With the FishPass project on hold due to an ongoing legal battle, Traverse City commissioners will vote tonight (Monday) to hire an engineering firm for nearly $ 135,000 to oversee Union Street Dam for security risks. Commissioners will also vote on the official adoption of the Strategic Plan for a Healthier Drinking Culture and the approval of contracts with outside firms to redesign the city’s website and provide technical plans for laying a sewer through downtown Traverse City.
Surveillance of the Union Street Dam
Commissioners will vote tonight on a contract for up to $ 134,600 with AECOM engineering firm to oversee Union Street Dam. City Public Services Director Frank Dituri said that the planned $ 19.3 million dam rebuilding as part of the FishPass project is experiencing delays beyond the control of the city due to a pending litigation in the Michigan Court of Appeals and currently no determinable length. ”Dituri notes that a recent state inspection of the dam“ has downgraded the dam’s rating to moderate to poor ”and that“ in order to maintain public safety it is necessary to use engineering firms to monitor the condition of the dam ”. . “
AECOM is the design team in charge of the FishPass project and “put a lot of time and effort into collecting and interpreting data in order to design the entire project, including the dam,” said Dituri, who added the company’s “expertise and familiarity with it.” “Says project makes them the best choice for providing surveillance services.” If the contract is approved, one of AECOM’s first tasks will be to conduct a topographical survey of the dam and install 10-15 monuments on the dam to identify movements and Monitor and track settlements. As the dam’s overflow capacity has been determined to be inadequate under Michigan Dam Safety Regulations, AECOM will examine options such as lowering dam barriers before storms to reduce the inadequate overflow capacity. “Changes to the structural design will not be taken into account, but a reduction in capacity due to clogging or closure of the fish ladder will be considered,” AECOM suggests.
Other tasks include monitoring the condition of old trees along the river dam, which pose risks from pipeline routes along tree path systems and the risk of losing a section of the dam in the event of a tree fall. The state inspection report stated that “all trees should be removed from the embankments to the abutments”. AECOM recommends leaving trees in place until the status of FishPass is cleared, but will monitor the condition of trees over the coming months and recommend their timely removal if they show signs of deterioration or FishPass is indefinitely delayed.
Other surveillance services planned by AECOM include performing a three day immersion inspection in both the downstream and upstream submerged parts of the structure, assessing areas of concrete showing significant deterioration and recommending either immediate repairs “or repairs as soon as the FishPass future” is to be fixed, or if the delay is longer than 12 months. ”AECOM will make similar recommendations as to whether immediate repairs are needed to fill gaps in the dam’s sheet piling. Overall, the company said it will “conduct quarterly monitoring of the dam and instructions to city officials for more frequent monitoring” for the next year in an attempt to keep an eye on any immediate repairs or safety risks to the structure until the future of FishPass is more clear.
Strategic plan for a healthier drinking culture
City commissioners will vote tonight to formally adopt the Strategic Plan for a Healthier Drinking Culture, a document outlining short and long term action steps to be taken by the City of Traverse City, the TC Downtown Development Authority and the Traverse City Police Department to improve the community culture related to alcohol consumption. The plan is the result of a month-long public submission process that included a community survey with 1,130 responses and multiple focus groups, as well as one-on-one interviews with liquor license holders, business owners, employees and healthcare professionals.
After reviewing a draft plan with the commissioners last month, consulting firms Statecraft and Parallel Solutions made several changes to create the final recommended plan that commissioners will vote on tonight. These changes include adding “more positive language” to indicate that the community “has the opportunity to build on their strengths and opportunities and improve their drinking culture”. The final draft also states that while many steps for action are recommended that public and private sector partners could assist with implementation or support, the document is specifically designed for the city, DDA and TCPD and that “actions are tailored to this what these three public bodies are ”. best positioned to implement with existing capacities and resources. “
In addition to the actions previously identified, such as updating Traverse City’s liquor regulations and approval processes, working on a guideline for drinking tour operators, and improving downtown lighting and security cameras, new steps in the final draft include incorporating the strategic plan into the City master plan Update and consultation with Grand Traverse County on how “Grand Traverse County’s Department of Health and Attorney General’s plan to be involved in the Healthier Drinking Culture project in the future, and what possible roles each entity could play.
City contracts
Commissioners will vote tonight to approve two additional contracts with outside firms – one to redesign the city’s website and one to provide engineering services for a main sewer relocation project. After a request-for-proposal (RFP) was published to revise the city’s website, a committee examined and interviewed potential suppliers from 17 submitted bids. Employees recommend hiring Traverse City-based Flight Path Creative at a cost of $ 28,500 plus $ 600 per year for storage / access for five years and up to $ 5,000 per year for development assistance. According to RFP, the city is seeking “to develop a new, service-oriented website with a unique design for easy navigation that will demonstrate our special community and brand identity for future communication”.
The commissioners will also consider contracting Hubbell, Roth & Clark to provide engineering services for a project to route a 24-inch plumbing sewer along the river wall between Union and Cass Streets on the 100 block of Front Street. Moving the pipe south in the alley away from the wall reduces the risk of catastrophic sewer failure that could occur if the retaining wall tilts or moves. According to the director of Stadtwerke Art Krueger, “the site conditions between the wall and the sidewalk have deteriorated at an alarming rate with increasing settlement and sidewalk instability problems”. One store on the 100 block had a sewer failure, and the area is showing “elevated settlements, which increases concern,” says Krueger.
With the city recently granted government funding to repair the water infrastructure, including the retaining wall and sewer, Krueger recommends that the city “move quickly” to finalize the technical plans for the pipeline installation with a possible construction in the spring of 2022 and then stabilize the river Wall at the 200 block between Cass and Park Streets, as the sewers in this area will remain along the wall. This stabilization project could take place next fall. Krueger says the block of 100 wall could also be stabilized, or the city could remove it entirely as part of a possible redesign of the area’s green spaces as part of the Lower Boardman River Unified Plan.
Pictured: the location of Union Street Dam prior to the construction of the FishPass (left); Rendering of the site with the created FishPass (right)
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