Mulliken council shifts money between funds to erase road account deficit, approves Thriftway canopy variance

Mulliken's village council opened the year by tackling a bookkeeping problem years in the making: the local road fund has been running a deficit while other village accounts quietly covered its bills. Acting on the treasurer's recommendation following the annual audit, the council approved a series of transfers designed to bring every fund back into balance before the fiscal year closes.

The treasurer explained that the sewer fund owed the general fund roughly $37,000 and the major road fund owed about $136,000, debts built up over years of splitting paving costs between funds. The council voted to have the sewer and major funds repay those debts to the general fund. It then approved moving $100,000 from the general fund to the local road fund, which currently owes the village about $88,000 and has been sitting in a deficit of nearly $30,000. The treasurer stressed the money is a transfer, not a loan — local road won't be required to pay it back — and said the moves are needed to satisfy state auditors, who don't allow any fund to close the year in the red. Once complete, local will still have roughly $69,000 in reserve. The treasurer noted the general fund will end up well over $250,000, a threshold that draws state scrutiny, and floated putting some of that money into a certificate of deposit until it's needed for upcoming repairs.

Board members also approved the treasurer's report and voted to move exclusively to emailing meeting minutes to trustees going forward, ending the previous mix of email and mail delivery.

Looking ahead to next year's budget, due for final approval in March, trustees traded ideas for spending priorities. Several raised concerns about deteriorating and root-heaved sidewalks around town, particularly a stretch in front of the Dollar General that has been held up waiting on paperwork from a bank holding the property's easement. Members also discussed extending sidewalk along Eaton Highway, repairing collapsing catch basin castings on Main Street, repaving French Street, adding flower pots around the village, and either buying or renting Christmas decorations — with one option being a company that installs and removes seasonal lighting for a fee rather than requiring the village to store its own. Other ideas included relocating the old church bell to the pavilion and eventually adding a shuffleboard or pickleball court there.

In zoning business, the council approved a variance allowing a canopy at the Mulliken Thriftway's planned fuel station to sit 10 feet from the sidewalk instead of the standard 30-foot setback. A second variance request, to reduce the number of required parking spaces at the same site, was tabled until the applicant's design firm delivers finished parking drawings. A separate accessibility-related request at the site was treated as a distinct zoning matter to be taken up separately.

The council also approved rezoning a Main Street building from commercial to residential at the request of its owner, a resident who wants to live there and add a wheelchair ramp to the front entrance. The village's attorney had advised that rezoning, rather than a straight variance, was the appropriate path when accessibility needs are involved; the ramp itself will still require its own variance review once plans are submitted.

On traffic safety, trustees learned the county sheriff's radar speed-display sign has been taken down for the winter because its battery won't hold a charge in the cold — an issue also affecting a similar sign in a neighboring township. Trustee Brandon Lambrix researched an alternative: a solar-powered speed sign used in Grand Ledge that costs about $3,800, with free cloud data tracking in its first year and a $500 annual fee after that. He agreed to gather more information, including pricing for a spare battery pack and whether the device can store data locally in addition to the cloud.

Officials also discussed ongoing problems with dilapidated buildings around the village, including one property where the building department has been reluctant to act despite a court order allowing inspection. A recent sludge assessment at the sewer system came back better than expected for its age, and the treasurer said she's identified contacts who can help pursue grant funding for lift-station upgrades, and that switching to a full audit every other year — with a lighter review in between — could save the village around $7,000 in alternating years. The Eaton County Sheriff's Department reported five calls for service in the community during the month, including a larceny, a malicious-animal complaint, a suspicious-situation call and a traffic stop.

During public comment, a resident argued that landlords, not the village, should be responsible for providing parking for tenants rather than letting them park on the street. Another resident complained about garbage and animal feeding creating unsanitary conditions at a nearby property, saying it has drawn a growing number of stray cats and asked the village to intervene. A resident also revived a suggestion from a prior meeting to add a shuffleboard or pickleball court near the pavilion.

The meeting closed on a contentious note. A resident said two trustees had gone to a mechanic who recently opened a shop in town and warned him against working with him, and accused the pair, whom he named as Will Simon and Bob McCausey, of undermining local businesses' willingness to work with the village. Both trustees denied the allegation, and the exchange grew heated before the council voted 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.