Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By Zachary Marano
MERCER, Wis. — The town of Mercer Board of Supervisors met on Thursday to discuss a piece of property that is being operated as a tourist rooming house without a permit and the enforcement of the town fireworks ordinance over the Fourth of July weekend.
The board continued their discussion from their previous regular meeting on July 1 regarding a home on North Falcon Road that is allegedly being rented by its owners without a proper permit. At the meeting two weeks prior, the board agreed to send a notice to the renters informing them that they needed to obtain a permit.
Council chair John Sendra said he talked with the owners’ attorney about what his clients needed in order to operate their property as a tourist rooming house. He said the attorney was under the impression that he had already fulfilled all his requirements because he received a conditional use permit for the property from the planning commission.
Sendra said the owners need to pay a fee and apply for a tourist rooming house permit.
“He thinks he doesn’t even need to pay a fee. He think’s he’s fulfilled all his requirements. So, he’s kind of flying in the face of what our ordinance said,” Sendra said. “We said there was going to be a public hearing. (The owners) don’t agree. They’ve had enough public hearings. They said they are not going to participate in any more public hearings.”
Sendra said the board needed to approve a written notification that will give the owners seven days to come and fill out an application for a tourist rooming house permit. If they fail to obtain the permit at the end of these seven days, they could lose their conditional use permit.
A motion to send this letter of notice was approved unanimously apart from town supervisor Eric Snow, who abstained from the vote because his parents are in close proximity to the property on North Falcon Road and he wanted to avoid the appearance of impropriety. According to Sendra, the notification was sent on Monday.
In response to complaints about police inaction regarding alleged illegal fireworks use in Mercer during the holiday weekend, Snow and board legal counsel Fritz Schellgell attempted to clarify how the town’s fireworks ordinance is enforced.
To shoot off fireworks, a Mercer resident must have a fireworks permit. If the resident uses fireworks without a permit, they can receive a citation. If they use them outside of the allotted time window, the city can pull the permit.
Schellgell said that a complaint must identify the person committing a fireworks violation by name if they are to be taken seriously by the board of supervisors. A recent complaint email only identified a property address, which he said was insufficient for the town to move against the alleged violator.
Schellgell also said that everybody has the impression that enforcing against fireworks violations is fast and instantaneous, like a knee-jerk reaction, but it doesn’t happen that quickly in practice.
“What we need to do is have verified violations. Once that occurs, we can start the process and I can file an action in circuit court. And they can be enjoined from doing so,” Schellgett said. “Here’s a court order that says you’re prohibiting from doing X, Y and Z. And if they violate that court order, the sheriff’s department can act on it. There are teeth, but there’s a process, and the biggest problem is I don’t think anybody is really grasping the process.”
After he noticed “fireworks ordinance and lack of enforcement” listed as an agenda item for Thursday’s meeting, Snow said that he searched for fireworks complaints made in the last 30 days. His query produced eight results. Five of these fireworks complaints were not within the town of Mercer and one was actually the Mercer Fire Department doing a test firing.
“There was not a single one of them that our officers did not respond to. One of them was unfounded. There is not a ‘lack of enforcement’ by the sheriff’s department,” said Snow, who is a deputy with the Iron County Sheriff’s Office, but added he wasn’t acting as a spokesman for the department.
Sendra responded to Snow by saying, “Fair enough.”
In other business, the board approved:
—A motion to accept a contractor’s bid of $176,720.84 to pave Lakeshore Drive.
—Conditional use permits for a 60-by-40-foot garage on 5760 N. U.S. 51, a 45-by-30-foot accessory building on 4525 N. Popko Circle East and a 40-by-40-foot accessory building on 6799 N. Spider Lane with stipulations of no human habitation or commercial use.
—A motion to appoint Nicole Christopherson as the Mercer School Board’s representative on the Library Board for the remaining year.
