Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Sorted by date Results 1403 - 1427 of 9733
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] HURLEY — The Hurley City Council on Monday voted 4-1 not to close Silver Street or provide other support that would allow for a downtown parade during the annual Memorial Weekend ATV/UTV Rally. Council members Joanne Bruneau, Jamey Francis, Robert Lanctoe and Stephanie Innes-Smith voted with the decision to withhold city support required for the Hurley Area Chamber of Commerce and other event partners to hold the parade in the interest of following COVID-19 pandemic guidelines that still r...
By CHARITY SMITH [email protected] HURLEY - A rescue effort that included the help of the Hurley Police and Public Works departments successfully retrieved a dog that had fallen into a manhole near Second Avenue near downtown Hurley Wednesday morning. Sadie, a 13-year-old German wire hair pointer belonging to Karen and Paul Hagemann, ventured off into a culvert during her morning walk shortly before 9 a.m. The culvert starts at the west side of Second Avenue and runs under the road...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD — The Ironwood City Commission approved two projects Monday that are meant to help Miners Memorial Heritage Park continue to grow and expand. The commission approved a $264,364 bid from Marquettebased Flowtrack Mountain Bike Trails, LLC, to complete the mountain bike trail construction and qayfinding signs project at Miners Park. The project includes construction of a pump and hand cycle tracks; cross country and mountain bike trails; a 3-foot boardwalk trail; trail signs and posts. The a...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD — After nearly two years of preliminary work, the Ironwood City Commission on Monday approved an engineering service agreement to start the water treatment plant project. The commission, 5-0, approved the design and project management services with HDR, Inc., of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. The firm will start work on final engineering of the estimated $9.7 million concrete, gravity filtered water treatment plant and pump station to better address manganese and iron water quality issues a...
By P.J. GLISSON [email protected] WAKEFIELD - City Manager Robert Brown, Jr. announced on Monday evening that tours of Wakefield city garage sites will begin today at 5 p.m. While presenting a related slideshow at a regular meeting of the Wakefield City Council, Brown said the tours will allow the public to compare the three existing sites used by the Department of Public Works to the projected new site in the city's industrial park, southwest of Sunday Lake. In addition to today's tour, a...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD — With the Ironwood City Commission’s blight action on a long-time problem residence on Monday, the commissioners called upon all residents to clean up this spring. Commissioner Kim Corcoran said that with the commission taking action on one residence on Monday she wanted the city to consider something more constructive than punitive. She took the opportunity to drive around the city recently and noticed a number of properties with blight issues, and along Copper, Oak, and Ironwood str...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD — There have been significant improvements with on-time arrivals and departures along with increased boardings according to comments from an official of Boutique Air Inc., the Essential Service Provider that started service on Aug. 1. Tom Warren, vice president of business development for Boutique Air, traveled from Colorado to provide a progress report on issues presented by the Gogebic-Iron County Airport Regular Board at its meeting on Monday. He first appeared before the board in F...
By CHARITY SMITH [email protected] BESSEMER — Bessemer high school students will continue with in-person learning despite a recommendation from the Michigan Education Association on Friday to revert back to virtual learning for two weeks. “(Schools in the Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District) came to the conclusion that because it is just highly recommended and not mandated, that we’re just going to continue in person,” said Dan Niemi, superintendent of Bessemer Area School District. Niemi said he believes the recomme...
by MEGAN HUGHES [email protected] PENCE, Wis. - The Penokee Rangers gathered Saturday morning for an important task, preparing trail markers for the summertime. The markers, which are fashioned out of ironwood, will mark the trail for summertime hikers, and are planned to last for a long while. Volunteers gathered at the Pence trailhead to work on stripping bark and smoothing down branches. "This is the first time they have met to do this as a group," according to chief of trails, C...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] HURLEY - The Iron County board of canvass met Friday to complete the canvass of local votes cast in Tuesday's election, formally certifying the results. The three-person board reviewed the tally sheets for every ward in the county to ensure the filled out tally sheets accurately reflect the number of paper and electronic ballots cast. The process largely confirmed the results initially reported Tuesday night, with the exception of Sharon Ofstad...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] HURLEY — The Hurley K-12 School has released its spring calendar with events modified for public participation. Scheduled spring events include traditional but modified graduations and prom, choral and band concerts, scholarship and awards programs, according to Melissa Oja, the middle and high school principal. The success of the fall and spring sports programs provided a model for pandemic safety and allow for more people to attend with the open gym floors not in use for the events, she said. ...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] HANCOCK — As the weather warms up, the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department is warning residents of potential diseases they can get from ticks and mosquitoes. Ticks live in grassy, bushy or wooded areas, according to the health department, and can be active any time there are multiple days in a row where temperatures are above 32 degrees. They can carry a variety of diseases — including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tulameria and anaplasmosis — a health department spokesperson sa...
By CHARITY SMITH [email protected] WAKEFIELD - The Wakefield Public Library reopened its monthly patron exhibit this month. The exhibit, which features artwork and other collectibles belonging to library patrons, had been shut down for more than a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "With the relaxing of some of the restrictions, we decided that we were able to safely reopen that. So we just restarted that," said Joel Laessig, library director. The library started the exhibit in August...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD TOWNSHIP — The presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the area of the Gogebic Iron County Airport has prompted a second phase of sampling to determine the spread of the toxic chemicals into nearby land, wells and waterways. Abigail Hendershott, the executive director of the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team (MPART), led a team of experts in a virtual meeting Tuesday to discuss the process with residents. She said an executive order created MPART as a collaboration of s...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] HURLEY — Iron County will continue to use the Duluth-based Jamar Company for heating and cooling work at the county courthouse after the Iron County Board of Supervisors’ finance committee approved a 5-year contract extension Thursday. The agreement will have the county pay $59,800 in 2022, according to Iron County Clerk Mike Saari, with roughly half of the cost going to replacing aging equipment at the courthouse. Saari said most of the heat pumps at the courthouse have been there for 20 yea...
MERCER, Wis. - Mercer voters approved a half-cent consumer tax to help pay for roads and infrastructure costs in Tuesday's spring election. The voter approved the Premier Resort Area Tax (PRAT) with 278 votes (59.7%) for the proposal and 187 votes against. This contrasted the previous PRAT attempt in the 2019 spring election when the proposal lost 507-264. Mercer is eligible to utilize PRAT as a municipality with at least 40% of its equalized assessed property value in use by tourism-related...
BESSEMER — The Bessemer City Council gave the organizers of local Fourth of July festivities its “blessing” Monday to go ahead with plans for this year’s events. “I’ll be happy with absolutely anything that we can have just to bring our hometown pride back. Bring the community back together and just celebrate the Fourth of July. So anything that we can possibly have, I am grateful for,” said Linda Nelson, president of the Fourth of July organizing committee. Nelson said normally at this time of year they would be finalizing plans, howeve...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] HANCOCK — The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has identified a variant of COVID-19 that is thought to have emerged in the United Kingdom in five Houghton County cases, the Western Upper Peninsula Health Department announced Monday. “When a variant is identified or suspected, additional measures take place, such as a strict 14-day quarantine,” WUPHD Health Officer Kate Beer said in the announcement. “A new variant in our community is concerning since it can be related to higher...
By TOM LAVENTURE [email protected] IRONWOOD — As the heavy work involved in building the new Pat O’Donnell Civic Center is completed the more detailed finishing work has its own complications with scheduling and shipping delays that are related to pandemic, according to reports at Monday’s board meeting. “There are a lot of things on back order,” said Jim Collins, board chair. “Everybody is waiting for somebody else to finish something. It’s a hard time and, in my opinion, no one is dragging their feet and they are working very...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] GREENLAND - The region's fickle weather can make spring a difficult time to plan construction projects in the Western Upper Peninsula, as evident by the delayed start of a bridge project in Ontonagon County. Work completing a multi-year project replacing two bridges over the Firesteel River near Greenland had been scheduled to start in mid-March, according to a Michigan Department of Transportation announcement. However, MDOT spokesman Dan...
By P.J. GLISSON [email protected] BESSEMER - For the second year in a row, VFW Post 3687 in Bessemer sponsored on Saturday a "COVID-friendly" celebration that organizers described as "an Easter egg hunt in a bag." Billed officially as a community Easter event, the occasion went off without a hitch, with dozens of cars passing on each side of a table stocked for ongoing and efficient dispatch. The Easter Bunny stood front and center, waving with both hands, throwing kisses, clapping,...
By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] HURLEY — Iron County voters are heading to the polls today to cast their ballots in Wisconsin’s spring election. Although the local races will depend on where voters live, everyone in the county will have the chance to vote in the race for state superintendent of public instruction between Jill Underly and Deborah Kerr, as well as the judicial race for a seat on the District 3 Court of Appeals between Gregory Gill and Rick Cveykus. Many of the local races feature unopposed candidates running for ei...
By P.J. GLISSON [email protected] KIMBALL, Wis. — In a sign that the COVID-19 pandemic is fading — and/or that more and more people now have related vaccinations — an Iron County church offered an Easter morning breakfast at its Kimball location. Just prior to a mid-morning service led by Pastor Steve Estola, the Good Shepherd Community Church offered a hot meal to a small number of church members who ate in groups separated by several feet of “social distance.” Robin Estola, the pastor’s wife, said that all of them were “so thankfu...
BESSEMER — The Bessemer City Council approved a resolution to allow flexibility in meeting platforms during its first in-person meeting in over a year on Friday. The special meeting was called in order to address the issue of whether or not to meet in person in the future. “That’s the state of Michigan for you. It kind of contradicts the COVID-19 rules. I talked to our attorney and we have to have this meeting in person in order to decide whether Monday, and future meetings, will be in person,” said City Manager Charly Loper. Loper said th...
BESSEMER - Students at Washington Elementary got to pour slime on Mark Switzer, the school's dean of instruction, on Thursday, as a reward for the kids' fundraising efforts in the Kids Heart Challenge for the American Heart Association. The annual challenge encourages students to get at least 60 minutes of exercise a day, drink water instead of drinks with sugar, and show acts of kindness. The students set up profiles on the Kids Heart Challenge website and raised money for the American Heart...
