By Barb Pert Templeton
The Marine City Commission meeting on Sept. 4 included a one-page agenda and 37-page meeting packet and lasted just 47 minutes. Commissioner Sean O’Brien was absent from the recent meeting.
Here are a few highlights:
Waste Water Treatment Plant gets new alarms
The Waste Water Treatment Plant in Marine City will have a new SCADA alarm system after officials okayed the purchase at a Sept. 4 meeting. City Manager Michael Reaves explained the purchase to the city commission stating that the alarm system activates high intensity speed pumps called Kennedy pumps. Having them is critical to notifications related to weather events or high intensity storms where the city needs to be aware of pumps activating or failing to operate. Reaves said he pre-budgeted for the items and he asked the commission to approve the purchase not to exceed $20,000. Officials were unanimous in their approval of the SCADA alarms.
Ordinance review up and running
The city’s Ordinance Review Committee met recently and Commissioner Jacob Bryson said things went well. Still, he said they invite the public to come to the meetings if they have any issues with any of the ordinances on the city books. “If there’s an ordinance you’ve had trouble with, something’s not right about it or maybe it’s just hard to understand please come to these meetings and let us know,” Bryson said. Should the person be unable to attend a meeting Bryson said send an email to the city or to him or call the city but find a way to let them know. He said maybe the ordinance isn’t clear or it’s out dates but just let the committee know so they can tune into that ordinance when they are reviewing things.
Marine City Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick
Water system to get new equipment
Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick said she recently attended a meeting for the water system grant the state is giving out. “We have that water system to detect any types of things coming into the river, we’ve had it for a long time and it’s on everybody’s water bill, everybody’s been paying for it,” Hendrick said. She said the plan is to replace all the equipment and it will be a minute-by-minute system. “They’ll have access to this information a lot faster than what we currently have,” Hendrick said, adding that the current system is about 15 minutes. The new system will be installed in all the plants and Marysville already has it. “It’s a lot smaller, newer, nicer, very efficient; they can get it up right on the screen and they can see it from plant to plant faster,” she said. The city will have all new equipment and will keep paying for it eventually due to the monitoring but the state will cover the cost for all the equipment to be replaced. Hendrick said she took a tour of the Marysville Plant and it was impressive. “It will come in handy in the event we have any type of spill out in the river we will finally get notified way faster once this is all installed,” she added.
Reaves clarifies capitol bonds
In late August the commission approved seeking capital improvement bonds for the sanitary sewer and waste water treatment plant but City Manager Michael Reaves said that approval neglected to include the storm system. So, the original resolution needed to be amended to include the storm system in the bonds. The commission voted in favor of amending the original resolution.
