 |
|
February 2004 Status Report
It is my pleasure to provide this status report for your review and information. If you have any question about items listed here, please do not hesitate to contact me.
1. Water/Fluoride Lawsuit
As you know, the citizens who initially filed a referendum petition regarding the addition of chemicals to the Water Plant have filed a lawsuit asking the Judge to have us place the referendum question on the ballot. A hearing was held a week or so ago in front of Judge Chamberlain. At that time our Attorney, Steve Martineau, and their Attorney, Joe Barberi, were both given 15 minutes to argue their position before the Judge. If I was to summarize all of their remarks, I would say that Attorney Barberi argued the same points that he presented to the City Commission, and Steve Martineau argued the same points that he presented to the Commission recommending we not place it on the ballot. However, in the court hearing both sides included more references to specific case law that they felt bolstered their positions. After the oral presentations, the Judge indicated that he would take it under advisement and issue a written opinion. At this time I do not have any idea as to when he might issue an opinion.
2. State Shared Revenue
It appears that our revenue sharing will not be cut as part of the Governor's budget proposal. However, it is still a long time between now and when the state budget must be approved in September. I am sure there will be a lot of discussion in both houses about the proposed budget, and revenue sharing could still be on the table for discussion. It is nice to know, however, that we have the strong support of the Governor not to cut revenue sharing any further.
3. Fire Funding
As you know, bills have been introduced in the Senate proposing an increase in the liquor tax. This extra money would then be placed in the fire fund for distribution to eligible communities. We hope this legislation will proceed quickly through both houses. I have a meeting with Representative Caul and a member of the House Finance Committee on Friday to talk about the impact of fire funding for our operations.
4. Project 2000
There are at least three new single-family homes going up at the present time in Project 2000; one by Mike Hofer, one by Joe Olivieri, and one by a private individual in The Plains Subdivision. In addition, Village Builders have indicated they will be ready to start construction of the roads in the area east of Sweeney Street this summer. We are currently designing and preparing the bid specifications for the road that will enter into that area from Isabella next to Chase Run. There are sufficient funds available in the Project 2000 account to pay for that road construction. As you may also know, Joe is building two additional multiple-family units behind the strip mall he built along Broomfield. As Duane Ellis mentioned during our goal-setting session, the County Road Commission has indicated they would not permit any additional curb cuts from Industrial Park-South onto Isabella Road. I will prepare for your consideration at the next Commission meeting a resolution to be presented to the Road Commission indicating our strong support for the proposal.
5. Visioning/Master Plan
We have received and reviewed a draft of the results from the visioning sessions that were held as part of the Master Plan update. Staff has some questions about the report and the recommendations contained therein, and we have a meeting scheduled with the consultant for the first week in March. A draft of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan will be submitted to the Parks and Recreation Commission on February 24th. This plan will be presented to both the Planning Commission and City Commission in March.
6. Family Recreation Center
As I have indicated in earlier reports to you, the next major step in the public input process is the surveys that will be mailed to 2,000 households in the county. The consultant would like to see at least 400 responses, so if we do not get those, they will institute phone surveys to try to get the necessary statistical count to make the survey valid.
7. Goal Setting
I want to take this opportunity to thank the City Commission for committing a day to this process. We are currently in the process of compiling all of the information into a report that we will submit to you upon completion.
8. Mt. Pleasant Center
At Monday night's meeting we will be presenting you a copy of the report and recommendations from the Center Committee. As part of that recommendation we will be asking that you adopt a resolution endorsing the recommendations of the Committee. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all members of the Committee (their names are listed in the report) for the number of hours they have put into this effort. There are still a number of steps to be taken after adoption of the report, including future meetings with state and federal representatives and state community health personnel.
9. Health Consultant
As you know, both public and private employers across the nation have been experiencing increases in health care costs. While we feel we have done an excellent job in controlling our costs and structuring our program to help keep our costs down, we feel it might be good to step back and have someone look at our program and give us some ideas of how we might tweak it to make it even better. We are in the process of getting quotes from qualified firms to perform this analysis.
10. Well Building No. 1
As you know, we have a sales agreement with an individual for the purchase of that building. There have been some difficulties with issues of parking and ingress and egress from the site, but I believe those should be resolved fairly soon. Hopefully we can then proceed to the closing on this property.
11. Borden Building
There is not much new to report on this project. Tony Kulick will meet with the developers and representatives from the state regarding funds for clean-up of the site within the next few days. The developers continue to proceed with this project.
12. Capital Improvement Projects
With the award of bids for the sewer relining projects we are beginning this year's capital improvement projects. In addition to these bids, we are currently out for bids on our local street projects for 2004. We will also be out for bids in the spring for our major street projects, including Washington Street and High Street. As you may recall from the budget presentations I made in the fall, we have allocated $3.7 million this year for various capital improvement projects, particularly major and local streets, water and sewer projects. As you know, our Public Works Division does all of the engineering, bidding, and construction supervision of these projects. This is a sizable workload that involves a tremendous amount of staff time to complete within a one-year period.
13. State Wastewater Operators Challenge
I would like to take this opportunity to recognize four of our Wastewater Treatment Plant employees. Darrin Beebe, Tim Middleton, Kurt Adams and Nolan Sapyak competed in the State Operators Challenge held in Lansing. Operators Challenge is a competition between four-person teams performing various wastewater-related activities, including confined space rescue, pump repair, process control, lab analysis, and collection systems. It is a timed competition, with time penalties for mistakes or omissions. Our team won the process control section, and came very close in the safety competition. We finished second overall to Midland.
My congratulations to all the team members for doing so well at the state competition. They represented the City very well.