Not often are we able to reconstruct our main roads in the City, so it was exciting to be able to start the process of reconstructing all of Kelly Road from 8 Mile to 10 Mile. This portion was northbound from Stephens to 10 Mile. It was approved by City Council on June 2, 2015.
To better handle the fiscal priorities of our retirement system, the City Council voted in 2013 to move the funds from a local account administered by the City Employees' Retirement System Board of Trustees to the Municipal Employees' Retirement System (MERS). The Ordinance can be found here. MERS administers Defined Benefit and Definted Contribution plans, and those plans were moved to this third-party system. The City finished the final steps on May 12, 2015.
Previous to this motion, the City had no procurement cards (credit cards) to purchase needed supplies. Issues frequently arose when something could be purchased online, and the vendor did not allow us to invoice them for purchase. I proposed to our City Administration that we obtain procurement cards so that we can more easily buy supplies, and also save time and money in the process. This motion allowed us to do so.
There are roughtly 100 miles of road in Eastpointe. A very large percentage of the roads are side streets. It is very expensive to reconstruct a road, and quite a bit cheaper to resurface a road. But, the best bet is to maintain them and have to do neither. City Council decided that we should put a lot of resources towards this endeavor to keep our streets up, save money in the long term, and build a better PASER rating.
This project was renewed and continued almost yearly after this point, at least through 2021.