Williams Township, around Auburn

Williams Charter Township is the south west corner of Bay County, with Midland County on its western line and Saginaw County to the south. The 2025 Census Gazetteer gives it 33.6 square miles of land. The small City of Auburn sits inside it, its centre only 2.2 miles from the middle of the township in a straight line, and the township's centre is about 6.0 miles from the middle of Midland and 11.4 miles from the middle of Bay City. The April 2020 Census base counts 5,059 people, about 151 to the square mile, and the July 2025 estimate is 5,032. The township's own history page, read through a search summary, says the first settlers came in 1854, before Bay County existed, and that Williams became a township in 1858; a post office ran at North Williams from 1868 to 1874.

Every decade represented

The 2020 to 2024 Census survey counts 2,151 homes in Williams, with a median build year of 1979, and the building is spread unusually evenly. The 1960s gave 329 homes, the 1980s and the 1990s 294 each, the 1950s 261 and the 1970s 245, and another 245 went up in 1939 or earlier. In all 1,110 homes, 51.6 percent, predate 1980, and 453 date from 2000 or later. Single detached houses make up 76.9 percent of the stock, 110 homes are in buildings of five to nine flats, and 280, 13.0 percent, are mobile homes with no basement at all. Owners live in 1,719 of the 2,097 occupied homes, 82.0 percent, and the median owner occupied value is 178,300 dollars.

So the likely basement depends on the street. A 1950s or 1960s house is often block or early poured concrete over a clay tile drain that may have silted or cracked; the newer houses usually have poured walls and a plastic drain to a sump. In poured walls the common leak is a thin vertical shrinkage crack, and our crack repair page sets out how to tell one that is finished moving from one that is not.

One building department for two

Williams runs its own building department. Auburn's city code, read through a search summary, names the Building Official of Williams Township, Bay County as the enforcing agency under the state construction code inside the city too, so the same office may well handle an Auburn address; ask when you ring. The township hall is at 1080 W. Midland Road, Auburn, on 989-662-4241, with office hours listed Monday to Thursday; a directory gives a second number, so use the one on the township's site. Its fee page, also summarised, sends permit fee questions to the Williams Township Building Department.

Sewers and county drains

The township's water and sewer page, seen through a summary, says the Bay County Department of Water and Sewer runs both systems day to day, so a sewer backup through a floor drain is a call to that department as well as to the hall. A 2025 bid notice describes a new water main and sanitary sewer between South Garfield and West Fisher roads. Storm water goes to county drains: the Bay County Drain Commissioner's 2005 map of Williams shows an Auburn Road detention basin and stormwater pumping system and a Dell Creek retention basin, and the township is part of the Waldo Drain district rebuilt in 2022.

Nearby

Monitor Township, to the east, has old farmhouse cellars beside new subdivisions, and Larkin Township, across the Midland County line, shares the Waldo Drain.