COOK- Representatives of a citizens’ committee exploring solutions for transportation problems sought and got the Cook City Council’s endorsement of their efforts following a presentation at last Thursday’s regular council meeting.
Kathleen McQuillan and Judith Ulseth described for the council how their grassroots effort came about and what their mission to improve conditions for the transportation-challenged in the Cook and North Country region might entail.
“We’re here this evening to bring to your attention a project that we are working on in partnership with some people in the community of Ely,” McQuillan said. “We’re looking at the needs and gaps in transportation services in our community. This has been an issue forever, it’s common in lots of rural areas that people really lack adequate transportation. It’s a really serious issue in our community.”
McQuillan and Ulseth are part of a group called Northern Progressives, which McQuillan described as “a grassroots community-based organization with not a lot of formal structure.” But the group has been focused in recent months on developing action projects related to essential services, and they realized that underlying all of the resource access issues they identified was the lack of transportation options. Step one in tackling the problem was to gather real information from real people in the area to better understand the problem.
The Cook Transportation Needs survey they created is available now through May 15 with accompanying drop-off boxes at the Cook Public Library, the Homestead and Pioneer HRA buildings, Cook Scenic Rivers Clinic and Zup’s Grocery. It is also available by calling Ulseth at 218-750-4304. The surveys have a mailing address printed on the back so that they can also be folded, stamped, and mailed in. Completed surveys should be returned by May 15.
“We’re asking the community to answer certain questions that reflect their basic needs for transportation – what kind of vehicle they rely on to get to their appointments, to get to work, to get to the grocery store, and what their experiences in the past have been with transportation,” McQuillan said. “What have they tried, how was it, and we also ask for any ideas or input that they have on what would be most beneficial to their accessing adequate transportation.”
The two groups have also been in contact with transportation providers such as Arrowhead Transit and Big Woods Transit, and have been seeking out other sources of transportation such as private services or rides offered by agencies or civic groups or others providing transportation to those in need.
“We’re looking at what exists now and where are the gaps,” McQuillan said. “We’ll be pulling together all that information that we get from the community and sitting down as a committee to look at what we do with the information. And then also do some research on other rural communities in our state, or even the nation, that are coming up with innovative ideas to provide transportation.”
“We’re at the very earliest stages of this, and we’re all doing it voluntarily,” McQuillan continued. “We’ve got many partners, and we’ve talked with many people around the community who are very excited about us working on this, so we don’t feel alone. But we’d like the council to offer their moral support to what we’re doing working out in the community and that you’re not adverse in any way or have concerns about anything.”
Council members responded with a unanimous endorsement of the committee’s work, and council member Elizabeth Storm added a personal plea for people to do the survey.
“I’d also like to encourage everybody to complete the survey,” she said. “Surveys that we have had in the past couple of years have yielded good results, for instance the cleanup of the city and housing that we’re still working on.”
Colonial flair
Next up in the public forum was as curious a sight as seen at a Cook council meeting in a good while, a gentleman walking to the podium wearing a black tricorn hat and a white wig, a throwback to the days when the United States was in its infancy as a nation and the ink was barely dry on the Constitution.
It was appropriate attire for a man who identified himself only as a member of group that’s advocating for a constitutional convention of the states to address government overreach and restore limited federal government, he said.
“You’ve got to have two-thirds of the states to make it happen,” he said. “We have nineteen states on board and we have 2.5 million petitions across the United States trying to make this happen.”
The man referred back to the Founding Fathers and their intent in structuring the Constitution that the nation remains a republic and not “communism or socialism with a totalitarian dictatorship.”
A constitutional convention as outlined in Article Five of the Constitution would “guarantee states citizens rights,” he said.
Numerous legal scholars have argued the opposite, saying that a constitutional convention could be dangerous to democracy because it would allow the convening group to rewrite the Constitution for their own benefit. It could potentially curtail the protections granted under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and restrict the federal government’s ability to protect citizens from state overreach.
When asked by Mayor Harold Johnston what he would like the council to do, the man asked them to pass a resolution supporting the call for a constitutional amendment and send it to local legislators and the legislature’s leaders as well.
After twice advising him that the council needed to move on, Johnston cut off the presentation and the council chose not to act on the issue.
Blight
Maintenance Supervisor Tim Lilya gave an update on the city’s attempts to address property blight issues since updating the blight ordinance.
“We’ve been sending letters, and seven residents have not been responding to our letters,” Lilya said. “So they are receiving a final letter this week or next week, and after that it will be handed over to the attorney.”
Council member Jody Bixby suggested that the city do more to publicize the efforts being made to remedy blight, so that citizens who observe properties that haven’t been cleaned up could be aware that actions are being taken.
“They have had letters, they have had warnings, and now we’re proceeding to the next level,” she said.
Other business
In other business, the council:
• Heard that the citywide cleanup days will be May 17-18. In addition to providing a dumpster for resident’s waste, the Cook Lions Club has agreed to have several pickup trucks available to haul items for those who don’t have any way to get them to the drop off site.
• Heard a presentation by Courtney Clark of the Tower DNR office about development plans for the 164-acre Owens Wildlife Management Area just south of Cook and north of the airport, including increasing accessibility for parking for the walking trail.
• Heard about plans for repeating the “Adopt-a-Pot” hanging flower baskets on River St. this summer and approved organizers going ahead with the project.
• Heard from residents Brian and Martha Nordmann, 112 1st St. SW, about a years-old dispute with the city over the level of the alley behind their property, the alley that runs behind City Hall, the park, and the library. Having shaped their lot to conform with flood plain requirements, the Nordmanns said that the city’s failure to raise the alley has rendered 60 percent of their garage and 75 percent of its doors unusable. Supplemented with pictures of serious flooding, Brian Nordmann walked through a timeline of meetings and discussions with various officials, in which he said they were told it is the city’s responsibility to do the work and that there was supposedly money available through the county to pay for it.
Council member Kim Brunner responded that the alley has never been a project endorsed or planned by the city.
“We never intended to do the alleys,” she said.
“We feel we’ve done everything we’re supposed to do,” Nordmann said. “We’re sitting now with a building that we can’t use.”
The Nordmanns said they would try to get more documentation verifying the statements of a county commissioner who weighed in on the issue by saying the commission allocated funding for an alley. There was no additional resolution reached on the dispute.