Mulliken council opts to borrow radar speed sign from county sheriff rather than buy one

The Mulliken village council approved the minutes of the prior meeting and the treasurer's report without discussion of any irregularities. Treasurer Kelli Waldo told the council that property tax collections were running at roughly half of what's owed, with another chunk — described as about 10 percent of the village's total — having just come in. She reported no unusual expenditures for the period aside from routine sewer repairs, which were covered under the village's preventive maintenance contract.

Speeding complaints drove much of the meeting's new business. Trustees had researched buying a radar speed-display sign for the village, with price quotes running from roughly $3,000 to $6,000 for a stationary unit and $8,000 to $12,000 for a trailer-mounted version. Rather than spend that much, the council said it would take up an offer from the county sheriff's department to borrow a radar sign for two-week stretches at a time, moving it around town as needed. The council also discussed, and rejected, the idea of adding a stop sign near the Main Street/Charlotte Highway area, noting it sits too close to a railroad crossing to be effective.

During public comment, residents said the existing speed-warning signage does slow drivers down right where it's posted, but that some cars speed back up once past it. A resident at 267 Charlotte Highway asked that the borrowed radar sign be set up near their address for its first two-week trial, and the council agreed.

On sidewalks, the village plans to repair damaged sections, including at least one spot where a fallen tree left a stump that still needs to be removed before repair crews can move in. Trustees also discussed permitting and other paperwork tied to nearby sidewalk and tree work near a planned business site on Charlotte Street.

In committee reports, trustees said a contractor, Iron Horse, is expected to replace a catch basin soon and was asked to also check a problem sewer or water line on Eaton Highway. The maintenance report noted storm cleanup was completed and new signage was posted at both ends of Charlotte Highway. Trustees said Mulliken came through recent severe weather better than neighboring communities, noting Potterville reportedly went five days without power and that several small tornadoes were reported in the area, including one in Williamston.

Vandalism at the village park pavilion was also discussed: at least one bench and a picnic table were recently damaged, and camera footage wasn't able to identify who was responsible because of gaps in coverage. Trustees discussed adding a camera or repositioning an existing one for better coverage and posting warning signage near the pavilion and a nearby stockpile area.

A proposed gas station and convenience store on Charlotte Street drew extended discussion, though no representative of the project attended the meeting. Trustees raised concerns about fencing or a curb around the fuel tanks, traffic flow and visibility near the pumps, and said the project would likely need parking variances under village ordinance, along with addressing lighting and noise. Trustees also discussed a state rule barring a single site from selling both gas and hard liquor, noting a past local business worked around that rule over several years by operating under two separate licenses.

The council also reviewed general ordinance-violation complaints, most involving overgrown lawns, and said it would ease up temporarily given recent storm damage. A tense, unrelated neighbor dispute was raised, with the council saying that while it takes citizens' safety concerns seriously, the matter is a police and civil-court issue rather than something the council can act on directly. Trustees said neighbors who feel unsafe could sign a petition or affidavit and take the matter to a judge, who could order a safety evaluation.

No village police representative was present at the meeting, as only two officers were on duty that night. A report for the prior month described a quiet stretch: one unknown 911 call, one abandoned vehicle, three assist-citizen calls, one civil complaint, two follow-ups, a retail fraud case, a retail embezzlement case, a suspicious situation, a suspicious subject, a traffic violation, and one other vehicle-related incident.

On the ongoing salt storage building project, trustees said costs are coming in well under the roughly $30,000 that had been budgeted, citing rough material costs in the range of a few thousand dollars. The council also discussed adding warning signage near the site given reports of children playing on the salt pile.

The meeting closed with a motion to adjourn.

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.