Melvindale City Manager Richard Ortiz (second from left) reports on recreation and pension fund grant awards during the July 17 City Council meeting, as City Clerk Linda Land (left), Mayor Nicole Shkira and City Attorney Larry Coogan listen.
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
MELVINDALE – City Manager Richard Ortiz announced July 17 that the city received a $690,000 Department of Natural Resources Spark Grant and a Michigan Local Retirement Grant.
Michigan Spark grants help communities create, renovate and redevelop public recreation opportunities, particularly in cities where the economy and residents’ health were hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Michigan Local Retirement Grant program helps provide relief to local units of government whose annual budgets are significantly burdened by pension and retirement health care costs.
Ortiz said the Spark Grant will be used for a dock and an outbuilding at the fieldhouse, new bathrooms at the fieldhouse with access from the outside, and repairs to the boat ramp.
The City Council unanimously approved a resolution to accept the grant.
Ortiz said Michigan has put aside grant money for communities impacted by Michigan Public Act 202 of 2017, also known as the Protecting Local Government Retirement and Benefits Act, designed to improve the solvency of municipal pensions by requiring specific filing and reporting requirements.
He said there are two requirements: to fund pension obligations and to fund retiree health care.
Ortiz said Melvindale received grant money last year that the city put into the pension fund.
He said in the past, the city paid for retiree health care as the need arose, but the state now requires that a fund be established.
“The state said you have to fund retiree health care up to 40 percent, and pensions at 60,” Ortiz said.
He said the pension fund is closer to where it needs to be than the retiree health care fund.
Ortiz said the most the city would get from the current grant is $1.4 million, but after discussions with administrators of the program, he learned that it is likely that Melvindale will receive $800,000 to $850,000 from the state.
He proposed that the city put the grant money from the state into the retiree health care fund, with which the council unanimously concurred.