ELY — The current political season filled the Vermilion North College theater again last week as Ely residents turned out to hear from local candidates for Ely mayor and city council seats. Current mayor Heidi Omerza and council member and mayoral challenger Emily Roose took the stage to talk about the future of the city. City council candidates Abby Dare, Angela Campbell, Al Forsman, Lacy Squier and Mark Zupec then took their own places to answer questions. The Ely Rotary Club and the American Association of University Women sponsored the event.
Ely’s economy was the main focus throughout the evening, whether the discussion focused on job creation, economic diversity, mining, taxes, or city spending. The dollars flowing into, out of, and around Ely held the spotlight.
Omerza emphasized the need for full-time jobs in the area, particularly for younger residents.
“I think if we talk about workers, we need to make sure we’re looking at childcare, housing, and jobs,” Omerza said, explaining that keeping workers in the area means communicating that all of those things are available.
“Out of all my four kids, I have one that has stayed here,” Omerza added.
While Ely got its start as a mining town, Omerza said the city won’t see a mine again, at least not within the city limits. “I really try to always focus on that, especially at our council table. Diversification is always the goal when it comes to job creation. We have tourism. We need to make sure that we’re taking care of our tourism, and no single industry should ever be Ely’s only lifeline,” Omerza said.
Her opponent, Emily Roose, took a longer view, speculating on the future of Ely’s economy and how the city could prepare. Roose argued that even if Ely sees an influx of workers from mines or other businesses, Ely might not be ready to support them. Roose said that Ely can prepare for the future by creating more housing and assisting small businesses.
“We can prepare for a future where we need to have more things. We can create more housing. As I mentioned before, our 2023 housing studies said that we need 250 additional units. We are currently building a housing unit in partnership with the Ely HRA, but that’s only 37 units. So, if we were to prepare for that, we would need to build more units,” Roose said.
Roose added that Ely is a great entrepreneurial town and that filling underutilized storefronts could create jobs for the family members of potential miners and allow the city to work with the schools to provide the best possible education for children in the area.
“If we improve ourselves in preparation for the mine, we would also be improving ourselves if there isn’t a mine. We can stop letting this conversation be one that is ignored and taboo, and start working to improve our economy in all the ways that are available to us right now,” Roose said.
Roose also suggested several proposals to help small businesses, including better connections between the Chamber of Commerce and other economic development organizations, negotiating cheaper pooled health care plans, and forming buying groups for similar types of businesses in the area.
“And all of this should free up more capacity for businesses to be able to support having more employees,” Roose said.
The council candidates also focused heavily on economic issues.
Both Abby Dare and Lacy Squier focused heavily on small businesses in Ely as a source of economic development, while Angela Campbell looked to traditional industry and mining, and Al Forsman and Mark Zupec highlighted infrastructure and economic diversification.
Dare argued that the city could do more to prepare existing properties for business owners.
“Down in the commercial world, where I own a business on Sheridan Street, you not only need a good business plan, but you also need to be prepared to renovate an entire building,” Dare said, adding, “I know there’s tons of regional collaboration we can do to help fund projects to start these renovations, but more importantly, a new business owner needs to trust that the town is going to show up for them.”
Dare also encouraged the city to embrace off-season tourism.
“I would love to lean into off-season recreation and just how burly it can be up here,” Dare said.
Squier focused on the potential of educational institutions in the area as a means of job growth and economic support. It was a topic she returned to throughout the forum.
“I’ve been paying attention to the community, meeting as many people as I can, and I see that our shared love of young people and education really brings us together. And again, we’re rich in educational institutions. We’re fortunate to have a college, an elementary school, a high school, an adventure school, a folk school, a wolf center, a bear center, and I think our trails are educational forums,” Squier said.
Squier’s focus on education also led to child care in Ely, which she pointed to as an ongoing challenge, explaining that it will only get worse as Ely grows.
“Ultimately, child care is a business model, and we know we need to do more to retain the people who work in the child care industry, and again, steel ourselves for doing this work on the long term, because we want to keep growing and we want to keep adding children to our community,” Squier said.
Both Dare and Squier also pointed to the city’s soon-to-be-renewed comprehensive plan as a tool for steering Ely toward a brighter future.
“It’s a huge opportunity to really lean in and discover all of the networks and institutions this town has. Really tap into the tourism bureau. Really tap into the chamber of commerce and check in on the work that they’re doing and how it is all of them integrate together. Really tap into the college, the Forest Service, the school, the hospital — all major employers in this town,” Dare said.
Angela Campbell promoted a different path to job creation, including a re-embrace of mining and infrastructure.
“We need jobs. We need full-time jobs. We cannot sustain many, many families out here. Individuals are working three jobs in order to maintain a lifestyle, and that’s why encouraging mining in the future, encouraging manufacturing, bringing in industries that could employ and sustain our community, build, you know, our family base so that our schools, our hospitals, you know, our services can be met,” Campbell said.
She added that with proper oversight, the environmental harm of copper-nickel projects could be mitigated.
“I will not apologize for wanting good jobs here, and I will not accept sloppy standards that just put the Boundary Waters at risk,” Campbell said.
Mark Zupec approached the jobs question with the trades in mind, another potential direction toward diversification. He said that schools could do more to train students in the trades and emphasized that the council could do a better job communicating the resources available for business owners and entrepreneurs.
“We have so many different partners to work with in small business administration. We’ve got the city programs in their own right. Not to mention all the things that are out there through the state and the county. We’ve got a great toolbox that just needs to be shared with everybody,” Zupec said.
Zupec also indicated a need to shore up infrastructure. “I find that to be one of my top priorities: not just our water and sewer, but also our electric. We are really in major need of an upgrade on a substation, and I think that should be another focus,” Zupec said.
Forsman, who has been involved in many of the recent infrastructure projects during his time on the council, spent a large portion of the forum explaining existing and past projects, including the city putting solar panels on top of the water treatment plant and replacing city lighting with LEDs.
“We’re focused on trying to make sure that what we do is sustainable and responsible with energy usage and your tax dollars. We want to try to keep our expenses down as much as we can, and sometimes that means suggesting more on that front end to make sure that we can save it over time,” Forsman said.
Forsman said that the main project at present is improving the water line infrastructure.
“Right now, our water line infrastructure is actually being attacked in a three-phase project, and it likely will last two, three years to get that done,” Forsman said.
“I think the focus on infrastructure, repairing streets, making sure that every year we’re doing some infrastructure project, we’re getting some of these issues that have been avoided and delayed over the years. We’re making sure that they get done, and I’m proud of that,” Forsman said.
During the mayoral forum, the discussion of infrastructure bled into the subject of taxes. When asked how she would navigate cuts to the city budget, Omerza said, “We would start with a line-by-line review of non-essential spending before touching services. We would do cuts that are furthest away from services that would touch anybody in this room.”
Roose said she would first trim the budget close to home, suggesting a cut in her own city salary would be part of the solution.
Outside of their economic diagnoses and prescriptions, each candidate touted their communication abilities, seeking to represent their constituency. Candidates discussed Ely’s wildfire response as well as what topics mayors and council members should weigh in on in the current political climate.
In response to criticism that the city didn’t do enough to keep people informed during the July wildfires, Omerza explained that she had taken a backseat after turning over authority to the emergency preparedness team that coordinated the response.
“I could no longer make decisions on behalf of the city, which is actually a big deal. So, we signed it over to St. Louis County,” Omerza said. “All the information that was handed out, all the information that was passed out was passed out to them. So, we got information out the best way we possibly could.”
Roose added that she thought the city could have done more, such as sharing emergency response plans beforehand.
“I think one thing that we could have done better in the emergency that we just had was getting communication out to people, and I think that one other thing that would have calmed some fears that people had was sharing what Ely’s emergency plan would have been, even though we were not enacting it at that time,” Roose said.
Later in the forum, Roose was asked what topics a small town mayor should comment on.
“I think it’s appropriate to weigh in on state and national issues when speaking directly from the heart, when speaking about something regarding people’s feelings or emotions or a recent event that happened that was a really important thing for people living inside city limits,” Roose said. “I also think it’s important in times like this to reiterate the city’s mission statements, the city’s values, and to let everyone know that we are still a welcoming community, no matter what is happening outside in the rest of the state and at the national level.”
Her sentiment was shared by Dare, who was asked the same question during the council portion of the forum. Dare reiterated multiple times that the city council should spearhead healing efforts in the tense political climate.
“I really hope that we can go through a healing process with each other and be way more deeply in community with each other and cheering each other on. Whether you’re on your side or their side or whatever side, I hope it just starts to feel a lot better and more cohesive. And I would say that the city council has a huge role in spearheading and role modeling that type of communication and trust building,” Dare said.
Candidates were asked throughout the forum about the future of Ely, a question posed by the moderators as, “Is Ely Dying?”
“Ely is not dying,” said Omerza emphatically. “That has been since I have lived here. That has been the headline, and obviously it’s some headline that needs to be flushed on the toilet. It’s evolving. It’s always been evolving, and Ely always finds a great way to reinvent itself.”
Almost every other person who took the stage over the course of the evening echoed the sentiment, with the one exception of Zupec.
“In some ways it has died,” Zupec said. “When I was a kid, there were three hospitals in the area, and now we’re down to one. So, in some instances, yes, things have subsided. Enrollment in schools is down, but I do think we’ve seen a major influx of population across the board, not just in Ely, but also in the townships. So, I think, as was stated earlier by a few people, things are changing.”