Marenisco leadership to see change of guard at year's end

By P.J. GLISSON

[email protected]

Marenisco - After nearly a quarter century on the job, Marenisco Township Supervisor Richard Bouvette has announced he will retire after the coming November election.

Bouvette has made that decision clear in recent months, but it wasn't until this spring that only one person applied to take over the job.

He is Marenisco Police Chief Bruce Mahler, who will retire from law enforcement in August after more than 16 years on his largely one-man job.

Both men, who have a longstanding relationship beyond their current roles, spoke with the Daily Globe last week outside of the Marenisco Town Hall.

"Best science teacher I ever had," said Mahler, grinning about Bouvette's earlier role at the former Marenisco School.

"The only one you ever had," said Bouvette, who taught from 1968 until he was the school's superintendent from 2001-2004. He then continued from 2002-2004 as superintendent of the newly-consolidated Wakefield-Marenisco K-12 School in Wakefield before retiring from education.

Bouvette was born and raised in Grand Rapids, and Mahler was born in Chicago.

"I moved here when I was seven," said Mahler. "I grew up here in Marenisco."

Bouvette said that, for as long as he can remember, Marenisco has attracted people from Chicago. Mahler recalls his parents buying a house here even before they made it their permanent home.

The chief has 42 years in law enforcement, having worked previously in the Office of Special Investigations at Marquette's K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base before it closed in 1995.

He also was the director of the Regional Police Academy at Northern Michigan University, where he received his B.S. in Criminal Justice, followed by his master's degree from Michigan State University.

The chief also was a member of NMU's criminal justice staff and was an undersheriff in Marquette County.

In addition, he was the police commissioner for the L'Anse Indian Reservation and was a criminal investigator and police supervisor at the Lac Vieux Desert Band in Watersmeet.

In Marenisco, both Bouvette and Mahler are responsible for the state's second largest township in relation to land. It has 325.9 square miles compared to the 36 square miles of the average township in Michigan. Only McMillan Township in Luce County is larger, with nearly 600 square miles.

"We're at a disadvantage and an advantage," said the supervisor of his township, which includes a chunk of the Ottawa National Forest. "We have a lot of land."

On the other hand, he noted that the U.S. Forest Service owns around 130,000 acres, and commercial logging interests own another 80,000 to 90,000 acres.

He said the township doesn't get much tax income from forest land, and it also reduces what could be residential land.

"Our lakes are surrounded by forest service properties, so we have nowhere for people to go," he said.

Still, he said, there is a plus in that 100,000 acres of that land are open to hunting, fishing and trapping.

The township's population had been about 1,700 before the Michigan Department of Corrections closed Marenisco's nearly 50-year-old Ojibway Correctional Facility at the end of 2018.

Since then, Bouvette suspects it has been under 1,000, and both guys know that - as a result - state funds from revenue sharing, gas tax, etc. will be substantially lower for the foreseeable future.

The men agree that the current COVID-19 crisis will cause additional hits to sales and gas taxes.

Bouvette has seen ongoing decline throughout his career.

The former Marenisco School had about 180 kids when he arrived in the late 1960s.

"When I first came here, we had the Kimberly-Clark Sawmill," he said, adding that then "Louisiana-Pacific built a new sawmill, ran it for about a year and a half, and then tore it down."

Bouvette said that, over time, several corporations have established themselves in the region due to tax incentives. However, he added, "As soon as the tax credit is gone, they're gone."

Given that the loss of the prison took with it about 200 good-paying jobs, both men are concerned about encouraging future enterprise.

The Lake Gogebic region has five resorts and a supper club, and Marenisco's "downtown" area has a small market, along with two taverns, a budding bed and breakfast unit, and a restaurant that also includes a laundromat.

The township also has a water plant, a lumber mill, a fabrication plant, a parts place, a tree service, and some independent contractors.

Marenisco recently lost its medical clinic when Mahler's wife, Dr. Kim Mahler, retired.

The township itself employs three full-time and three-part-time employees, plus a few part-time summer employees. Mahler also hires some part-time help during the busy winter snowmobile season.

Although a potential buyer has expressed interest in the former OCF complex, those talks are still in preliminary stages. A Chicago entrepreneur is considering the facility for use as a marijuana farm, where he could grow, process and test marijuana before selling it outside of this region.

"Right now, everything is in the state's hands," said Bouvette. "If he buys, then we take over from there, and we have to set some rules and guidelines."

Mahler and Bouvette both emphasized that the township needs more youth.

"We need some new ideas and a new infusion of energy," said Bouvette, who held his position of supervisor from 1984-1996 before resuming it again in 2009.

Mahler said he hopes that the growing trend of remote work might help to lure some younger folks here.

In general, he commended Bouvette for where he's taken the township. He credited the supervisor with "water and sewer projects that he took on that nobody else took on for many decades."

"I didn't do that by myself," said Bouvette. "I don't think I had a bad board member in all the years I was here."

Mahler, who is part of a county-wide initiative to create a strategic plan for economic development, said the township still needs "to chase" whatever potential enterprise may exist.

"The problem is we're always competing with everybody else," he said of other townships and municipalities in the region.

He added that the township budget will be paramount to future planning and that he and the Board of Trustees must strive "to augment what we're going to lose" in relation to state funds.

"We try to keep it nice and neat, attractive, friendly," said Bouvette of Marenisco. He hopes that prospective business owners and other residents will respond to that effort and then make the region "even better."