Plymouth BPWS updated on fire at Walmart
The Plymouth board of Public Works and Safety met on Monday night. Minutes of the prior regular session and the prior executive session were approved.
Meeting time and date were kept the same as the prior year. The board will meet on the second and fourth Monday of the month at 6 p.m. at the City building, located at 124 N. Michigan Street. Any holidays that would prevent the board from meeting, those meetings would be rescheduled to another day.
Plymouth Fire Chief Rod Miller updated the board on the fire at Walmart. It occurred on Saturday night and was contained to the heating unit on the roof.
“There was no damage to the building itself, just a little bit of
water damage from below that unit,” said Miller.
Miller also thanked his department and the other local fire departments that were able to swiftly respond to the call.
He also requested to begin the hiring process for a firefighter/emt. Miller said that he has
moved a paramedic into a spot that was open so at minimum he would be looking for an EMT. The board approved the request to advertise.
Street Superintendent Jim Marquardt informed the board that the 2021 Fuel Price Agreement prices were confirmed from the quote received from Ceres Solutions at the prior board meeting. After checking fuel prices, Marquardt said that the company honored the prices that were in the original bid which were $1.97 for gasoline and $2.23 for diesel. Last year for gasoline, the price was $2.09. For diesel, it was $2.51 last year.
“So, total contract wise, that’s actually a savings of $11,100 for this year on fuel. So that’s a good thing,” said Marquardt.
He also informed the board that in the budget, there is a line item for a large 10-ton type dump truck with a snow plow and spreader. He requested approval to start the search for bids. Marquardt expects the search to take most of the spring and summer. The board approved the request.
City Engineer Rick Gaul updated the board on the Dora Lane Replacement project. In a prior meeting in December 2020, Comcast requested that the board release the financial guarantee. However, the board decided that before that is approved, a line must be removed and reinstalled correctly. Comcast had installed a cable on the wrong side of Dora Lane and not in a conduit. It had been tabled at the last meeting.
“The contractor came and basically rearranged some of the verbiage a little bit and some of the actions and basically I told him I couldn’t approve it that way, but he needed to go before the board,” Gaul explained.
The contractor was not present at the meeting.
“I think that if they’re not showing up to ask for clarification or discuss it, our position really doesn’t change. My question is if we hold that financial guarantee and they simply take no action, is this something we will be looking at correcting ourselves?” asked Council Member Jeff Houin.
Gaul replied that “if they don’t want to do it, either way we have three lines in the ground right now. I guess I would say keep the financial guarantee until a time that they decide to address it the way that the board has previously said how we want it addressed.”
It was tabled again because the contractor was not at the meeting to answer questions.
Ratification of an executive order to allow a dumpster to be placed at 100 W. Garro Street. There was a fire at that location and the dumpster would accommodate the cleanup. The board approved a motion to ratify the executive order.