NEGAUNEE, Mich. (WJMN) – Wednesday evening, the City of Negaunee held a ‘State of Our Infrastructure’ open house at Upper Peninsula Brewing Company.
The open house consisted of not only charts and blueprints of current and upcoming projects for the city, but also pizza, beer, and community bonding. Residents of Negaunee were discussing their streets and infrastructure with neighbors and city workers alike. Negaunee City Manager, Nate Heffron says that Negaunee has a ‘dig once philosophy’ when it comes to inspecting and paving new roads.
“The whole purpose of this meeting is just to give the folks of Negaunee an idea of the status of our infrastructure,” said Heffron. “So it took a couple of years. We had to go through inventory, everything, look through records. We got several grants to help us take care of these assets and figure out what’s wrong, where do they stand. With all that information we take that, we put together and we’re able to create projects. So, like the project behind me right here is our next proposed water and sewer project. That water project is roughly a $6 million project, and the sewer project is roughly about $8.5 million. What that means is we’re going to get upgraded water and sewer. That definitely needs to be done and the streets will get paved as well. It’s not like one day I wake up and say, let’s paint that street because we have to look underneath that street first and we have a different philosophy here. We certainly don’t want to pay for one year and then the next year rip it up because we didn’t do our diligence and make sure that the water and sewer got underneath it first.”
You can find all updated information on cityofnegaunee.com.