Traverse City commissioners will discuss how they want to spend one million dollars netted by the city's sale of the former Traverse City Light & Power coal dock at their 7pm meeting tonight (Tuesday) at the Governmental Center.

City Manager Marty Colburn is recommending commissioners consider allocating a quarter of the proceeds - $250,000 - to the Boardman River Dams & Restoration Project. "The Union Street dam is part of the Restoration Project, and $525,000 in non-federal funds would be required for the $1.5 million" in planned dam improvements, Colburn wrote in a memo to commissioners. "Allocating $250,000 from the coal dock sale proceeds would allow us to leverage grant and other dollars to reach the $525,000 in non-federal dollars needed."

Commissioner Gary Howe says Colburn's suggestion is "smart" but wants to look at the timeline for Union Street dam improvements. "We can always find the money (for that project)...so I'd like to know what the timeframe is," Howe says. "I don't want to save those funds and just have them sitting in an account for 10 years." Howe says he'd favor using a public input process such as participatory budgeting, in which the city could set parameters - for example, a certain amount of funding and number of projects - and let residents weigh in on using the coal dock proceeds.

"A million dollars is a great opportunity," Howe says. "I think we should have some type of public process to determine how that money is spent."