Sturgis aldermen to hold workshop for bike rally

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The Sturgis Board of Aldermen will hold a workshop to discuss a motorcycle rally counterproposal Tuesday at Sturgis City Hall immediately following a special called meeting at 6:30 p.m. on an emergency generator for the city’s water supply.

The aldermen voted in January to hold the workshop and develop a counterproposal to the Sturgis South Bike Rally Board’s 2013 motorcycle rally proposal. Sturgis Mayor Walter Turner said alderman liaison Mike Collins will then bring this counterproposal before the rally board to give its members a clearer idea of the city’s needs.

“(After that,) I expect the (rally board) to have their meeting and go from there,” Turner said. “The (city) board... (wants) to look at the revenue and expenses, lay it all out, put everything on the table and see what they think about having a rally for this year. I’m just going to have all the figures I presented to the board last year on security, trash, (etc.) (The aldermen) can come up with their figures and look at the offer the rally board has already made.”

Turner said the workshop will be open to the public, but the aldermen will not make any binding decisions about the rally at the workshop.

“You can’t have any motions or anything during a workshop, but it’s still open to the public,” Turner said. “I would imagine we could send something back to the rally board and not have to wait for the next meeting to do that. That’s not really a decision type that has to come before a regular board meeting because ... we’re just forwarding information.”

The specially called meeting pertains to a new generator to keep Sturgis’s water supply running during an electrical outage, Turner said. This generator comes from a grant that the city recently extended, but the project’s first bid was for a generator that automatically activated when the power went out, which cost more money than the grant allowed.