Macomb Township Board of Trustees approves $3.4 million water project

MACOMB TOWNSHIP — With pumpkins adoring the meeting hall at the last gathering before Halloween, the Macomb Township Board of Trustees approved an extensive set of water improvements at its Oct. 23 meeting.

Set to cost $3.4 million with work beginning in 2025, the project will upgrade or add water infrastructure across the township.

“With Garfield (Road) being completed we need to install some hydrants along Garfield,” Macomb Township Land Development Director James Van Tiflin said. “There were no hydrants before (because) the water main was going through farm fields. We have a couple subdivisions that still have 6-inch water mains in them that were installed in the 1960s, so those are in need of replacement. Then we’ve got a couple of loops we need to make to connect essentially dead-end water mains, so we have more system reliability.”

The board’s approval begins the design and permit-seeking stages of the process, which will then be followed by having the project sent out for bids. Van Tiflin told trustees the projects have been bundled together in order to make the project more attractive to contractors, as some of the smaller projects have had a difficult time attracting bidders.

 

Planning application fees
Trustees approved an overhaul of the fees schedule for the Planning and Zoning Department’s various applications. Work on the overhaul involved multiple township departments to best determine what each application should cost.

“One of the goals was to treat all of our review activities consistently and fairly,” Township Supervisor Frank Viviano said. “In actuality, the initial review fee will go down because of the previous way it was analyzed. Mr. (Josh) Bocks (the township’s planning and zoning director) looked at an average number of reviews and those projects that were more difficult — that had been reviewed five, six, seven times — were dragging that average review fee up. In effect, the business owners and developers that submit plans and are attentive to detail and cause us less work will see a lower fee because they’ll pay it one time and be done, but those that have more difficult projects or make changes and come in for five or six reviews will pay a little more.”

As of Oct. 24, the updated fees could be found in the meeting packet, located in the “Agendas & Minutes” option beneath “Your Government” in the “Departments” tab of the township website.

 

Air compressor purchase
A late addition to the agenda was the purchase of a new air compressor for the Department of Public Works. According to department director Kevin Johnson, the compressor caught fire the day before the meeting while being used.

“Thankfully, everybody using it was okay,” Johnson said. “Everyone was safe, and the Fire Department was able to handle it with ease.”

As the 25-year-old compressor, in the words of Viviano, “went out in a blaze of glory” unexpectedly, the $27,460 expense to purchase a new compressor from AIS Construction Equipment was not budgeted for. The department is hoping to recoup some of the expenses through insurance and adjustments will be made to the department’s budget to compensate for the expense.