MARS -- At a meeting Monday evening, March 18, borough council approved preliminary engineering services for two projects which are part of efforts to comply with federal Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System requirements.

The projects were first proposed at the council’s previous meeting on March 4. The first is a “rain garden“ to be located near Penn Mar Plaza senior housing community on Route 8, while the other is a stream bank stabilization project which would start behind the Mars Public Works building on Spring Street.

A rain garden is a bowl-shaped depression in the ground which collects rainwater.

KLH Engineers, based in Pittsburgh, will perform the engineering services for both projects, which are estimated to cost up to $9,984 — $4,340 for the rain garden and $5,644 for the stabilization project.

Mayor Gregg Hartung said he is working with Fritz Baehr, local architect and former Mars borough councilman, to secure grants to fund both projects.

Borough council president G. Michael Fleming said volunteer work will be key to grant eligibility, which requires the borough or another party to contribute 15% of the amount. That amount can come in the form of volunteer work hours.

“Whatever amount of volunteers that we have, we can get a certain per-hour credit per person that adds up to the match that's required to achieve the grant,” Fleming said. “The more people we have that are getting credit for six hours of volunteer work or whatever, we can document all that, and it helps us not have to come out of pocket.”

“There’s a certain volunteer wage per hour, and that’ll actually be applied toward in-kind services,” Hartung said. “It means basically things that we would typically pay for that are being provided by volunteer service.”

Hartung said volunteers would most likely work on the rain garden and not the stream bank stabilization.