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Township sets water litigation team

ALPENA — The Alpena Township Board of Trustees developed a team for its meetings regarding its water litigation with the City of Alpena during a Wednesday.

Trustees Norm Poli and Matt Dunckel and Township Supervisor Nathan Skibbe will be the three people from the board will be a part of the negotiation team and will attend the water litigation meetings. Trustee Cash Kroll is an alternate in case Dunckel cannot attend a meeting. The township’s legal counsel, Jim Florip, also will be attending meetings.

“We should probably have two trustees attend the meetings,” Kroll said. “It would be beneficial to always have two at the meetings.”

The board is unsure of how many meetings there will be. Meetings will be either during the day or in the evening.

“The recommendation was to have two or three people attend,” Skibbe said. “Anything more than three becomes awkward because there would be a lot of different opinions. Meetings at times will be fairly lengthy.”

As the township supervisor, Skibbe will be attending every meeting. Department of Public Works Director Jerry Bleau will be attending meetings as well.

“There are some people that have told me that I am supposed to be there,” Skibbe said. “It’s hard to justify taking numerous people out of a workday if we’re not really going to be a part of it.”

Skibbe said everything that has happened from day one has been going through Bleau and Bleau will be at the meetings that he needs to be at.

“It was a recommendation by our water litigation team to make a board motion to support the attendees of the water litigation as a negotiation team,” Skibbe said. “We’re just following the recommendation of our legal counsel.”

In other business:

∫ the board scheduled budget meeting dates to start developing a new budget: Jan. 27 from 12-5 p.m., Jan. 31 at 5 p.m., and Feb. 15 at 5 p.m.

∫ the board scheduled a Charter Committee meeting on Jan. 25 at 3 p.m.

Julie Goldberg can be reached via email at jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5688.

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