Waterfront ideas, wastewater odors, and more: Top 3 takeaways from Port Huron officials' goal session

When Port Huron City Council members met for their yearly discussion of goals this weekend, the usual query lists of potential priorities and red sticker dots used to rank them were gone.

Instead, there were bookmarks.

“The problem with the red-circle exercises is those are designed to try and get to some definition in a really short period of time, and it doesn’t give you the opportunity to be thoughtful about the approach you’re taking,” visiting consultant Gregg Guetschow told council members.

The shift spurred a moment of laughter — and a joke from City Clerk Cyndee Jonseck: “What? Nobody likes my dots?”

Guetschow, a former longtime local government manager and president and CEO of Gregg Guidance, LLC, facilitated a more than three-hour discussion Saturday morning — his bookmarks outlining 10 prescribed questions for innovators in hand.

In the past, council members met to hear updates from city department heads before assembling goals on their own with a final list of priorities for the coming year to be OK’d at a future meeting.

But the only other non-elected officials involved in the process Saturday were Jonseck and City Manager James Freed, and in place of goal-setting was a visioning session that, Freed said, would later yield a report from Guetschow to help steer city decisionmakers down the road.

“What I am here to help you do today is tell your story,” Guetschow said, “and there are several exercises that I will guide you through.”

There were often shared priorities among council members, ranging from childcare and housing needs to infrastructure that's friendly to pedestrians and could help attract cruise ships to stop.

Still, Guetschow’s first question — “what if?” — garnered the most discussion.

1. Finding a vision for Port Huron's waterfront

It was a part of the discussion that started with another joke — not just bringing a casino to Port Huron.

Mayor Pauline Repp said she wanted to better capitalize on the city’s waterfront, particularly in the coming months amid a new confluence of available property.

“We have the Dunn Paper company that closed. We have the Acheson site, Desmond (Landing) is up for sale. There’s a lot of opportunities. We have the relocation of our fire hall, which will leave waterfront property on the Black River,” she said. “… So, I think we need to come up with some kind of master plan or thoughts about what we could pursue in those areas.”

The city itself can’t take action, such as buying, selling or leasing property, on the waterfront without a vote of the people, under the city charter. One vote on the concept of selling the Municipal Office Center has already gone before voters, and once the city begins weighing the future of the old Central Fire Station, they’d need another consensus there, as well.

Councilman Conrad Haremza and others advocated for visioning around the Black and St. Clair rivers separately, and multiple council members supported the idea of allocating resources to a Black River cleanup in May that was announced by resident Scott Farquhar at a recent meeting.

Guetschow asked Repp what her vision was — if it was more related to housing or quality of life uses.

She said it was both. Both the mayor and Mayor Pro Tem Sherry Archibald referenced hotels on the water.

“But when you look over at Sarnia, across the river, they have a lot of development on their riverfront that we don’t have, and I don’t see any reason that we shouldn’t be able to,” Repp said. “I have people ask me this when they come to town. We don’t have (many), really, waterfront restaurants, and here we’ve got all this water.”

“And to bring people to live here, that’s housing, as well,” she added. “We need to have more quality housing, as well. Not just high rents, high cost of housing on the riverfront. Housing in general.”

2. Fixing the smell from downtown's wastewater treatment plan

After discussing broader resident needs and attracting visitors to Port Huron, Archibald said, “None of it matters if we can’t fix the smell on the wastewater treatment plant.”

Complaints picked up last summer, and city officials said they were looking into solutions to address failures in a more recently purchased odor-control system.

Archibald advocated for finding a permanent fix “no matter what it takes.”

Freed said they implemented a remediation plan and have been working with a new engineering consultant.

“We implemented ammonia remediation, which is a temporary solution. We’re working with Fishbeck now on the design of a long-term solution and completing possible litigation with (the previous firm),” the city manager said. “… The firm that designed the $(2.2) million (control system), it’s failing. Ammonia is what you’re smelling. The system that they designed does not meet the specifications to meet that ammonia load.

“So, (the previous firm) had bad testing data. You put bad data in, you get a bad output. We’re working with (them) on the problem. (Attorney) Gary Fletcher’s been working on it. But it’s appearing now that it’s not going to happen. So, in the next 30 days, I expect Gary will take you into executive session to talk about what our next steps will be.”

3. Changing the format of meetings, or adding new ones

At multiple points on Saturday, officials reflected on better communicating with residents.

But they also wanted to better communicate with each other — be it the format of the updates council members get via email from Freed or how they interact at the council dais.

Councilman Bob Mosurak admitted he hadn’t been excited about coming in early Saturday for the special meeting but that he was leaving in a much more positive state of mind, including how he worked with other members.

Councilwoman Anita Ashford acknowledged a stiffness with Mosurak, as well as Councilman Jeff Pemberton, relating their shared conciliatory need to keep moving forward to her support of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices she believed also helped how they interacted with the public.

Councilmembers agreed they wanted to see more meeting formats — and away from the restraint of the usual council meeting — that allowed them to publicly discuss city issues more freely and informally, as they did Saturday.

Freed said they’re generally required by city charter to hold two monthly meetings, but that they could hold more in alternative settings. He pointed to other communities where all action items are addressed at one meeting, while the other meeting was more like a work session.

They weighed hosting quarterly work sessions, and Freed said they could bring in a different city department head for each one, similarly visioning about long-range priorities. He said he’d work on a new calendar and bring it back to council for use by sometime this spring.

Special meetings and work sessions, such as for the city budget each May, are typically held on the fourth floor of the Municipal Office Center.

Of shifting the weight of council meetings, Haremza said, “I think it’d be a game-changer.”

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Waterfront ideas, and more: Top 3 takeaways from Port Huron officials' goal session