Mulliken council holds property tax rate steady, approves new street lights and street-cleaning equipment

The Mulliken village council voted unanimously to keep the village's 2025 property tax rate unchanged at 5.1593 percent, the same level it has held for roughly 12 years. The treasurer told the council the village's budgets and bank accounts look healthy and said she did not want to raise taxes.

In routine business, the council approved the minutes of the April meeting and a set of budget adjustments for the 2024-25 fiscal year. The treasurer's monthly report covered a range of ordinary expenses, including utility and tax-software bills, the village's annual payment of about $7,687 to the Mulliken District Library millage, and roughly $1,700 for engineering survey work tied to a sidewalk project on M-43 near Dollar General. A recent tree removal near Potter, French and Foster came in more expensive than expected because the contractor needed a crane; council members noted they should get firm quotes in the future.

The council approved installing three new street lights on the east end of Eaton Highway, at a cost of about $320 per pole, after a resident's request. Trustees noted the per-pole price had risen from an earlier quote of about $100 back in April, but agreed to move forward and absorb the added electricity cost.

On village equipment, the council approved selling a piece of surplus village property for $4,500 to the only interested buyer after it had been listed for public bid. Members also voted to move forward on purchasing a new sweeper/vacuum unit and dump trailer, a purchase estimated at roughly $20,000, pending a callback to confirm the price hasn't changed. The council separately approved hiring a contractor to sweep village streets this spring, at a cost of a little over $1,000, and approved roughly $680 to have potholes patched on several village streets, including Eaton Highway and French Street. A small stock of cold-patch asphalt will also be purchased and kept on hand for emergency repairs.

Sidewalk repair work is continuing around the village. Council members said the work looks good overall, though one contractor redid a homeowner's sidewalk square at the homeowner's request beyond the approved scope; the council was clear that cost is not the village's responsibility. A resident, Tom Robinson, reported sidewalk and flag damage on his property where Consumers Energy dug up a shoulder during utility work, and the council will look at getting it repaired. Bids for the next round of sidewalk work are expected to be ready by the June meeting, and trustees asked one another to note other sidewalks around town that need attention for possible fall repairs.

At the village's sewage lagoon, a utility pole strike on Eaton Highway knocked out power and caused the backup generator to fail, but a contractor had it running again within about 45 minutes and there was no pipe break, despite an initial report of one. In tracing the system's manholes, crews determined that a pipe near the drainage ditch had been installed running backward against the natural flow; the council plans to have that corrected this fall once the current pumping cycle is finished. Separately, a plumber repaired the building's hot water heater at no charge, but warned it is old and could eventually cost several thousand dollars to replace; the council discussed budgeting for a replacement before winter.

Trustees also discussed routine lawn mowing, noting the wet spring has made it hard to keep pace, and said mowing crews are keeping up as weather allows. A rough spot on the rail crossing has been reported to the railroad, which said it would send someone to inspect it, though the council had not heard back as of the meeting.

During the public comment period, a confrontation broke out between a resident and the village president, and the resident was asked to leave the meeting. Later in the meeting, the president said he intends to pursue a personal protection order against an individual who he said has been harassing him and his wife and has made threats, and who has also questioned whether a trustee actually lives in the village. The president asked that the matter be formally noted on the record for the whole council.

In zoning matters, the zoning administrator reported that lawns and property upkeep around the village have generally improved, with fewer violations to address, and said the village plans to send a letter thanking a resident who recently cleaned up a corner lot.

Looking ahead, residents can expect sidewalk repair bids at the June meeting, work on the lagoon's drainage pipe this fall, and further discussion of hot-water-heater replacement and additional sidewalk repairs as part of fall budget planning.

How this report was produced

This article was generated by an automated pipeline, and we think you should know exactly how. First, the audio of the meeting was converted into text by automatic speech recognition — software that infers words from sound, without a human listening along. That machine-made transcript was then read by Willbot, American2Day’s AI reporter, which condensed it into the report above. No human transcribed the meeting, and no human wrote this summary.