Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By CHARITY SMITH
Bessemer — The Bessemer city council will hold a special meeting at 6 p.m. on Tuesday to discuss the city’s master plan.
“We’re just in the early stages, but the master plan is the guiding plan for the city for the next five years,” said city manager Charly Loper.
The meeting, Loper said, is a “brain storming” session for the city council. However, the public is welcome to listen in and provide feedback and-or ideas to Loper directly either before or after the meeting.
The city sent out an open-ended survey to residents last year, Loper said. This year she said they are planning on sending out a more detailed survey to get people’s opinions so that the city can move forward with the plan.
One of the things the city is considering is possible millages to remove blighted houses and to fix roads, according to the city’s 2020 survey. According to the survey, the city wants “to get a general gauge of support from residents before we spend money working with engineers and attorneys to get this information on a ballot.”
The survey said the city has removed six blighted buildings since 2017, but there are many more to be removed. Each house that is blighted costs the city $17,000 to remove, and a building costs the city over $50,000 to remove, according to the 2020 survey.
The city receives between $460,000 and $563,000 from the state through gas taxes and other places for road funding, according to the survey, which accounts for the city’s entire road budget. Plowing costs the city about $340,000 a year, according to the survey. This leaves the city with about $120,000 to $240,000 for road maintenance and improvements, the survey said, for its 30.26 miles of road.
The Michigan Department of Transportation estimates it takes about $10,000 per mile of paved road per year to maintain the roads according to the survey. This means that the city needs a budget of at least $302,600 a year for road repair, which it does not have, according to the survey.
“Because we have been underfunded for so long, we have some really rough roads and will need more than $10,000 per mile to get these roads up to a decent quality,” the survey said.
The city is expecting to get even less funding this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic according to the survey. The city would receive about $30,000 from each millage passed, according to the survey.
According to the survey, every 2 mills levied would give the city enough funding to remove one to four additional structures per year depending on their size and complexity.
The council ultimately derives the master plan, Loper said, but she is responsible for writing it. The plan is due in 2022, but she said they were able to get a head start on the planning last year, as other things were moving slowly because of COVID. However, the beginning of the five years, is determined by when the plan is finalized and approved.
“I don’t have a timeline, just because it seems that every time you attempt to make a timeline during COVID it just gets thrown out the window. So we’re just moving forward on it as we have the chance, and once it is adopted it will be a five year plan,” Loper said.