Ishpeming Kids Put the Mayor on the Hot Seat

Ishpeming Mayor Gary Nelson has been involved in running Ishpeming for a decade as a member of the City Council. As mayor, he works for the people in the community so we recently asked him about what can be done for kids in Ishpeming and how to make the town a better place for them. He has raised four kids and is now raising two more adopted children, so he knows quite a bit about raising kids in Ishpeming. He gave us very thorough answers to the questions we put forward. We would like to thank Mayor Nelson for his time.

8-18 Media: What made you happy about raising your kids in Ishpeming?

Mayor Nelson: I think the biggest part is there are a lot of opportunities from a quality of life perspective in terms of recreational opportunities. There’s not as much crime as you would find in a bigger city. And the school systems…I think Ishpeming has a very good school system. The NICE school system, all three of these local communities have what I would consider to be excellent educational opportunities for the younger grades through high school. So, that’s biggest thing. They’ve got a great opportunity to do well in school and get a good education preparing them to go on to college, which most of my kids did.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest problem in Ishpeming as it relates to kids?

A: Even though there are areas like Al Quaal and the Playgrounds. . . A few years ago there were some kids that wanted a skateboard park, and we haven’t done a whole lot in terms of providing that. Many years ago Ishpeming had a youth place where the kids hung out. We had a youth director and an actual physical building where young people could go and hang out and have different events. A problem with the City of Ishpeming is its declining population––there aren’t as many kids as there used to be. It’s hard to get numbers to sustain some of the programs that you’d like to have because you just can’t get the number of kids that you used to have back in the late 60’s early 70’s when Ishpeming’s population was around 11,000 or 12,000. Now the population is about 6,300-6,400. Also, they’re more spread out throughout the townships and it’s hard to get a good group of kids to continue to participate in things so that you can financially make them viable. Like the youth program they had here…they tried a couple of times (to restart it) and just couldn’t get the number of kids and couldn’t get it supported financially to make it go. You’d like to be able to provide a lot of good opportunities for kids in terms of keeping them involved in positive events, like the sporting events. It would be nice to continue to provide some of those programs and keep those things going. For example, trying to provide a skateboard park for kids to do their skateboarding and stuff. It’s coming up with the money and finding a spot that’s the challenge.

8-18 Media: What has the city council done recently for children in the community?

Mayor Nelson: About two years ago they put the tubes (tube sliding area) in at Al Quaal, and that was about a $50,000 expenditure to try and enhance the Al Quaal Recreation Area. I think they put in an ice rink there, too, and put some lights on it. They made some changes to the playground facilities and enhanced parking and improved the track. Another thing that’s family-oriented from another grant this year is the Heritage Trail, from Ishpeming to Negaunee, which is now paved. That gets a tremendous amount of biking, walking and non-motorized use, and we did get a grant this year to extend the trail from where it starts in Ishpeming over by the Cleveland Cliffs Brownstone to the other side of town. It will add about another three miles to the trail. We’ll have six or seven miles of paved trail through there for kids or families. I think that’s a really nice thing for the community. I think it’s really appreciated right now.

8-18 Media: Do you think there will be shopping in downtown Ishpeming in the future?

Mayor Nelson: I think there will be some shopping opportunities in the downtown. It won’t be like it was in the late 60s and early 70s. At one time in Ishpeming’s heyday it had a Penney’s, a J.J. Newberrys, a Woolworth Store––It was a big hub of economic activity. Unfortunately, a lot of today’s shoppers have moved to the malls, so it’s hard to get those big companies to try Ishpeming. I think there will be some shopping opportunities, but it’s going to be the small, Mom and Pop type of stores. It’s really hard to get some of the name brand stores . . .we’ve tried in the past. We’ve tried to get T.J. Maxx, some of the other bigger name brands. A lot of those want to have a community profile before they’ll put their business in those communities, and Ishpeming is not big enough or doesn’t fit the community profile for a lot of the bigger businesses. I think it’s gradually changing here to be more service-related: the insurance agencies, the lawyer’s offices, the bank will probably still be downtown. I think Wilderness (Sports) will be there for a long time to come. But some of the small ones might be a little more difficult. You’d hope that there would be, but the economic reality of it is it’s probably going to be tougher and tougher for those businesses to make a go of it.

8-18 Media: What could have been done to prevent the killing of the moose by police in the city limits last year?

Mayor Nelson: It’s an unfortunate situation that I think the police chief and the fellow from the DNR were stuck in. It was a no-win situation ultimately because their first thing was to try and get the moose to go out of town. The problem is that it became such a public event where people were curious to see the moose. They thought they had it scared out of town a couple times, but people kept chasing it back into town. It finally got to the point where they did what they did because they were concerned that the moose, the more stressed it got, that there was a high probability that it could have hurt someone or run over someone. It did almost run into one person. An animal that size, it could have been a tragic event. So their concern became a public safety thing. I think it’s as tough as it is sometimes because, especially for our area, a moose in town is not a very common event. What you would hope is that the public would understand that you need to leave it alone and let it leave town on its own. But everybody wanted to see it, and in the end it turned out to be not a good thing. It’s trying to convince people that when an event happens like this in the future the best thing is to leave it alone and walk away and not try to scare it or chase it through the town. From a police perspective, a little better crowd control, a little better convincing people to go home and leave it alone. There were significantly more people than police officers, so they didn’t have a good handle on it. I think they are going to come up with a plan as to how best you can keep people away from a moose and develop a crowd control situation for an event like this in the future so it won’t happen again. It was an unfortunate event, and hopefully it will never happen again.

8-18 Media: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Mayor Nelson: I appreciate what you’re doing today. It’s a great way to get educated on your community. The media is a great communication tool and I appreciate you asking about the city. The organization that you’re in is a wonderful opportunity for you young folks to get involved in a great field. I wish you the best of luck with your program.

Editor’s note: This story was compiled by Tia Platteborze, 12, Lorissa Juntti, 10, Sydney Dorow, 10 and Marie Morton, 9.