Rich LaBombard Oversees Brief Council Meeting
Resident, Bob Rowley raises concerns that the Planning Committee and CopperRock Construction are ignoring the complaints of residents in “the Rollaway community.”
By Justin Tiemeyer - contributing writer
The Lowell City Council assembled for a 30-minute meeting on Monday, October 2, with all council members present. Standing in for City Manager, Mike Burns, who was busy representing Lowell at the 2023 International City/County Manager Association (ICMA) annual conference in Austin, Texas, was Assistant City Manager/Department of Public Works Director, Rich LaBombard, who filled the position following the retirement of Dan Czarnecki. LaBombard has ample experience in the role, having served in the same position from 2016 to 2019, prior to Czarnecki’s tenure. LaBombard was largely silent and supportive during the brief meeting, primarily delivering updates on roadwork projects during the acting manager’s report, but the council was anything but
silent about LaBombard.
The council was ecstatic and on-record about their support of Rich LaBombard’s return to the City of Lowell family. Lowell Light & Power General Manager, Charlie West, started out the meeting with a presentation on public power. During the first full week in October, over 2000 municipal electric systems nationwide celebrate Public Power Week. West spoke to how fortunate Lowell has been for resisting the urge to sell Lowell Light & Power, because most communities have sold their public utility. West shared a number of statistics, like how public power is five times less likely to experience an outage, and electric rates are about 27 percent cheaper overall. Lowell Light & Power has provided $1.5 million in retail rate savings, and contributed 10 percent of the City of Lowell’s general fund, through pilot payments. Following recent storm outages across West Michigan, due to a storm cell that produced a number of tornadoes, many Lowell restaurants and businesses experienced their biggest sales the Friday and Saturday after the storm hit.
“That’s something I never thought about,” Council member, Cliff Yankovich said, “the positive economic impact, if we have power and nobody else does.” Though West gave this presentation because the calendar told him it was Public Power Week, it is all the more relevant because of another upcoming date on the calendar: the November consolidated election on November 7, 2023, where five individuals, Eric Bartkus, Jake Davenport, Mike DeVore, Jim Salzewedel, and Sharon Shah, will compete for three city council seats. At a previous council meeting, concern was raised that one of the five candidates would like to sell Lowell Light & Power, but all five candidates have since told the Lowell Ledger that they have
committed to keeping the utility public and local.
During public comment, residents, Pam and Bob Rowley, spoke out against CopperRock Construction and the conversion of the old Rollaway Fun Center building, and surrounding property, into a three-story, 44-unit apartment building with a 3,800 square foot commercial space for a restaurant. Pam expressed concern that on-street parking, in the surrounding residential neighborhood, will reduce visibility for residents pulling in and out of their driveways, claiming that businesses should have all on-site parking, which is not the case for many businesses along Main Street in Lowell. Mayor Mike DeVore explained that MDOT is ultimately responsible for the decision to add or remove parking spots, but the city would have to do the leg work ahead of time. Later, Pam returned to the podium to explain that she has spoken with MDOT, and the city can make this decision without asking MDOT. Bob listed some concerns about parking ordinance, but his main concern was that neighbors, in what the Rowleys described as “the Rollaway community”, are being ignored. At Planning Committee meetings, residents were initially told they would have five minutes to speak, but when the meeting took place, this was reduced to three minutes. Furthermore, neighbors were asked not to speak about the same concerns more than once, which disrupted the prepared testimony of a number of concerned citizens. “I think it’s a big problem,” Bob said, “and ignoring it is the wrong thing to do.”
Mayor DeVore explained that comment was limited to three minutes, when he was first elected, and he ran on being accessible and transparent, and the council subsequently lengthened public comment to five minutes. However, he does not have the power to set expectations for other boards. Council member, Leah Groves, commented that different expectations for different meetings may be unnecessarily complicated for residents looking to engage in the political process, and Mayor DeVore suggested getting all of the board chairs together in order to come up with a uniform procedure. The only agenda item the council entertained was a request by Police Chief, Christopher Hurst, to sell the department’s three Remington Model 870 pump-action shotguns, in order to earn money to put toward a patrol rifle for officer Fredi Raymundo, who was sworn in at the previous council meeting. Nobody in the department qualified with these shotguns this year, because nobody carries these weapons with them on patrol. Council member, Jim Salzwedel, asked what the advantage was for officers to use a patrol rifle rather than a shotgun. Chief Hurst explained that the AR-15 style rifles are accurate to a distance of 300 yards and can penetrate armor. Furthermore, the shotguns carry five rounds, whereas the rifles carry 28. The council approved the sale of the three shotguns.
Chief Hurst also reported 128 traffic stops during the month of September, an uptick from previous numbers that came about as a result of traffic-stop quotas the department mandated in response to public concerns about speeding throughout the city. Chief Hurst also intends to download electronic speed-sign data every three months in order to shed some more light on the city’s speeding problems. Council member, Marty Chambers, celebrated the results from the police department’s quota as a sign that the police are doing the right thing. Just prior to the end of the meeting, resident, Beryl Bartkus, came to the podium to get an update about the museum steps. After the money the city put into repairing the steps, she was concerned with the stymied progress and the quality of the pillars. Council member, Chambers, explained that the pillars were not built tall enough, so they had to be extended, and all of this delayed the completion of the progress. Bartkus asked for a timeline on the completion of the project, to which Council member, Salzwedel responded, humorously, “Hopefully, by election.”
The next City Council meeting will take place on Monday, October 16, 2023 at 7:00 pm. Those interested in watching the October 2 meeting can find it on the City of Lowell YouTube channel, @cityoflowell. The agenda can be found at the City of Lowell home page, lowellmi.gov.
