FAIRMONT – By a 3-2 vote, the Fairmont City Council on Monday approved working with Short Elliot Hendrickson (SEH) on a plan for downtown improvements

The original request for proposals was sent out in November of 2024 and revised in September of 2025 to include ADA accessibility, beautification features and stormwater quality improvements. Proposals were received from Bolton and Menk, ISG and SEH.

Public Works Director Matthew York said Bolton and Menk were removed from consideration due to not having the level of specification ISG and SEH had.

The improvement project review committee, which includes York, Councilors Randy Lubenow and Britney Kawecki, Economic Development Coordinator Ned Koppen, and Civil Engineer Tyler Cowing, voted 5-1 to support ISG over SEH. ISG’s proposal is around $43,000, while SEH’s is around $125,000.

Before being brought before the committee, CEDA Business Development Specialist Celia Viesselman and Analog Games Owner Adam Klesh spoke up during the public comment period to support SEH’s proposal.

Viesselman said she saw some potential conflicts with zoning and that ISG was looking at zoning codes and programs like the facade loan program. ISG’s timeline is only four months to work on their plan, whereas SEH has a six month timeline. Viesselman said that two extra months are crucial for community engagement and buy-in.

Additionally, Viesselman expressed concern about the outreach city council had done leading up to Monday’s meeting.

“I talked to several business owners before tonight’s meeting to see if they knew anything about this plan being decided on tonight, or had heard anything about this project. You guys have some staff capacity challenges, so sometimes communication is harder. But if you’re trying to create a plan like this, you want to make sure all the players are at the table ready to make that plan possible.”

As a downtown business owner, Klesh echoed this concern voiced by Viesselman and also threw his support behind SEH’s plan.

“As many of you know, several available buildings are in varying states of disrepair,” Klesh said. “For a brand new business owner, it’s challenging to take on both launching a business and addressing years of deferred maintenance. Building strategic infrastructure improvements, along with clear policies and incentives that support new and existing businesses, would make a meaningful difference. I believe the SEH plan provides an opportunity to begin that forward movement.”

Kawecki said when the RFP was initially put together, SEH was supported. Now, with a different set of people, she said the focus has changed.

“Now we’re recommending a completely separate proposal, which isn’t necessarily focusing on a conceptual design over the next two, five, 10, 20 years as to where this entire downtown area wants to be. We’re saying that we’re going to focus on minimal stakeholder input, and we need to focus on the pavers, lighting and bollards. How did that change?”

Lubenow was the next to voice his thoughts, and he also put some stock in SEH.

“When you look at the two proposals, like we’ve all talked about, all three met the minimum standards,” he said. “If the rest of the council wants to spend money on downtown and look at continuing this project and another step in the next five to 10 years, then I think there is a lot of value in what SEH brought forward.”

Instead of the two finalists, Councilor Wayne Hasek said perhaps Bolton & Menk’s proposal at $37,800 was worth being reconsidered.

“We got a business that’s closing in town with about 80 some employees,” he said. “Bolton & Menk is in town. All these other two firms are out of town. I think we ought to go to Bolton and Menk.”

Referencing the analysis given to all board members looking through all the proposals, and after hearing from the public, Councilor Jay Maynard had one proposal stick out in his mind.

“It looks to me like SEH actually is the stronger proposal according to the SWOT analysis,” he said. “Between that and the community engagement we heard tonight from people downtown who were in favor of the SEH proposal, I’m not comfortable going with ISG over that.”

Mayor Lee Baarts chimed in next. He said there have been discussions beforehand and now regarding differences in proposals, but he didn’t see the huge difference when it comes to community engagement in both plans.

“I think there are some things that were probably better in the SEH proposal on that area,” Baarts said. “I think the committee didn’t feel like it warranted an $83,000 difference. Would it be worth it to the citizens and our taxpayers to spend that much more on getting maybe a little bit more on the communication side?”

Kawecki motioned to approve moving forward with SEH and Maynard seconded. Before the vote, Councilor Kotewa said he would prefer this be tabled two weeks, so it could be reviewed further and more outreach could be done with business owners.

Since there was already a motion and a second, Baarts said they had to go through with a vote on it, and if the vote failed, they could do a separate vote to table it.

The vote only needed a simple majority. It succeeded in doing so, as Lubenow joined Kawecki and Maynard in approving moving forward with SEH, while Hasek and Kotewa voted no.

Moving to other matters, the council discussed access to city attorney correspondence.

Lubenow said Acting City Administrator Paul Hoye had tried to send out correspondence with the city attorney to the mayor and council, and he was told by a city attorney he couldn’t do that.

“If it’s simply asking as generally about the charter, where there’s violations of the charter, I really think all of us should have that information, and I just wanted to bring it forward to ask if others felt the same way,” Lubenow said.

Kawecki said she doesn’t believe the city administrator should have free rein to go to the city attorney for everything, but the council does need to have a better wrap on the situation overall.

Maynard said the city administrator is hired to operate in good judgment, and they should be allowed to do that without micromanaging.

Hoye said a solution to this problem was offered in a monthly report the city attorney could do, which would provide more detail on projects they’ve been working on. Baarts said it is worthy of further discussion and a potential motion, and tasked the city council to have one of its members draft an agenda item and motion for the next city council meeting.

In other business:

— A housing study contract was approved with Bowan National Research. Koppen said the cost will be $48,500, which includes the standard cost, plus $2,500 to add an employer survey to the study as well. Koppen said the city staff and attorney both looked it over and signed off on it. The motion was passed unanimously.