Water and Sewer Townhall fall’s short in Marine City

Not even a dozen people turned out

By Barb Pert Templeton

Despite the fact that water and sewer bills in Marine City could significantly increase soon, only a handful of people showed up at a recent townhall designed to explain the situation.

In fact, just nine people attended the recent Water and Sewer Townhall hosted by the city staff on Sept. 23 and five of those were members of the city commission. Mayor Jennifer Vandenbossche, Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Hendrick and Commissioners Sean O’Brien, Jacob Bryson and William Klaasen all took their seats in the audience.

When contacted by phone the day after the gathering City Manager Michael Reaves said he wasn’t so much surprised at the light turnout but rather he’d been “hopeful that there would be more interest from the public.”

Reaves has been sounding the alarm about the city’s outdated and neglected infrastructure for months now.

The townhall began with Reaves providing a bit of background on the project. The process for reviewing Marine City’s water and sewer issues began in the fall of 2024 and has continued since that time. The city received a notification from the State of Michigan regarding deficiencies in the water and sewer enterprise funds, Reaves explained.

At that time Marine City entered into an agreement with the Michigan Rural Water Association to review the city’s water and sewer rates at no cost to the city for the services.

Reaves said that for many years there has been a significant lack of structured planning related to the city’s water and sewer funds and there hasn’t been a professional study done for many years.

Over the last ten months the city staff has completed multiple facility assessment reviews looking at a minimum of 13 different facilities.

Currently work is underway at the waste water treatment facility, renovation work is being done at the water works plant and a two-year large scale water main infrastructure project is taking place. Reaves said the city has also started to address critical infrastructures – like collapsed sanitary and storm system components.

“All these factors and many others, contribute to the water sewer rates and the quality of life here in Marine City,” Reaves said.

Utility bill explained in detail

City Clerk Jason Bell stepped to the podium to explain residents quarterly water bills. He touched on commodity charges for both water and sewer, including the units being multiplied by the rate to come up with the cost. City Finance Director/Treasurer Katy Posey said the sewer commodity rate fluctuates because it’s based on meters.

Bell also shared information for ready to serve fees for both sewer and water and they are both flat rates, not based on usage it’s based on the meter size.

Bell and Posey also touched on debt services stating that there are two listed on the utility bills, again one for water and one for sewer. Bell also noted there are miscellaneous fees listed on the bills including an administration fee of $2.41, sewer storm maintenance of $3 and there’s also a flat rate of $3.62 for water monitoring. All the invoices also include an Explanation of the Billing Codes and the current water and sewer rates.

Reaves pointed out that the city operating its own waste water treatment plant is very expensive. He said the waste water treatment plant has many items in it that are 80 to 90 years old. It creates a significant infrastructure problem in terms of equipment and facilities, all that’s figured into that bill.

“Literally we’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul for a number of years and we’re spending far more for administration and operational then what we take in,” Reaves said. “Candidly, this can can’t be kicked any further down the road, you have to deal with these things now.”

Rural Water Association weighs-in

Joe VanDommelen, a water circuit rider with the Michigan Rural Water Association, did two presentations, one on water and one on sewer. He spent more than an hour explaining things and answering questions.

“This (the rate program) is not a throw a dart at a dart board and pick a number, this is all data provided from staff and historical data from the community we input it into the computer and it’s just a giant math problem,” VanDommelen said. “I input data into the math problem and at the end the program gives me an answer.”

Following a lengthy discussion on rates via a large spread sheet, a resident asked if the city was looking at a 200% increase on the meter, and VanDommelen said do you mean on the ready-to-serve to which the gentleman said yes. He then asked is the rate increase going to be from $17 to $50 and again Van Dommelen said yes, that was likely. The resident then asked “are we voting on this or is the city going to say this is what the new rate is”?

“So, this is for education of the public, we are still studying this, it still has to be fine tuned and eventually it will go before the commission,” Reaves replied. “We will present this to the commission where they would make a determination, there’d be a public hearing and an ordinance change.”

The city manager said infrastructure and its costs aren’t sexy to anybody, not like a new swimming pool which everybody loves but toilets flushing and clean water aren’t thought about until they’re not there. He said unfortunately a generation and a half have skipped doing these infrastructure improvements.

“We’re end of life with our infrastructure,” Reaves said.

VanDommelen agreed and said you can’t fix the past you just have to go forward.

To see the Marine City Water and Sewer Townhall in its entirety go to CTV Community Television on YouTube.