Houghton Approves the Master Plan Sets Three Public Hearings in June

Houghton has approved the city’s newest master plan for the next five years. Master plans cover a wide range of subjects related to the function, goal, and desires of a community. Houghton’s city council approved the master plan after countless hours of effort put into the document by the city planning commission and engaged residents over the past year.

What this is, is essentially the Council’s approval of the master plan document, which is the product of a couple of years’ work of the Planning Commission and various committees. Again, it’s gone through, the Planning Commission did vote to move this forward to the Council for approval, of course, and honestly, it’s been grueling to get it to this point. So the next step would be if the council does approve the master plan, we would, I guess you want to call it, typeset it and publish it in its final format. Format not, it’s in its final form, it just needs to be in its final format. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton

Those interested in reviewing the master plan and finding out the goals Houghton has set for itself can find more details linked to here.

In addition to approving the city master plan, the council set a public hearing for the Hoguhton capital improvement plan and operating budget for June 12th. A third public hearing that evening will discuss setting a solid waste fee schedule to bring recycling back to areas downtown.

So this would accompany the return of recycling to downtown, making some, I guess, measured changes to the fee schedule to account for recycling services offered. The biggest thing is recycling services, which would be available to users that are on their own dumpsters is probably the big thing. Now we will want to look at, for lack of a better way of putting it, some penalty type of things. if we catch bad behavior out there, but that can be done. It’s actually done in a different ordinance, but we wanted to get this one in front of everybody and in place so that we would hold a public hearing on June 12th for this one. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton

 Following other action items by the council Houghton broke into a closed session to discuss recent union contract negotiations. Those interested in learning more about the Houghton Master plan and the public hearings scheduled in June can find details at here.