Council approves engineering agreement with C2AE

by Angie Asam, Staff Writer

At the last meeting of the Rogers City city council an engineering agreement with C2AE for the water system and wastewater treatment facility improvements being pursued by the city through a grant with the United States Department of Agriculture ? Rural Development (USDA-RD) was tabled until more information was available.

Tuesday evening the council took the matter off the table and took action after hearing from Larry Fox, director of C2AE Gaylord operations, on the revisions made to the agreement as well as news from USDA-RD.

?I want to reassure you that your USDA-RD application is the best route you can take to get stimulus money. They are going to be using the federal dollars to give more loans and grants. You are right on track with your application. USDA has indicated to me that they may be changing some of their requirements, which could increase the grant from 20 percent to 30 percent which would lower expected rate increases on the sewer side,? said Fox.

Fox went on to tell the council that his company had revised their agreement to state that they will hold all fees until December 1, 2009 at which time the city will be expected to pay the fees with the idea that all grant funding will be in place at that time. No interest rate will be applied to the money owed until after that date.

The council unanimously approved the agreements for both the water system and the wastewater treatment plant engineering work.

Following the approval Fox also planted a seed in the minds of the council members by telling them that this possible increase in grant percentage means the city could add to the water side of the project to make it qualify for the grant as well. Right now the water system projects don?t raise the rates enough to qualify for grant funding but adding in some other projects, one of which could be the water tower, could make them qualify for grant funding, meaning the city could get more work done with little rate increase. The city agreed to begin looking at that and asked Fox to provide a cost for the water tower as they move toward a public hearing to be held on the projects on March 17.

IN OTHER CITY COUNCIL NEWS:

? A two-year contract with Quast, Janke and Company was approved as they are the company in charge of doing the city?s audit. City staff is very pleased with the work done by the company.

? The city approved the use of two of the city?s facilities on two dates subject to the groups working with the police department and city manager. The Presque Isle County Historical Museum will be holding an expanded American Indian Pow Wow and Rendezvous in Lakeside Park on Saturday, August 8. The Kiwanis Club will be using the Westminster Park on Saturday, April 11 from 7 a.m. until noon to contuct the annual Easter Egg Hunt.

? Three requests for budget considerations were received and the council made a motion that all future and current items to be considered for the budget move straight to budget workshop when received by city manager Mark Slown. The three requests came from the Nautical Festival Committee, The Rogers City Area Chamber of Commerce and The Rogers City Area Senior and Community Center.

? A 90-day contract was signed with Rene DeRoque who handles the public access programming. The contract states that the city will run the programming off of DVD?s provided by DeRoque.

? Council member Darrin D

arga, who is the council liaison to the Technology Advisory Board (TAB), asked the council to formally ask the TAB to look at the concern with the webcam at the Rogers City Marina. Have the TAB work directly with harbormaster Brian Wagner to figure out the most effective way to get the equipment working so it can be up and running this summer. He also had the idea to look at some way for the city to provide wireless Internet at the marina for the visitors to our harbor. Council passed a motion asking the city manager to ask Wagner to work directly with the TAB on the webcam issue as well as the wireless Internet.

? Professor Bill Richards provided the city council with a proposal to conduct a strategic planning and goal setting workshop with the city council. The proposal featured a cost of $2,000 plus expenses and a commitment of additional time up to eight hours. The council thought they could explore other avenues rather than incurring such a cost. Possibly something through the Michigan State University Extension office in the county or some other avenue.

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