Farmington Hills Officials Talk Alternative Fuels

In the ongoing civic response to a community survey, the City Council is discussing a number of options for changes, improvements and tweaks in the coming year.

At a Saturday morning study session, officials noted that the 2020 Visioning process revealed city residents are happy with their local government, but would like to see a few changes. In addition to a community-wide survey, volunteers serving on five committees issued reports late last year in five areas: Activities and Citizen Retention, Taxes and Services, Education and Jobs, Economic Redevelopment and Energy and Transportation.

City council member Randy Bruce said volunteers separated the wants into long-term and short-term goals, some of which included attracting younger professionals to live in the community and developing a downtown area.

Part of the conversation turned around alternative fuels, such as hydrogen cells, flex fuels and pure electric.

Council member Michael Bridges said there was probably some form of federal or state funding that could help put alternative fuel stations around the city, but picking one over the other means forecasting where the industry will go, and that won't be known until a market develops for one or the other.

The conversation also hinged on what the city could do in terms of its own fleet of vehicles. Council member Richard Lerner said there are opportunities to try out a few different technologies.

“We could look at the city’s new vehicles, parks and recreation for example, to find out what works well,” he said. “That could be our own guinea pig.”

Along the same lines, officials discussed the possibility of using common areas in subdivisions as geothermal heating and cooling hubs for homeowners who would like to connect to them.