The Hastings City Council Tuesday approved a contract with Hubbel, Roth, and Clark (HRC) for $133,550 to develop a Geographic Information System for the city’s sanitary, storm, and water systems. It’s the first phase of the city’s asset management plan, using part of a recently awarded Stormwater, Asset Management and Wastewater (SAW) grant from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.

With the grant, the DPS will create a computer-based model of all of the city’s “horizontal” assets, its water and sewer lines and related equipment, mostly underground, and its “vertical” assets, the plants themselves. A record of vital information about each will allow the department to most cost effectively manage all of the systems, City Manager Jeff Mansfield said.

The SAW grant covers $100,395 of the work, the city pays $33,155, mostly for the drinking water distribution system study, which is not included in the grant. However, the city will save money by completing the entire system at one time, Mansfield said. HRC helped the city with the $712,638 SAW grant application and Dennis Benoit, from HRC, has been the city’s engineer for the wastewater plant for about 20 years.

Mansfield said he has to commend the DEQ and the governor’s office for using SAW grants to push municipalities into taking steps to plan, maintain and improve their infrastructure.

“We’ve done a good job in recognizing and maintaining ours, but some cities ignore the infrastructure until something breaks,” he said. “This give us a good opportunity (to create a comprehensive base of vital information) with a lot of the costs covered,” he said.

Also Tuesday, the council approved ordinance 539 amending the code on public school and institutional projects giving the Hastings Planning Commission input with non-binding comments instead of requiring site plans. Also approved were winning bids for two vehicles at auction at BidCorp.com. from Dec. 12 to Dec. 22. A 2015 GMC Sierra with a winning bid of $42, 509, plus seller’s fee of $425.09, went to Loren Curtis of Bay City, and a 2014 Ford Police Interceptor (Explorer) for $10,886, plus seller’s fee of $108.86, went to Mike Carolan of Troy. A 2010 Dodge Charger got no bids above the reserve and will be re-advertised.