Marquette City Commission discusses trucking ordinance

The Marquette City Commission met Thursday night to discuss the city’s proposed trucking ordinance.

One of the main items discussed is a possible north-south trucking route on McClellan Avenue. Right now, there is no official trucking route for the city so trucks can use any roads possible.

Parts of McClellan aren’t federally funded for a trucking route, so some trucks would have to use Wright Street to Marquette Township.

“What do we do? We haven’t got the money, whether its $10 million or $5 million we don’t have the money to go to McClellan and fix McClellan up to standards,” City of Marquette Mayor Pro Tem Fred Stonehouse said. “We have to make the best we can with what we have. This is a fine opportunity to do that. It’s certainly a compromise, it’s not perfect.”

“This is a way of protecting the city and protecting the roads and protecting us from having huge expenditure and it’s protecting us from having another onslaught of mining trucks,” Commissioner Michael Coyne said.

“We don’t want them (trucks) on Third Street, we don’t want them (trucks) on Lakeshore,” Commissioner Don Ryan said. “Now the only place for those logging trucks is to go out to Marquette Township even though they want to go south and east.”

The trucking routes would only be temporary and the ordinance would be reviewed in three years.

The commission’s main goal, along with Marquette Township, is to have a truck bypass in the future.

The ordinance will be formally introduced at the commission’s meeting Monday.  The public will have two weeks to look over the plan, after which a public forum will be scheduled.