Burton council directs staff to seek bids for mosquito-control pilot after company outlines one-year plan

Burton City Council members agreed to open a bid process for a one-year mosquito-control pilot after Ben Sego, general manager of APM Mosquito Control, outlined a phased approach emphasizing disease surveillance and targeted standing-water treatments.

City officials said they want staff to draft specifications that would allow multiple vendors to bid on the basic public-health scope — disease testing, standing-water treatment and targeted spraying in parks and other high-traffic public-use areas — rather than immediately adopting a higher-cost, “Cadillac” program.

The move follows a presentation by Sego describing how APM would structure a first-year contract to gather baseline data: unit pricing (per spray mile, per acre treated, per catch-basin treatment, per disease pool sampled), disease sampling for West Nile virus, and targeted truck spraying of about 100 miles per week. Sego estimated the city’s likely program costs would be in the six-figure…