of West Nile Virus
• Livonia, Novi, Farmington Hills, etc. share Hazmat services via the
  Urban Cooperation Act.
• Transit systems
• Joint fire department among cities and/or townships as well as
  sharing specialized public safety equipment
• Regional Dispatch—several county-wide and multi-county in the UP
• Oakland County provides GIS for free  
• Macomb/Oakland consortium to purchase vehicles  
• There is also a tri-county (metro Detroit) purchasing organization
  for many different types of commodities   
• Bay City takes care of Essexville’s traffic signals and Essexville shares
  an assessor/building inspector with Hampton Township
• MML is looking into joint energy purchasing, though the pool would
  be limited to city-owned facilities.  (Note that the state is doing the
  same with universities.)
• Saginaw/Midland Water Corporation—joint chlorine purchasing, etc.
  —shared with several communities
• State helps with joint purchasing (salt, vehicles, etc.) and some cities
  have joined with other areas such as Oakland County in purchasing
  when it’s been cheaper
• Wastewater treatment facility for Bay County, Bay City and Essexville
• Mt. Pleasant and Isabella County jointly operate an MRF.
• Saginaw has a Mid-Michigan Waste Authority that includes 29 communities
  in the county.  The authority has been highly successful in holding down
  refuse, recycling and composting costs because of the combined purchasing
  power.  The authority has its own office and staff that handles the day-to-day
  activities.
• Midland and Frankenmuth have agreements with surrounding areas in
  re growth—urban growth boundaries (set up some years ago).  Midland County
  has one library, one wastewater plant, a combined law enforcement center, etc.
• Upper Peninsula communities used the UCA to form an authority to handle
  the closed air force base
• Northwest Michigan school districts formed an authority for food purchase
• Universities have a separate entity to do telecommunications buying
• Traverse City shares a wastewater plant with five surrounding townships and
  a cable franchise with 10
• The Traverse City area library is a separate authority and in conjunction with
  neighboring Garfield Twp, TC will create a parkland and recreation authority
• Centralized dispatch in Grand Traverse as well as Cheboygan, Charlevoix and
  Emmet.
• Petoskey has joint recreational facilities with its school district and also does
  some work with the local college district
• Charlevoix County equalization does assessing and building inspection
• TC is the contract manager for a septic treatment plant for the area.
• Petoskey does its solid waste recycling through the county
• South Lyon and South Lyon School District built an administration building
  together
• South Lyon has no local assessor.  Instead, it pays Oakland County for
  assessing services
• Marquette County Sheriff and Michigan State Police share physical space,
  including office space
• When purchasing investigation K-9s, Marquette County Sheriff purchased
  a bomb dog to supplement the State Police drug dog which has overlapping
  services
• City of Marquette and Marquette County share computer training and expenses
• When purchasing fuel, city of Marquette purchases a volume which supports area
  school districts, Marq Tran (public transportation) and the county and city fueling
  depots
• Ishpeming School System participates in cooperative bids for numbers of supplies,
  participates in a UP-wide bus bid process to purchase buses at lower cost and
  collaborates with the city with playground and recreation areas to provide the
  most services by not duplicating structures
• Western Marquette County schools (Ishpeming, Negaunee, Republic-Michigamme)
  share programs such as special ed and voc-ed and also have cooperative transportation
  for sports with similar destinations
• Northern Michigan University participates with obtaining health insurance coverage
  with other universities in the state to lower the cost and purchases energy with
  other Michigan universities
• Rudyard Area Schools work closely with their ISD for shared plumbing and heating,
  as well as relying extensively on the Math/Science Centers for training
• Breiting Township has been meeting with local governments to continue efforts for
  collaborative rescue services, as well as water and sewer
• Iron County has collaborated water services throughout the county
• Nine of the UP counties are on one regional dispatch system.  Their goal is to include
  all UP counties in this system
• Battle Creek shares police services with a number of communities around it
• Wastewater treatment
• Maintaining traffic signals for the state and county
• Transit
• Water quality programs
• Engineering services
• GIS
• J.D. Edwards financial management software
• Economic development partnerships
• Albion and Calhoun County take turns plowing certain roads
• Larger communities share equipment with smaller—not every community needs
  very piece of equipment

Potential service sharing ideas