Those attending the Aug. 24 public hearing on the 1 percent tax question witnessed something rare and encouraging— a room full of people advocating for seven public projects to preserve and strengthen life in Cook County. The 1 percent tax referen-dum offers an opportunity for voters to approve an optional 1 percent sales tax that will be used to strengthen existing county institutions.
A group of county residents has come together to encourage a positive vote on the referendum. You will be hearing from that group and proponents of each project appealing for a “yes” vote. It may seem a stretch that a high-tech project like a fiber-optic broadband system can strengthen the way of life on the North Shore, but that’s reality. Our economy is built primarily on smallish, family-owned resorts and businesses that have been able to resist the pressure for bigness. But to remain strong, those family-owned firms need access to the latest in telecommunications. Their businesses require it; their clients demand it. Our schools, hospital, library, our locally based higher education effort, are all in the same boat—they desperately need access to high quality telecom-munications.
Every year we go without, we fall farther behind the rest of Minnesota and the world. Cook County government came reluctantly to the conclusion that it must provide modern telecommunications to the county because the existing vendors can’t or won’t. They’ve had years to do it and haven’t. In 2009, reli-able telephone service still isn’t available in parts of the county. Nor is the high-speed internet that busi-nesses and residents need to connect with the world. All seven projects that stand to get funding from the 1 percent tax similarly strengthen our way of life. Outdoor recreation facilities in Grand Marais and Tofte are badly needed to serve the county’s next generation of business people and political leaders.
A community center centrally located in Grand Marais would serve the entire county, from Grand Portage to Schroeder. Investing in too-long delayed improve-ments at Superior National Golf Course would help keep the West End tourism industry strong. The district heating project championed by the Cook County Local Energy Project would bring locally generated, lower-cost heat to county-owned build-ings while removing from our forests a great deal of waste wood that makes the forests less healthy and poses a serious fire hazard.
Change frequently is destructive, but some-times it strengthens what is good about a place. The changes inherent in the 1 percent projects are cre-ative and wholesome. They deserve the support of Cook County voters in this fall’s referendum.
Jim Boyd
Jan Sivertson
Grand Marais
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