Harrison Township trustees approve bike path repairs, change auditors

HARRISON TOWNSHIP — At its Sept. 26 meeting, the Harrison Township Board of Trustees voted unanimously to approve repairing bike paths throughout the township.

“Some of our bike paths are newer and might only need crack sealing,” Township Supervisor Ken Verkest said. “Some of the sections have suffered significant damage due to roots and need some complete rehabilitation.”

After having an engineering firm analyze the township’s bike paths, the cost to repair the paths was estimated at $750,000, and bids for the project came in the week before the meeting.

Township Engineer David Nummer stated that one contractor, James P Contracting Inc., indicated that the work could be “substantially completed” by November. Nummer also learned that about $215,000 in grants might be available to pay for bike path work. Both developments caused the item’s late addition to the agenda.

The lone bid for the project was for $752,750. Another contractor inquired about the work but did not submit a bid.

Nummer estimated the township would have five years of good bike paths once the repairs are completed.

 

New auditor
The board unanimously approved changing the township’s auditor from UHY LLP Certified Public Accountants to Rehmann.

“We’ve received exceptional work from UHY,” Clerk Adam Wit said. “It’s not an anti-one or the other. (UHY) was one of our top selections when we were going through it at the time. It’s just that, when it got to costs, we thought we were still looking for someone new at this point and Rehmann was the selection.”

The board will contract Rehmann for three years at an estimated first-year cost of $45,000.

 

Website moving to a ‘.gov’
The board also unanimously approved a plan to acquire and maintain harrisontownshipmi.gov as the township’s website address, changing it from harrison-township.org.

The decision to change the web address was made in order to enhance the trustworthiness of Harrison Township’s online services by using the government-only .gov address rather than a commercially available .com, .org, .us or .biz address.

 

Bus drivers pay increase
On Sept. 26, the Harrison Township Board of Trustees unanimously increased the pay for municipal bus drivers to $15 per hour and $16 if the driver has a commercial driver’s license.

The increase was made in response to losing a driver due to higher paying positions in neighboring communities.