Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Ironwood Township — The Ironwood Township Board of Trustees will likely take action on a survey for township residents at its next meeting, after the township’s planning commission voted Thursday to send the questionnaire to the board for approval.
The survey is part of the commission’s effort to update the township’s master plan as required every five years.
“The reason to do the survey is to gauge if there is any change in public thought or opinion on land use from five years ago to today,” commission vice chair Darrin Kimbler said.
A majority of the survey deals with land use in the township and the direction residents would like to see the township go in the future. It is the same survey residents had the opportunity to fill out five or six years ago, when the master plan was last being addressed.
New this year will be a handful of questions on medical marijuana, which the commission will hope help guide the township as it decides how to respond to new state laws that potentially open the door for commercial medical marijuana facilities in areas such as the township.
“Since the medical marijuana thing has come up, it should be in the master plan because it is a land-use issue,” Kimbler said. “So this gives us an idea on what the citizenry thinks about medical marijuana before we start to propose any ordinance to the township board.”
Assuming the township board approves the survey in the next few weeks, the surveys will be mailed to residents with their winter tax bills in December.
The commission expects residents would have a couple weeks to fill out their responses before they were due back to the township.
The commission members said they hope this method increases the response rate from the last time the surveys were sent out.
“(Being sent with the tax bill) will give everyone an opportunity for input,” Robert Lynn said, “so they can’t say, ‘Nobody asked me about it.’”
