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Closed door meeting held by city leaders over massive Fraser sinkhole

Posted at 5:08 PM, Jan 18, 2017
and last updated 2017-01-18 19:29:28-05

The sewer collapse and resulting sinkhole in Fraser will cost millions to fix.

The mess at 15 Mile in Macomb County has caused the evacuation of more than two dozen homes - three of which have been condemned.

Eleven surrounding communities are impacted. Those taxpayers will likely foot the bill, but how those community leaders plan to do it - well, that’s a secret.

They met today in a law firm conference room. But don’t tell anyone, we aren’t supposed to know. And we weren’t allowed in.

We sat in the hallway left to guess what was being said. But we weren’t the only ones kept in the dark.

Macomb County’s new Public Works Commissioner, who is as big a player as they come in this crisis, appears to have not been invited either.

“It was a private meeting that I sort of crashed, to tell you the truth,” said Candice Miller.

Because why would SHE need to be there. And why would the public need to be privy to decisions made about their tax dollars in the middle of an infrastructure nightmare?

“You may ask that question to Mark Vanderpool, City Manager of Sterling Heights,” said Miller.

We did. He called the meeting.

“Typically, it wouldn’t be a public meeting when you have business discussions like that,” said Vanderpool.

Meaning, they want to be able yell and scream about who’s going to pay for what or who’s going to sue who without us pesky media types recording.

In fact, from outside, I heard raised voices inside the meeting.

Vanderpool admitted, “Whenever you talk about millions of dollars, these are not pleasant conversations.”

Cost recovery and the word litigation was also used.

“The purpose of the meeting was to get together and talk about various options,” he added.

The details of those options,  we don’t known because the city manager contends its private and when you need to know -  you will.

That meeting aside, in regards to the sinkhole, Miller tells us they are building a temporary bypass that should be done in a few weeks. At that point we should get answers on the long term fixes there.