LAURIUM – The Laurium village council held its regular meeting for the month of May on Tuesday evening. Among other topics, the council moved forward on plans and improvements including the village master plan, sidewalk maintenance, and a state-mandated inspection of the village’s water system.

The village co-opts residential sidewalk maintenance with property owners that have sidewalks on their property with residents paying for materials and the village providing labor. Interested residents register with the village to have their sidewalks, in fifty-foot increments, added to a list.

Village Manager Ian Lewis said that he is ready to start calling property owners on that list to begin work on the projects. For the most part, this list is first-come, first-served, though some sections of sidewalk are prioritized if their condition is deemed hazardous.

Lewis also said that the village is going to target a cost of $6 per square foot. That means that property owners can expect to pay between $1,600 and $2,800 per fifty-foot section depending on the width of the sidewalk on their property. Councilor Jeff Erickson of the village Streets, Equipment, and Sanitation Committee, added that that number might change somewhat with the price of concrete.

“Some other communities put it entirely on the residents and it is entirely up to them to replace sidewalks,” commented village president John Sullivan.

The village is also moving forward with another large-scale project. In response to recent water crises, the state is mandating inspections of municipal water systems. That involves checking four points at each residence for lead pipes including within the home, outside of the home, and the nearby main.

“We are responsible for checking and digging up at least 20 percent of the unknowns out there. It is entirely on us, there is no money out there for this, and this has to be done over the next three summers,” said Lewis, who has identified the village’s 450 unknown points and is randomly selecting ninety for testing. “Hopefully we can bust out at least twenty of these this summer.”

Village councilors expressed a number of concerns including potentially damaging existing water infrastructure during the inspections, as well as the need to disturb the yards of property owners – though some councilors commented that properties randomly selected for inspection might also happen to be on the list for sidewalk maintenance.

“It’s definitely a project and I don’t understand how the state thinks that we, as a small village, can afford the brunt of this,” commented Sullivan.

Councilors also expressed aggravation at the state requirement given that there is currently little reason to be skeptical of the village’s water system, despite the age of some portions of the infrastructure.

“These people make these decisions with no idea what’s going on just to justify their own existence,” said Erickson. “Every water test we’ve ever done has passed with flying colors.”

Both of these projects will likely be topics of discussion at the regular meeting scheduled for June 20, which will open with a public millage hearing.