By: Dean Vaglia | Macomb Chronicle | Published October 25, 2023
MACOMB TOWNSHIP — The 104-year-old township hall will soon be electrified, as the Macomb Township Board of Trustees approved an underground easement for DTE at its Oct. 11 meeting.
“Now that town hall is in its new home, we need to bring power to it,” Macomb Township Supervisor Frank Viviano said. “We’re working with DTE to locate a new pedestal main service coming in off of Broughton Road, and this is the easement we need to put that pedestal in place.”
The 12-foot-wide easement runs along the western side of Broughton Road, giving DTE the space to install underground electrical lines and a transformer.
Having the old township hall electrified will allow it to serve as a venue for historical artifacts and events, such as special township board meetings or seasonal events.
“We envision when we have our holiday event decorating the interior historically like a 1919 Christmas and having Santa greet kids in the old town hall,” said Leon Drolet, township treasurer.
There is still much to be done to make the township hall functional. Much of that work and the needed materials are being donated. Upcoming parts of the restoration include replacing the current vinyl siding with wood and building a period-accurate porch. Longer-term projects through donations include building a garden around the old township hall. The garden will include plants native to Macomb Township, many of which have not grown in the area for over a century.
“We were donated chestnut trees, which are pretty much extinct in Michigan,” Drolet said. “They used to comprise about 20% of the forest coverage in Michigan. There’s a company out in west Michigan that has been developing disease-resistant chestnut trees. … There probably hasn’t been a chestnut tree alive in Macomb County, and in much of Michigan, in the last 50 years.”
Nethanya Fonseka, a Macomb Township resident and the founder of the tree-planting organization Plant it Forward, and another resident who is a Michigan State University master gardener are currently planning the garden with input from a Wiegand’s Nursery landscape designer, according to Drolet.
Broughton Road visioning project
In order to better visualize the township’s expansion, trustees awarded consulting firm OHM Advisors $28,000 to develop 3D and 2D models of the future Broughton Road corridor.
Reimbursed in part by a $23,750 grant from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, the model will focus on the span between 24 Mile Road and its current endpoint near Township Hall.
“We want the best possible product for what we can afford under the grant with a little bit of assistance from the township, mostly because we want to use it as a platform to seek other grant opportunities,” Viviano said, regarding the decision to get a 3D model. “Senator (Veronica) Klinefelt got us $5 million, so we think this project really lends itself to some other grant options that are out there. We really want to paint the picture for the people who are evaluating these grants.”
Projects OHM has worked on include the Auburn Road Reconstruction and Streetscape in Rochester Hills, and the restoration of Brandenburg Park’s shoreline in Chesterfield Township.
Election workers pay increase
With early voting on the horizon in 2024, trustees have voted to set $18 as the hourly pay rate for early voting election inspectors.
Macomb Township Clerk Kristi Pozzi said the $18 wage will keep the township competitive when election inspector hiring season comes around. Early voting election inspectors are being paid $18 per hour during Oakland County’s pilot early voting program, and the state will reimburse communities for early voting inspectors up to $15 per hour.
Election day precinct supervisors received a $50 increase to $350 per day.