By SUE SUCHYTA
Times-Herald Newspapers
HEIGHTS – The City Council on Feb. 10 approved Department of Public Works Director John Danci’s bid acceptance for solar-powered flashing beacon stop signs from Sugar Sound, LLC of Ann Arbor.
The motion, made by Councilmember Margaret King and seconded by Councilmember Tom Wencel, approved the purchase and payment for lighted stop signs not to exceed $755,000, which was unanimously adopted.
Dearborn Heights Department of Public Works Director John Danci (right) speaks at the Feb. 10 City Council meeting about the bid award for the purchase of lighted stop signs as Comptroller Mahdi Baydoun listens.
The solar-powered flashing beacon stop signs cost about $688 each, depending on the volume purchased.
Comptroller Mahdi Baydoun said the city has set aside about $700,000 from the major and local streets fund for the purchase, which will be supplemented by a Southeast Michigan Council of Governments grant, which can be used for signs near schools.
Wencel expressed concern that Sugar Sound is a Chinese company that uses replacement parts made in China. He urged consideration of a domestic supplier with replacement parts made in the United States.
He urged Danci to look at the cold weather tolerance of the stop signs before any purchases are made.
“We don’t want to be replacing batteries every one or two years – it would be a fortune to do it,” Wencel said. “I think we need to do a little bit more digging, a little more research on these before we purchase.”
He suggested buying 10 signs from Sugar Sound initially to judge their reliability.
Danci said the city used the same bid specifications that Dearborn used for its lighted stop signs, so all of the companies bidding were offering products with the same requested parameters.
He said one of Mayor Mo Baydoun’s priorities when he took office was to get the flashing beacon stop signs out into the community and working as soon as possible.
“Now we can actually order some under a program with a specific unit price, determine quality, and if we have issues on daily operations scales, we can say ‘OK, the product isn’t going to work for us,’ and we can look at other options or go back to another bid situation, but this at least allows us to use some of this money to get some of these out into the community,” Danci said.
Mayor Baydoun said he believes that the batteries had a five-year replacement warranty.
“The cold weather is something that we should question and look into,” he said.
The mayor said the lighted signs had been long awaited, but the city wants to do it the right way as they are placed around schools and parks as they initiate the first flashing stop sign installation.
“I’m not trying to say American made, Chinese made – we always want to go American made, but what can you afford as a municipality?” he said. “At the end of the day we want to make sure that we can put these out across the city so that we are ensuring the best quality of life and the safety of our residents.”