By Fred Lewis
Well our gypsy moth season is over for now. We will survey the egg masses in the fall when the leaves drop and evaluate our moves next year. We did see a lot of dead caterpillars at the end of the season. Some from the spray and some from the NPV. Let’s hope it continues.
Regardless, we will continue our plan and evaluate the area and publish the results on our website in early January. We will have a discussion at that time about our plan for the spring and give you a chance to comment. Understand, as I have told many of you over and over, this is about community treatment of an infestation. Not an individual treatment of each parcel of property. We eliminate enough of the infestation then they can not reproduce and continue to propagate through the community. We will make this happen, but for now let’s just enjoy the rest of our summer caterpillar free.
If you see the egg masses on the trees you can scrape them off into soapy water or better yet into a large pile and start a big bonfire with them.
As you all know we have a lot of road work in the community this summer. MDOT is resurfacing M65 from Towerline Road by Rollways Road south to M55. They will be grinding and overlaying new paving as well as laying safety shoulders similar to what you see on the work that was done on the north sections last year.
While they are working in town MDOT is required to fix the handicap ramps that were installed during the beautification in 2004. The crossing ramp slopes were not in compliance with the “current” ADA requirements so they were required to fix them.
Also, working in conjunction with the school and township, MDOT is installing a school crossing in front of the firehall for students to allow them safer crossing to the playing and practice fields after school. The school approached both parties about this issue last year and it was put in the plan for this project.
We are also taking advantage of this time to get some sidewalk repair done and some storm water drainage issues resolved. Hopefully we can minimize or maybe eliminate some of the standing water problems after the big rains. I know that this is going to be inconvenient for a while but it is what we have to go through to get our roads in better shape and to keep our roads in good condition.
Another road project that will be starting soon is the widening of Kokosing road from M65 to Lakeside .
This project started as a safety shoulder project with the county and we added to it and made it a walking/biking project to the Loon Lake park and M65. The planned 3’ wide shoulder is now a 5’ wide walking/biking path on each side of Kokosing Road providing a safe travel lane as well as access to the Loon Lake bike path, board walk and pavilion.
The 3’ is funded by the road commission as part of their safety shoulder campaign, the other 2’ is funded by a grant from the Iron Belle Fund, The Iosco County Parks and Rec. Grant and the Township.
If you have not had a chance to visit these trails take the time this summer to see them. If you visit the Loon Lake Park and go to the pavilion take a container and get some water from the old hand pump. It is cool, fresh and good, and there is nothing like pumping your own water. If you’ve never done it you should experience at least once, just to mark it off as a bucket list item.
Anyways these are some of the projects going on this summer.
We are still talking about the waste site costs. Currently at $63/year, we need to look at changing due to increase in use and therefore costs. Currently a $5 change results a little under $20,000. More information will be coming as we get our final numbers in for last year which ended June 30 for us. We will be having some meetings this fall to discuss this with everyone before we take any action. But we will have to do something, whether we supplement or increase we need to make a change.
As always if you ever have any questions, comments or concerns regarding our community please contact me. I am in the office Monday – Friday 7:30 – 4:00 at 989-728-2811 or my cell at 989-984-7073 or by email supervisor@plainfieldtwpmi.com
Fred Lewis – Supervisor Plainfield Township
