Traverse City commissioners unanimously approved a $2.2 million contract Monday for design services for major improvements at the city’s wastewater treatment plant – a project initially estimated at $14.5 million that could now cost $29 million, due largely to rising construction costs and labor shortages. Commissioners Monday also discussed possible changes to the process for making appointments to city boards and committees.

Wastewater Treatment Plant
Commissioners agreed to hire Fleis & VandenBrink and Commercial Contracting Corporation at a cost of up to $2.2 million Monday to complete preliminary design work on improvements at the wastewater treatment plant. The contract, paid for by the city’s sewer fund, will cover 90 percent of the design work needed for the project and provide a guaranteed maximum cost for construction.

Planned work at the plant will cover four key areas, including addressing the beginning and ending treatment stages. That includes improving the preliminary treatment areas to reduce the amount of grit and particles making it downstream to the later treatment areas. City Director of Municipal Utilities Art Krueger said the plant’s existing grit removal equipment is obsolete and only removes about 60 percent of grit. New technology, by contrast, is effective at removing up to 95 percent of grit. That can help “reduce operating costs from removing grit further downstream,” Krueger explained.

Other work will include replacing the plant’s eight outdated primary settling tanks with two modern tanks, which will reduce energy costs. The city also needs to upgrade its primary header piping and screw pumps, as well as its UV disinfection equipment. That equipment, installed in the 1990s, has reached the end of its useful life and will be upgraded to withstand 100-year-flood levels. Krueger noted that the city is on a deadline to replace the UV system by July 2026 under an administrative consent order from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).

Krueger said staff would be looking through the design process at how to incorporate “green energy” components into the project, including low-carbon materials, energy recovery for ventilation requirements, improvements to biogas recovery, and higher efficiency motors and variable speed operations.

Work that was once estimated at $14.5 million is now estimated to come in at $29 million. Krueger said an influx of infrastructure funding has “woken every community up in the whole state” to project possibilities, resulting in a “lot of asks” for loans and grants. “It’s very competitive,” he said. “Costs have been going up very alarmingly.” There’s also a shortage of skilled contractors available to do specialized work like wastewater upgrades and a “flood of work” now available for those employees, “so it’s a challenge,” Krueger said. He said the city is applying for loan funding from the state for the project, but if it’s denied, the work will have to be bonded. Interim City Manager Nate Geinzer noted that “this project is going to happen one way or another,” adding: “I don’t see costs coming down anytime in the near future.”

Mayor Richard Lewis pointed out that the project costs will be split between the city and the township members in the plant – East Bay, Garfield, and Acme – along 55-45 lines, reflecting the percentage of the plant owned by those parties. City Attorney Lauren Trible-Laucht said the master sewer agreement between the city and townships mandates township participation in those costs. While Krueger said the townships were all aware of the upcoming work, Lewis asked to receive some kind of formal acknowledgment by the members through the Board of Public Works to ensure all parties were moving forward in a collaborative fashion on the project.

Appointment Process
City commissioners could soon approve tweaks to the process by which they appoint individuals to serve on city boards and committees.

Commissioners overhauled the appointment process in 2021 following a years-long debate over how candidates are chosen to serve on city boards. While the mayor of Traverse City has the right to appoint candidates to certain city boards, those appointments must be confirmed by the rest of the city commission. That checks-and-balances approach led to multiple contentious situations when city commissioners blocked mayoral appointments – for reasons like perceived biases in the candidate selection process or not having enough information from a mayor about why a particular candidate was chosen – while mayors bristled at having to justify appointments they saw as being within their purview under state law.

The updated rules now call for ad hoc committees to interview and select candidates, rather than leaving it solely up to the mayor to conduct one-on-one interviews. City Clerk Benjamin Marentette said Monday that when the policy was amended in 2021, it was with the understanding there’d be a review two years later to see how the new rules are working. Commissioners expressed overall support for the new process, though cited some tweaks that could help with scheduling or efficiency issues.

For example, commissioners discussed the possibility of setting fixed dates – such as the second Thursday of a month or a time directly before city commission meetings – for ad hoc interviews to take place. Having those dates broadcast in advance – instead of trying to coordinate interview times on a case-by-case basis – could make scheduling easier for both applicants and commissioners, the commission agreed. Commissioners also discussed streamlining or eliminating the interview process when a board member in good standing applies for reappointment and no other applicants are in the running. City Commissioner Linda Koebert said it could also be helpful to have a list of suggested questions from staff – such as from the city planner for a planning commission appointment – that ad hoc committee members could reference in interviews.

Marentette said he’d take the input provided by commissioners Monday and return at a future meeting with recommended tweaks to the policy for board approval.