Kudos to the Anti-Mine Activists!

It was encouraging that three Menominee city officials wanted to stop the city from accepting donations from Aquila Resources, the Canadian company that wants to put an open-pit sulfide mine near the Menominee River.

Aquila has tried to buy off the entire area, but especially Menominee and Menominee  County, for a decade now.

Unfortunately, a majority of the city council nixed the donation ban last week.

Most local organizations and individuals aren't that stupid. Almost every municipality in our corner of the world has come out against the open-pit sulfide mine that Aquila wants along the Menominee River. The city of Menominee has lagged behind.

I've been to the mine site. I know how close it is to the river. I've listened to the propaganda Aquila spews. (Fortunately, the Canadian mining company has yet to hire anyone with the savvy to sell its plans with any expertise.)

Another big plus is the many average citizens who have fought against the mine for many years now, beginning with the Front Forty movement some 11 years back.

My favorites are those who frequent the Save the Menominee River Facebook Page. I won't name names, but they seem like a great crew: Driven, dedicated and resourceful.

They've testified, marched, picketed, donated, made signs, created memes, written letters and done much more to keep the Menominee River - which is finally clean after decades of contamination - safe from destruction.

Along the way, I suspect they've learned a  lot about the civic process and made what I hope will be lasting friendships. I really like these people, at least online. I admire their dedication.

I applaud the progress these good people have made. Now there's more than one federal agency that is looking askance at the Back Forty Mine. As it should.

Sure, the mine might bring a few jobs to the area. But that's not so attractive now with other businesses expanding.

And no amount of job creation is worth losing our most valuable resource: The Menominee River.

Stop the mine.

“Not every business is a good business.”

At long last the Menominee City Council has asked for a resolution opposing the Back Forty Mine.

Read about it.

Kudos to Mayor Jean Stegeman and council Rep. Frank Pohlmann for pushing it past opposing council members.

More kudos to Stegeman for recognizing and pointing out that all business is not good for the community.

I’m reminded of my 18-month fill-in stint on the Marinette Plan Commission. We very wisely said no to a fireworks business that would have allowed stock to remain in the building during months of closure. The building would have been located near a residential patch of Marinette Avenue.

Good for the community? I think not.

Tourism & MCABI: Good Match?

Marinette County officials are giving serious thought to moving tourism promotion to the county’s economic development arm, MCABI.

That’s a good idea. Read more here.

MCABI, by the way, stands for Marinette County Association for Business & Industry. It was a moribund little organization until Ann Hartnell took over as executive director in late 2012.

Hartnell and her board are responsible for finally getting the long-talked about business center/ incubator off the ground. The center is located across from Ironworks on Main Street in mid-town Marinette.

She retired at the end of 2017, and will be replaced by Lindsay Callow. That is another piece of good news, I think, as Callow has demonstrated that she is a creative thinker with a solid background in business and marketing.

Callow and her husband own two area wineries, and have done a stellar job getting them off the ground and engaged in the community. They are vested in the community.

Now is the time to make tourism promotion a part of economic development. Lindsay Callow appears to be a great choice to oversee both areas.

I never met the county’s most recent tourism coordinator who quit last fall.

I do know that within the last two years, I picked up a copy of the Marinette County tourism guide that was full of misused words, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles and other grammatical catastrophes. It looked good, but was full of writing errors. I can’t see that happening with Callow at the helm.

Tourism has been a political football in Marinette County. It’s been overseen by the chamber on at least two occasions, by a consultant, by the county, by a committee - and dare we hope, finally under MCABI?


It seems Callow resigned 3-4 weeks into the job.

Oh, well.

Kudos to Stegeman and Pohlmann

I haven’t always agreed with Menominee Mayor Jean Stegeman.

But I respect her for opposing the Back Forty Mine. She deftly handled the city council’s refusal to discuss the issue a few months back (that’s when I started but never finished this post.) She correctly pointed out that several council members skip meetings when the issue is on the agenda.

She showed more grit this week when some council members - well, mostly one - grilled Aquila representatives. Read more here.

The very fact that Stegeman opposes the mine when so many around her appear to be aligned with mine officials is admirable. She’s sticking to her convictions.

So is Frank Pohlmann, one of two Ward 4 reps. He’s better informed than the Aquila reps.

I don’t know why Stegeman gave up her chance to earn real money by leading the Tri City Area United Way. I know what she earns in her very part-time mayoral position, ands it’s a pittance. It wouldn’t even pay for a years worth of groceries.

But Menominee is lucky to have Stegeman and Pohlmann on board.

Henes Park: The Next Century

Trails are named for great thinkers.

Now in its 110th year, Menominee's Henes Park, through the generosity of the family whose name it bears, will see an update.

Read the story here.

The late John and Jewel Henes, as thoughtful and as community-minded as any local couple could be, conceived a plan for a park building that takes the park well into the 21st century. The Heneses, along with people like Sara Lambrecht and Tom Kuber, are largely responsible for Menominee's gem of a preserved downtown with its 19th/early 20th century buildings and turrets.

No they didn't build it, but the Heneses and Lambrecht were tireless promotors of historic preservation. Kuber and his wife, Sandy, purchased many of the old buildings and preserved and maintained them for many years.

The iconic lifeguard stand.

The Heneses and their deep sense of pride in Menominee have contributed greatly to the quality of life there.

Now the park, located on Poplar Point, and given to the city by John Henes' grandfather in or before 1907, will get a new building, a lodge of sorts - not the kind with rooms to rent - with a kitchen and sanitary facilities that can accommodate large gatherings like family and high-school reunions.

What a wonderful idea! Menominee, consider yourselves lucky.

The park was designed by Ossian Cole Simonds, a Michigan native, who followed the landscape design ideals of the arguably more famous Frederick Law Olmsted, perhaps best known as the designer of New York's Central Park.

Both men knew that parks serve a number of audiences, those who seek activity and those in search of quiet contemplation. That idea gets lost all too frequently when misguided individuals - often the more athletically inclined - think parks are meant only for frenetic activity.

The road along the shore.

Just meander the inner trails of Henes Park. Despite whatever is happening at the beach and volleyball court, here you will find the sound of woodpeckers and nuthatches, the rustle of leaves, the crisp crunch of twigs underfoot. The trails are named for philosophers, not athletes.

So it made a lot of sense to me to know that Mayor Jean Stegeman asked if such a building was what the public wanted. To destroy the park's tranquility would be disastrous.

But I don't think that is what John and Jewel Henes had in mind. Quiet, gracious individuals, they surely understood and appreciated the need for silence and pondering at Henes Park. Huge patrons of art and the arts, the Heneses likely wanted to bring more creative and educational opportunities to this verdant semi-peninsula north of town. Their legacy will be well served in the hands of their niece Joanna Lewis.

At any rate, Menominee should consider itself fortunate to have thoughtful donors like the Heneses and the anonymous individual responsible for spiffing up the Menominee lighthouse.

Fortunate indeed.

I’m adding this link because it does a wonderful job describing the public parks movement. A friend told me of an older woman railing against the Henes gift because it would take the park away from kids. Parks are for everyone!

The Second Time Around

Once again there is talk of cooperation and communication among area recreation departments and related entities.

It’s a good idea, especially with a community recreation center under construction in Marinette.

The last time the idea was proposed, in 2009, a discussion filled the council chambers in Marinette’s city hall. An area recreation oversight entity was proposed. And then nothing happened.

Maybe the time wasn’t right. Menominee was between city managers and Marinette had Bob Harbick in the mayor’s seat. Local school districts were under temporary leadership.

Fortunately, that’s no longer the case.

One of the goals of the current proposal is to avoid duplication of recreation programs. To do this requires understanding the mission, vision and values of every local organization involved in recreational programming. Councilwoman Dorothy Kowalski has already alluded to this challenge.

But it also requires participants to take a good look at the economic needs of area families, especially those with children. Cutting a duplicate program won’t always be a wise move if it robs one group of access: An eight-year old on the north side of Menominee, for example, won’t necessarily benefit from a program only offered on the south side of Marinette.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this nascent effort shakes out.

Using Kids to Promote Mining?

Reports indicate that Aquila Resouces, promoters of the controversial Back Forty open-pit sulfide mine, have taken their public relations campaign too far.

At a recent Stephenson High School football game, Aquila allegedly donated $1,000 to the gridiron program, complete with small keepsake footballs imprinted with the Aquila logo. These were then tossed into the crowd by young girls, some reportedly as young as kindergarten age.

A well-written letter from Tina Lesperance, an anti-mine activist, described the scenario in today’s EagleHerald.

The tactic she descrbed is wrong on so many levels.

I don’t care what the cause is, using kids to promote it is beyond the pale. To be fair, it should be noted that some anti-mine protestors have brought their children to demonstrations. I don’t like that either. The difference is that the children are with their parents and generally not being used as cute little gimmicks.

Aquila has repeatedly tried to buy support from the community by making donations to community causes and institutions. I’ve never felt comfortable with that, but it’s a public relations tactic used in by just about every for-profit organization in the country. It’s just especially distasteful when employed by a tobacco company, a war-profiteer - or a mining enterprise.

But using kids as part of the strategy?

No. Really disgusting. No ethical public relations practitioner would do that. It carries with it the notion that we are a bunch of rubes who will buy into a mine that gives away mini footballs. Moreover, no savvy PR person should deliberately insult the audience.

What we don’t know is whose idea it was to involve kids. If it was the school’s suggestion, wow, I’m glad I don’t have children in that district. It’s not only unethical, it’s downright immoral. I hope parents will bring their concerns to the school board.

I don’t expect Aquila to take the high road. But I expect more from a public school district. And you should, too.