Belleville DDA selects Gonczy to cut grass in city park areas

The Belleville Downtown Development Authority studied seven proposals for cutting grass in the city parks this growing season and chose the low bidder, Gonczy’s Property Maintenance of Sumpter Township.
Gonczy will cut Horizon Park, Doane’s Landing, Victory Park and Village Park at a cost of $330 a week. The price is good for 2018, too, but the DDA will evaluate the work for the first year before going on with a second year.
Gonczy will take over from Pioneer Landscaping of Van Buren Township who was hired late last season to cut the parks. Their proposal was $600 a week. Both companies have good ratings from references.
Pioneer was hired last summer to replace the City of Belleville DPW, which the DDA was paying $800 per week for the work. The agreement between the DDA and the city had lapsed and so they were negotiating a new agreement.
Other quotes for grass cutting were: Salisbury, $875; Weise, $1,230; Matt Lee, $1,375. TLC Landscaping of Maybee bid $205, but later said it didn’t understand the size of Village Park and couldn’t cut it for the $60 per week it bid for that work.
In other business at the Feb. 15 meeting, the DDA: •
• Heard Eric Patterson, owner of TerraFirma, Inc., give a presentation on managing the retention ponds at Village Park. He said the ponds are very shallow and were planned that way. Councilman Tom Fielder said the ponds were put in to allow a very wet area to be built on. He said there is less water now than when they were built. “They are not designed as cosmetic fishing ponds. They are designed as retention ponds,” Patterson said, adding 12’ ponds wouldn’t have been approved by the county when they were built in 1996. It is very expensive to dredge them to make them deeper now, he said;
• Voted to re-elect the present officers to serve for another year: Rosemary Loria, chairwoman; Denise Baker, vice-chairwoman; Jim Higgerson, secretary; and Sabrina Richardson Williams, treasurer;
• Voted to keep on meeting at the same time for 2017: 6 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month;
• Heard Mayor Kereen Conley give an update on the proposed City Events Ordinance that will be voted on by the city council and is expected to go into effect Jan. 1, 2018. She said the city wanted to improve the application process and to make sure the cost of the city for providing services at events was recouped and not a drain on the city budget. Carol Thompson, DDA Coordinator, said they are thinking of convening events’ presenters with a good speaker and then roll this new process out to them; and
• Learned the Belleville SOUP Project for 2017 is set for Wednesday, March 29. The annual event (since 2014) is planned in partnership with Belleville High School NewTech. The public pays for a soup dinner and listens to student presentations on proposed downtown projects. The public votes and the winner gets a stipend for seed money to put on the project. Last year’s winning project – Water Drive on the Waterfront – has yet to be scheduled, but is expected to be put on this summer. One year, all the student presenters were given money along with the winner, but Thompson said NewTech only wants to do one project a year. It is a volunteer activity for the teachers and the NewTech staff is rotated.