Photo by Tom Gilchrist • Tony Coln, far right, a Mayville Police Department officer, chats with Mayville village officials (at table, from left) Wanda Topham, Sue Marlow, Clare Fryers and Lisa Haubenstricker during the November 12 village council meeting. Coln has been hired as Mayville’s interim police chief for December through March.
By Tom Gilchrist
For The Advertiser
MAYVILLE — Mayville Village Council members voted unanimously Tuesday night to hire Tony Coln as interim police chief after the resignation of Chief David Forystek, whose last work day is Nov. 30.
Following a 28-minute closed session with Coln, the council allowed the public back in the meeting room where council members voted 7 to 0 to hire Coln as interim chief from December through March at a salary of $16,546.
That pay rate equates to an annual salary of $49,638.
Coln, 37, of Saginaw County’s Taymouth Township, works as a part-time officer in Mayville and also works as an officer in Genesee County’s Mundy Township. He said after Tuesday’s meeting that he plans to move to Mayville, and has indicated he hopes to become Mayville’s new chief on a full-time basis.
Earlier this month, though, Trustee Cecilia C. Kapcia said the council hasn’t decided whether the new chief will work full-time or part-time. Kapcia also said the person chosed as interim chief wouldn’t necessarily be the new chief following interviews of applicants seeking the job.
Forystek worked part-time as police chief, a job he held since 2011.
Before the council asked the audience to leave the meeting room, Fryers said the council was entering closed session because council members are ”talking about the appointment of a person and what they’re going to pay him.”
In other discussion Tuesday, Fryers read a letter from an attorney for developer Clare Roller, with the lawyer alleging a pit containing a water meter at 330 Roller Way is “incorrectly constructed” and not acceptable “with respect to the (water) hookup to the 330 Roller Way home and ancillary locations.”
The letter from Saginaw Township attorney Frederick C. Overdier refers to an inspection report of the 3-foot-wide pit by a Lapeer engineer, who states he observed a water meter in about 18 inches of water in the pit.
The presence of water in the pit “hampers routine maintenance” of the water meter, according to Corwin P. Mabery of Davis Land Surveying & Engineering PC of Lapeer. Water covering the meter also poses a potential environmental hazard, according to Mabery, who wrote in his Nov. 6 report that if a pollutant such as oil or gas is spilled and drains into the pit, it would come in contact with groundwater.
Mayville village President Clare Fryers said village Department of Public Works Supervisor Andy Hecht and another DPW employee were “run off the property” when they went to investigate a complaint about the water-meter pit’s construction.
“Mr. Roller cannot enter that pit at all,” Hecht told council members. “He does not own it. It is my judgment — and only mine, and the Village Council’s — on how that pit is manufactured. I or my employees are the only ones who enter it. Nobody else does. (Roller) has nothing to do with that pit.”
Hecht said an engineer hired by the village has recommended a few changes to the water-meter pit, but that he hasn’t heard from Roller about receiving permission to go on private property to reach the pit.
“I’m ready to go in there and make the adjustments, and that’s where we’re at right now,” Hecht said.