School Board Recall, Third Street Marketplace, Spaceport Prospects, Cop Shortage, Population Gain, and NMU Honored
The Latest from Marquette, MI by Brian Cabell
OH BOY. JUST what we need. A recall effort is underway to kick three members of the MAPS School Board out of office because they voted with a fourth member (Cherryl Maddox-Smith) to do away with “Redmen” as Marquette Senior High School’s mascot…Maddox-Smith is ineligible for recall because she’s in her first year in office.
Sure, the 4-3 vote was disappointing to some, and it’s an emotionally charged issue…but still, can’t we move on to more substantive issues like, ohh, the education of our children?
“We are publicly elected officials,” says School Board President Kristen Cambensy, who voted to keep the name, “and we have to expect that not everybody will agree with every vote we take.” Amen, but that doesn’t mean when we disagree on an issue with our elected officials that we should immediately boot them out of office.
Oh wait! There’s more! There’s also been harassment on social media and otherwise against both the pro- and anti-Redmen board members…Wonderful. Loudmouths full of venom engaging in personal attacks against unpaid School Board members who have chosen to give up their time to serve their community…What is wrong with us?
SEEMS WE’VE HEARD this before…Back in 2020, City Commissioner Andrew Lorinser, who was an outspoken opponent of the Redmen name, was hounded into resigning his office because of the vitriol he faced from a group of citizens…“It was social media, emails, phone calls, personal confrontations,” Lorinser says. “Even my wife had to deal with it.”
Maybe Marquette is just a microcosm of our now toxically polarized nation, but some of us thought we were better than that. Apparently not.
LOOKS LIKE THE Third Street Marketplace is just about filled with tenants…“We’re almost done after three long years,” says Joe Constance, the marketplace developer….He’s expecting to wrap up a deal with a food-and-beverage shop next week…Unnamed publicly, so far. Likely won’t open until next spring…It’s been a long haul for Constance who, at one time or another, had the Food Co-op, an Italian restaurant, a pie shop, and a game store intending to move in…The deals all fell through…Not this one, he hopes.
STILL A SHORTAGE of flights at Sawyer International Airport…Wait!!! That’s the wrong name! The new name for the airport, part of the rebranding project, is the “Marquette Sawyer Regional Airport,” signage soon to go up…The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but Airport Manager Duane Duray says it better reflects the culture of the airport and the UP.
Anyway, the shortage remains—two American Airlines flights a day, only one Delta flight, and one of the American flights will likely go away this fall…”Our anticipation is that, as the airlines recover from the pilot shortage, we’ll get some flights back.”…No prediction from Duray as to when that will be…Somehow, in the eyes of the airline bigwigs, Marquette remains a backwater.
THE U.P. SPACEPORT, the one announced with great fanfare a few years back, is…uhh…well, we don’t know. Gavin Brown, the executive director of the Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association—the guy who was enthusiastically leading the charge for the controversial Spaceport—hasn’t responded to two inquiries about progress on the Spaceport project…Economic concerns and resistance from some residents in the UP might be the reason for the silence, but we don’t know because, so far, no one’s talking.
YA WANNA BE a police officer? Apparently not…Michigan has 4500 fewer police officers than it had in 2001, and 900 fewer than just three years ago—this according to Bridge Michigan…Here in Marquette, the same problem: police are down four positions, with two more coming up. Nobody banging on the door to get in…Two newbies are in the Academy right now, but when they join up, Marquette Police Chief Ryan Grim will still be facing a serious staff shortage…“It’s the political climate and social media,” he says. “Police have gotten a bad reputation. But they should realize that being a police officer in Marquette is a lot different than being an officer in a big city.”
One more thing: Marquette cops get a pension. Sweet.
WOOHOO! MARQUETTE IS gaining population…It picked up more than 600 residents between 2020 and 2022…This, according to Michael and John Broadway, who wrote an extensive article in Rural Insights on UP populations trends…According to the authors, the gain in population was likely due to the influx of retirees and remote workers…Climate changes—especially scorching heat down south—will likely bring more folks north in the years ahead.
“WE’D LIKE TO take over a motel. We’re in talks with them right now.” That’s Ryan Redmond, the executive director of Superior Connections, talking…Superior Connections is an agency that supports recovering addicts in Marquette County—people who are so down-and-out on their luck with drug, behavioral and criminal problems, that they sometimes can’t get housing and help from other poverty agencies in the county…Superior Connections finds shelter for them at various churches, motels, even an outside encampment in Skandia…It’s tough, often thankless work for the nine staff members and dozen volunteers, but they keep at it…Someone’s gotta do it.
THIS IS A big deal…An NMU crew that produces video coverage of the NMU hockey teams has won a big award over competition from several larger schools—this, according to Northern Today…They won the 2023 College Sports Media Award for a five minute clip they produced on the NMU-Michigan Tech hockey game this year…Most of the biggest schools in the nation hire professionals to produce their hockey coverage. Not at Northern. Here, it’s students who do the work. Learning through doing…And these kids at Northern apparently learned fast.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”
—Mister Rogers
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I wrote last time about the name change issue: enough!! It's time to deal with educating our young people.
Thanks for doing this. Sure wish we could move on from the name controversy to other more important issues.