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Houghton plans to use some of the remaining ARPA funds for park improvements. Houghton has approximately 120,000 dollars remaining of the COVID relief money that the city needs to spend before 2026. Within the recently approved master plan, Houghton included outlines for potential projects in the Garnet Street Park, West Houghton Neighborhood Park, and Woodhaven Park.
Right now, I think Amy’s put it out on Facebook. We’re advertising it and there are signs in each of these parks So that the people who use them can come in and art let us know ahead of time What kind of things they would like to see us do for improvements there. – Ann Vollrath, City Clerk, City of Houghton
Houghton has placed signage in the three locations to advertise a park open house to understand the community’s desires for recreation further. The city will hold the open house inside the city chambers in mid-July. Those unable to attend during the public engagement opportunity can submit ideas to Business Development Coordinator Amy Zawada (amyzawada@cityofhoughton.com).
The Houghton city police department receives new body-worn cameras for officers. Houghton Chief of Police John Donnelly informed the city council that the city had received its second order of body-worn cameras for patrol officers. Donnelly says that the department has needed the new cameras for a while after submitting the request last year with the help of grant funds.
We were able to get our second shipment of body-worn cameras. We’ve been working on this program forever it feels like. We had an initial grant, which was. It was the hardest grant to get the money. We did get some more, and now we have enough so that we can have up to six officers on duty. One of the big things with body-worn cameras is if you have them, you expect them to be on whenever there’s a critical incident involving a police officer. The ones that we have now are to the quality and to the quantity that we can make sure that everything is getting captured that should.” – Chief John Donnelly, City of Houghton Police Department
Chief Donnelly noted that the department feels better having the safety of the public and officers recorded during interactions. Houghton has received six new body cameras. The City Clerk Ann Vollrath noted while addressing the 23-24 budget amendments, that expense figures went up for the police equipment due to the cameras costing more than expected.
