Saline City Council Approves Road Millage for Upcoming Ballot

Saline’s City Council adopted a resolution at the Aug 4 meeting to put a renewal of Saline’s road millage on the upcoming Nov 4 ballot for residents to vote on. The millage, initially passed by voters in 2018, is used for infrastructural upkeep, including road and sidewalk work.

“We believe we’ve got a good trajectory,” Director of Public Works Zack Haapala said at the July 21 council meeting. “Our transportation asset management plan is yielding the results that we anticipated, and so we’re continuing to maintain our road assets in good and fair condition, balancing that capital preventive maintenance and the full reconstruction rehabilitation, while we continue to maintain and perform condition assessments of all of our utilities under the road, under the road, as well as all of our assets to the east and west of the road as well.”

Road conditions are measured on the PASER (Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating) scale from 1-10. Currently, Saline roads average at a 5.9 rating, and if the mill is renewed, the rating is expected to maintain consistency. During his presentation at the July 21 meeting, Haapala suggested that raising the mill from 1 to 1.5 would bring the rating to a little below 7 by 2034. Mayor Pro-Tem Janet Dillon voiced support for a raised millage.

“We do call this our street millage, but there is language in it that we can use it for sidewalks and bike paths and things like that, where we do have issues,” Dillon said. “You know, we’ve had this battle cry for many years about being a walkable community, yet we have deplorable sidewalks. I would love to see some of this dollars being put toward the sidewalk plan, and put our comprehensive plan out there and get it done. We have made this commitment for several years, and we haven’t quite made it to the finish line.”

Councilmember Girbach proposed an amendment to the language to raise the mill to a 1.5, but the council passed the millage as-is, with Mayor Brian Marl and councilmember Nicole Rile suggesting it could be revisited again in three years to see if the millage needed to be increased.

“I support the resolution as written to extend this proposal for three years at the one mill dollar amount,” Marl said. “I think that that is appropriate and prudent at this time. Again, it’s only three years. It allows us, with new staff, with a new city manager to evaluate this issue further over the next 12 to 24 months. And in the future, it may be appropriate and prudent to ask the elected to approve something in excess of one mill.”

The mill, which will amount to approximately $600,000, will be up for a three-year renewal on the upcoming Nov 4 ballot.