HANCOCK — The 413 Hancock water customers who received a letter Wednesday about unidentified service line material shouldn’t be alarmed, City Manager Mary Babcock told the Hancock City Council Wednesday night.

The letters are part of an ongoing directive from the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, which began after the discovery of contaminated water from lead service lines in Flint, Babcock said.

The state’s Lead and Copper Rule, adopted in 2018, requires any such lines to be removed once they’re found.

“There are zero lead service lines currently identified in the city,” Babcock said. “We’ve been inspecting over the years … probably for the last eight years going forward, every time we’ve touched a service line, it’s been recorded.”

Those include homes along streets where other infrastructure work is being done, such as Minnesota Street last summer or Elevation Street in 2025, Babcock said.

The customers who receive the letters are randomly chosen from the pool of uninspected homes, Babcock said.

In September, the city received a $584,885 grant from EGLE to help identify or verify any lead service lines that might need replacement.

The grant goes toward restoring the soil in locations where crews use a hydrovacuum on either side of the curb stop. The process involves using high-pressure water to liquify the soil, then vacuuming the soil to extract it for testing.

Babcock said she hopes the remaining lines can be inspected next year.

The city will use grant funding to hire a contractor.

“It is extremely hard with our number of DPW employees to keep three of them out of the rotation during the summer, so we’re going to have a contractor come in,” she said. “We’ll notify them, all the residents, where they’ll be digging.”

In other action, the council:

• Approved the city recreational facility policies as presented by the Recreation Commission.

Before this, there hadn’t been a comprehensive planning document for the facilities, Babcock said. New Councilor Dean Woodbeck wrote the policy, combining policies that had been spread across several documents. In one of the bigger changes, the cost of renting the beach pavilion was raised from $50 to $100 to cover maintenance and other costs.

Most fees remained unchanged. Mayor Kurt Rickard said the city can adjust those costs later based on feedback from groups that use the facilities and from the city workers who maintain them.

≤ Heard from Police Chief Tami Sleeman there had been 250 calls in October, 14 traffic accidents, eight arrests and 135 traffic stops. Those stops resulted in 15 tickets and 80 warnings, she said.

“Even with the guys out doing enforcement, that is still a lot of accidents,” she said. “And we have dry weather right now, so we’ve got those kind of accidents when there’s no bad weather. They’re doing their best.

≤ Approved OHM’s proposal for professional service for the Michigan Department of Transportation Shared Streets and Spaces Grant for Elevation Street sidewalk connector for $32,500.

≤ Appointed Michael Lancour, Dave Dow, William McKilligan, John Diebel, Dean Woodbeck, Craig Pellizzaro and Brooke Harris to the Recreation Commission with a term ending date of Sept. 1.

≤ Approved B&B contracting’s payment application for the category B Minnesota Street project for $40,142.59.