City of Davison, Michigan

One of the great things about local fire services is the little things that add up in the end.
Here, two of Davison/Richfield area firefighters spend some time talking to very young kids about what to do in case a fire should ever occur at their school or at home.

When you think about it, it is a conversation we should all have with our children. Here in Davison we spend a lot of time on fire prevention. The more people that are aware of safety issues the safer our community can be. Accidents are called accidents because they are accidental (now there’s some clear logic for you). Nobody plans for there to be a fire in their house (not legally).

What happens in an emergency situation? Most adults panic. What about the kids? Well they get darn right scared and what do kids do when they are scared? Hide.

Here firefighters Ray and Andrew do a great job of explaining why they should not hide from firemen if there is a fire in their house. They also reviewed some key phrases with the munchkins, like:

• “Don’t hide, get out side.”
• “Stay low and get to the window”

Of course what would a visit from the fire department if the kids didn’t get to climb on, over, or through a fire truck? You could see the imagination on some of their faces. They could see themselves racing to a fire.

Hey, maybe visits like this will encourage future generations of firefighters?

The timing happened to be great. I set off our home smoke detector (on purpose) while our three girls were up stairs this past Sunday (really, this time I did it on purpose). I was very impressed my wife and daughters all made it out of the house and to our designated regrouping spot in 45 seconds. I even blocked the easiest exit. I can’t wait to do it about 3 in the morning…

It was hard to find parking on Main Street Friday afternoon to early evening. The downtown merchants hosted a two hour block for little goblins and super heroes to go door to door picking up treats.

The rules were simple, if a store had the orange sign on the door they were giving out candy, no orange sign they got passed by. Luckily for the kids there was very good participation from the merchants.

Even some “older” folks dressed up as well as some merchants. This is a great way for merchants to get exposure to the public.

The City of Davison has a lot of neat events like this throughout the year. If you have never attended any of them, you don’t know what you are missing. Families walking together, kids laughing, and neighbors sharing some good memories.

Wow that could be a song… But in Davison it was a historic event as the Davison Gas and Oil Building was brought down yesterday. As you can see from the pictures the building was not in great shape, but once housed a host of business in Davison.

City council has been keeping their eye on this property and has wanted this building brought up to code or removed.

Local lore report that several things happened in this building ranging from the Davison wooden bath tub factory, to the Davison carriage factory, to this was Paul Bunyan’s first play house long before his lumberjack days up the road in Bay City ( but who knows how these stories start?).

This morning in the heavy fog Colleen Hackney and I got to take a morning trip to the Village of Goodrich. Goodrich is located just about five miles to our south on M-15 (State Street in Davison). Goodrich residents, elected officials and employees have worked hard and it shows.

Board members representing communties
along the 82 mile linier communty meet
to discuss common efforts.

You know when you reach Goodrich. They have worked to have non-motorize routes (what we use to call side walks) on each side of M-15. The length of the Village is highlighted with a more historic street light (rather than the less welcoming cobra overhead lighting).

They have recently built a new Village Hall. This is where we had our monthly Heritage Route meeting this morning. The Village use to work out of rented space and they had very little of it.
For those who aren’t aware, a village form of government is different than either a township or a city. For the most part they are closer to a city form of government, but must work very close with their surrounding township(s). Village residents participate in both village and township governments, which is a good way to get double representation, but they also pay taxes to both entities. Villages normally give that extra layer of service that townships don’t have to provide (e.g. snow removal and street maintenance).

Anyway, our meeting of the Heritage Route went well. We have a group of communities along M-15 that have created a linear community of 82 miles. M-15 runs from Clarkston (in the south) to Bay City (in the north). We have written grants, done promotions and festivals and helped one another through various projects.

One project that is getting off the ground is our M- 15 webpage. A lot of neat small communities don’t have the resources to utilize the technology that is now available. But, together we can share the burden to help tell the Heritage Route story.

If someone from the south is heading north I have an idea for you. Get off of I-75 (which is the heaviest traveled north/south highway in the state) at the Clarkston exit. Then continue your trip north all the way through historic Bay City. Take your time and head through villages like Ortonville and Goodrich. If you time your trip right you might hit Ortonville’s Septemberfest or Goodrich’s Goodtimes in Goodrich Days. You can continue up through Davison where we have a little of everything; From a wide variety of eating spots to Abernathy Regional Park where you can enjoy miles of trailways or a nice picnic.

As you continue north you wind through the villages of Otisville and Millington. Otitsvills is the one with an event centered around buffalo and you can’t miss Millington’s bright yellow smiley face water tower. Going further north you get into the pine cork area of Vassar. A neat community nuzzled along the Cass River. Further north gets more rural as you pass through farm land and smaller crossroad communities with mom & pop restaurants like in Richville.

Finally you will reach Bay City, a famous logging community where legends like Paul Bunyan were born.

Received an email this morning from our City Clerk, Cindy Payton.

“Hey Pete,
I read this article and found it interesting….” The article she was referring was in yesterday’s Flint Journal on the City of Fenton creating a web page. Fenton is in the process of creating a web page and hope to have it up and running in 2006.

According to the article the city of Fenton will pay Creative Web Spinner of Fenton $19,800 to set up the Web site and $650 per month to maintain it. Cindy is not the only one who has mentioned this article to me.

Most people I spoke with have a common thread in their questioning. The question start out with something like “That seems expensive, doesn’t it?” and eventually goes into “How much do we pay?”

The City of Davison has done our web site in-house since about 2000. Dennis Miller, our director of building services, has been our in-house guru. We have utilized off the shelf software and have tweaked the site to make improvements. Our annual cost is around $600.

Our site has been about 26,000 visitors. A big improvement was when we put our property files on the site. Now realtors can get most of the public information they need from their own offices. This also frees up office staff time that use to have to get the information on property from any inquiry.

This brings us back to the question of “is $20,000 to much to spend on developing a web site?” My definitive answer is, it depends. It sounds like from what Chris Wren is stating they are going to be a fully interactive site where people can do business with the city 24/7. If that is the case, I know you couldn’t staff city hall 24/7 for $20,000 per year, yet alone a one time shot.

Times have changed. (remind you of a previous blog?)

Cities across the State of Michigan are all challenged with “doing more with less $$$$”. So this might lead to the next generation of services that we can provide and the cost benefit might work out better that one thinks.

One idea that I would like to see is e-billing. Can you imagine what cost savings in postage alone if we could electronically send out bills for water and sewer every month?

Ah… The future of governmental service is going to be exciting.

“Where’s your blog?” Mayor Rappuhn emailed this afternoon. “I didn’t get my afternoon fix of what is going on.” Fred continued.

It is great to hear comments like that from people who keep up to date on the blog site. I must admit I had concerns about starting the blog and the responses I would get. I hear some negative information from political pundants about presidential or congressional mis deeds, rumor mill blogs, or just darn right mean and nasty comments.

We have rolled right on with this adventure, and I thought today I’d share some progress on a few things in the city and not stick to anything specific.

I&I.

The Pilot program for Inflow & Infiltration on Flint Street has started. Sidewalks are being tore up and the residents are getting prepared for the work to be done. Matt Sytek, from our DPW’s Water Department, is seen here marking existing water lines so the contractors don’t create an issue to on going water service.

Davison Gas & Oil Building.

The final preparations are being made before this old building finally comes down. The local papers have been keeping watch on this and keep reminding me that this building should have come down twenty some years ago. We don’t know what is going to happen to the property after demolition, but at least we know we won’t have a dangerous building on our hands.

City Council Workshop

I was right when predicting a marathon of a meeting, but it was very informative and productive. A couple of highlights were:

• Colleen Hackney’s Powerpoint presentation on about a half dozen projects that are all coming together. These range from Streetscape, to infrastructure, to Facade Grants, a new municipal center and even more public gatherspace.
• The Braidwood manor complex discussing a Payment in lieu of Taxes Ordinance with City Council. Very healthy and respectful brainstorming on coming up with a win-win senerio.
• Police Chief and City council discussing on new ways to fund a Police Department.

DPW Leaf Pick-Up

Should be in full swing, if we could get mother nature to cooperate. Late October and most of the leaves are still in the trees. This can create a big challenge for our DPW if we get early November snow and we still have leaves on the street.

Blog numbers:

In four months of operating this blog site there have been over 1,700 visitors and over 35,000 hits. Thank you who read the updates. This month we are averaging 37 visitors every day.

And yes Mayor, I am doing a blog today.

About a month later than planned we are finally ready to start the disconnection portion of the I/I Pilot Program. I have blogged about this topic a few times already. Sunday’s Davison Flagstaff writer Jerry Ernst did a good article on where we are at and what we hope to learn.

As I mentioned in the other blogs, we are not alone in this challenge. The City of Slurry in Vancouver, Canada is also going through this process.

Our City Engineer from Rowe, Inc. (Leanne Panduren) left me a message this weekend that all the paperwork is in order with Unity Construction so we can start tomorrow.

Alexandria, Virginia also has a lot of information on their project and process. No matter what size a community is we all face similar challenges in dealing with these type of issues. There is never enough money. Educating people of not only what we are doing, how we plan to do it, but also why we have to or should do without the federal mandates. This is one reason that you will keep seeing blogs on our progress. The more people who are informed about what we are doing the better off we will all be.

Here is a picture of down spouts

That are tied directly into sanitary sewers.

“Downtown will never be like it use to” Chuck, from Chuck’s Barbershop explained to me. “You are probably right.” I responded to keep the conversation going. “You can try you’re Farmer’s Markets, Car Cruises and Festivals, but it won’t work. Downtown use to be hopping on Friday nights. The farmers would come in from the fields after a hard weeks work, sell their stuff and then spend their money right in town.”

You can probably go in any Barbershop across the country and hear similar reflections about good ol’ yesteryear. The above conversation happened about three years ago.

You know Chuck was right. Downtown will never be like it use to. Times change. Farmers don’t flock downtown on summer Friday nights. In fact it is probably harder to find a dozen working farms five miles from the city than it was just twenty years ago. Times have changed. Some people may not realize that we no longer have a Livery Stable downtown, there used to be one right next to City Hall. Of course that’s when City Hall sat where Second Street hill is today (next to where Michigan Secretary of State Office is). Times have changed.

The first time the City of Davison burnt down the fire department came by train from Flint, 10 miles to the west. The train doesn’t stop in Downtown any more. The carriage shop use to make horse drawn carriages downtown, now Davison Computers build computers downtown.

Times have changed. Friday nights downtown in the summer will find the streets filled with a couple hundred classic and hot rod cars.

Before last Friday’s “Do-Da Parade” I heard a couple of comments on how attendance was going to be down. With a home varsity football game where we could cinch at least a share of the Big 9 Title and Saint Johns Church with their annual Fish Fry, there is no way our community could support three main events.

Well times have changed.

• Huge crowd for football game, estimated around 5,000.
• Fish Fry sold close to 2,000 dinners
• One of the largest turnouts for Do-Da Parade, 4 deep the entire route.

Some times change is hard, but it always happens. We at the City of Davison are committed to staying up to speed with changes while still maintaining that small town atmosphere.

Pulled into the parking lot of city hall just after 6:30 this morning. Wait, is that Scott’s truck, he’s not in his DPW truck, but his own vehicle. Scott gets out and walks to the door. He must tell the confusion by the look on my face “Meeting Joann and Brian here to go for training update.” That’s right they are going to an update in Ann Arbor today on the Sensus hand held water meter readers. I should have remembered that. Scott informed us of that at the Departmeent Head meeting on Monday. I would love to be able to change out all of our meters and go to a mobile truck read system. We would then be able to read every water meter in the city in a day. Just takes money, and that we don’t have any extra these days.

As Scott waited for his crew to show up I was able to talk with him about some items I found out at the County Drain Commission office yesterday.

Dropped my lap top off and started the equipment in the offfice, including the coffee maker.

Started compiling the list of things to go on the City Council Workshop for this coming Monday. Wow, 12 items, going to be another marathon, but lots of good topics that need to be worked out. There is actually a little of everything on the list, from a PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) proposal to how can we fund our Police Department. Throw in updates from Community Development and the Senior Authority with a healthy discusion on our nepotism policy and I think we will have a great workshop.

I was going to get right to the Blog, but put it off to compile notes for Monday’s workshop.

A rap on the door got my attention, Colleen poked her head in and brought me up to speed on our Act 99 Installment Purchase. This one is going to be close on getting the deals closed next week. Alot of this will be on the timing between getting the legal paper work from our bond counsel of Miller Canfield Padock and Stone and getting the bank’s paper work done so the finances are ready for closing.

After four phone calls and six emails I met with Colleen to check on the update she will give on Community Development and our Council Workshop. Where does the time go, Cindy P. advises me my 11:00 meeting with the Davison Index is waiting.

After a brief update with Monica from the local paper on our I/I Pilot Project I get a chance to discuss a possible single lot assesment for a utility hook up with Cindy V. and Andrea.

12:30, oh shoot, I told my lovely bride Jennifer and daughter Tess I was going to be home for lunch at noon. After some great home made tomato soup and chicken pita wraps I get to take my youngest daughter back to work with me while mom takes a quick trip to the Doctor. I take Tess on a drive through the city, taking notes on code enforcement and possible/probable projects. Looking over my shoulder I see she has a color book out drawing with crayons “look Dad, I’m writing just like you.” I look on the center council and there is my pad of paper with all my notes. Geez, how many two year olds get this type of on the job training.

I take Tess back to the office, the ladies in the front office would kill me if I didn’t let them tease her, me or both. Back to my office and the Mayor drops in to bring me up to speed on two things he’s working on. The Mayor ask Tess if I bought her a Pony from Pumplinfest.

Okay, times up, Take Tess back to mom. Exchange complete and sucessful.

Dennis updates me on some code enforcement action and some challenges in dealing with the county on soil erossion permits.

Colleen’s computer is not cooperating (is it male or female…no not going there). Move to Plan B. Okay that is moving forward.

Conference call with our attorneys on a few issues.

Download some stuff for Colleen (remember plan B?). 5:15 pm, Colleen is still working, tell her to go home (she does not listen).

Call from wife from home, Tess not feeling well, a trip to after hours urgent care coming on.

Arrange for older daughter to pick up freshman daughter after basketball game.

So it’s 11:00 pm and I still have not blogged yet, guess it will have to wait until Friday.

Flags are flying is not an uncommon phrase to be used here in “the City of Flags”. But on this October day we are talking about a different type of flag that’s flying. The “Miss Dig” signs are signs to let people know there is going to be some digging going on along the west end of Flint Street.

This is all part of our I & I Pilot Program. Each color flag represents a different utility that is buried in the ground. When a contractor finds a flag they know that they are within a 1 1/2 feet of the utility and should hand dig.

Anytime property owners are doing their own projects people should call Miss Dig @ 1-(800)-482-7171 three days prior to the project.

Michigan’s Utility Flag Color Code looks like this:

Red Electric
Orange Telephone; Cable TV; Fire and Police Communications
Yellow Gas and Oil
Green Storm Drains
Blue Water Systems
Brown Sewer Systems
Pink Surveying

The City Council awarded the contract to Unity Construction out of Burton, we have had our pre-construction meeting and we hope to start work in the next week or so. Our hope is that we can have this project wrapped up in two months.