Campers and RV owners will pay a little more next year to stay at the Grand Marais Recreational Park.
After discussing two options, the park board voted unanimously to go with option 2, which cleaned up the rate card and dropped the midweek rate.
“Currently, we offer midweek rates that are $2 less each night than on Friday and Saturday nights,” said Park and Recreational Director Dave Tersteeg, who was addressing the board at its December 8 meeting. “This creates complexity in the rate card and customer service woes when quoting rates.”
To simplify the process, Tersteeg suggested, “What if we just offered one rate (the current weekend rate) on all seven nights? It’s an average of six percent more per night on the midweek prices and a rate freeze on the weekend rates.”
This would translate to charging $8 more for a weekly full hook-up rate or an increase of 3 percent.
Jennifer Stoltz motioned to approve option 2, which was seconded by Barb Backlund and approved by the remaining board member at the meeting, Sally Berg, who is the chair. Kaye Tavernier was unable to attend the meeting.
Park board members also voted to increase the monthly rate for off-season storage from $70 per month to $72.
Also seeing a modest increase next year will be marina users, who will be charged 1.5 percent more for seasonal rates. For the average 28-foot seasonal boater, this will amount to paying about $34 more per season. The cost of buoy rental will rise from $620 per year to $640.
With September becoming much busier, the park board voted to extend the peak rates from Sept. 15 through the end of the month.
“In recent years, demand in September has been very strong all month long, especially in the fall color season and with circle touring RVers,” noted Tersteeg.
A lengthy discussion was held about deciding what to do about making a policy decision based on RV sites and whether to change their designation from monthly to nightly.
Leading the discussion, Tersteeg said a policy change 20 years ago removed lakeside RV sites from the Seasonal Class. People who were on the sites annually keep them as long as they wanted, but when they left, the site reverted to nightly rental. Today 13 of the 15 sites are nightly, and each of those makes roughly $7,500 per year.
“People want to stay next to the lake and have been willing to pay for the privilege; these sites are $12 more per night than the standard full hook-up sites and have the highest six-month occupancy average,” said Tersteeg.
Taking that a step farther, he added, “This same logic and policy could be applied to monthly sites that were designated prime in 2016. While perhaps not as premium as the front row (81-100), these sites are certainly nicer than the standard nightly sites ‘out west,’ and we could create new Prime nightly rates, say $5 more than standard.”
But as he discussed this with the board, long-time employee Samantha (Sam) Wallner brought up several areas where there could be a conflict with this program, and Tersteeg agreed it needed to be thought over some more. With that, the board agreed to leave the matter on the table until their next meeting.
“You two understand the complex issues far better than we do,” said Berg. “We will trust your decision on this matter.”
Gunflint Hills Golf Course
In the wake of the early retirement of the Gunflint Hills Golf Course superintendent, and after having no luck finding a replacement last summer, an advisory board has been assembled to help in the search for new leadership for the city-owned golf course.
The top priority of the advisory is finding a qualified superintendent to oversee the golf operations, said Tersteeg, and he hopes interviews will begin mid-January and someone can be hired sometime in February.
The starting salary range for this year-round position is $45,000 to $55,000.
When asked if he thought there was enough work available to keep someone employed fulltime year-round, Tersteeg replied the golf superintendent would work more during the golf season and less in the off-season, as he does in his position, but there was plenty of projects and work to keep a new employee busy.
Serving on the advisory board are Tersteeg, Sally Berg, City Councilor Kelly Swearingen, Steven Aldrich, a citizen, and Patrick Knight, a city employee.
Park entrance sign
It was hoped the new park entrance monument sign that will be built next summer could serve as a dual purpose and also be used to welcome visitors to Grand Marais, but it can’t serve both needs, according to city architect CJ Fernandez.
If the sign stays in the right of way, where it was hoped it could be built, it cannot advertise the city’s interests, said Tersteeg, relaying the information he had received from Fernandez.
“Should we wish to advertise our interests, we would need to look into an alternative sign design that is not in the right of way and or an attachment onto the Grand Marais sign that is out of the right of way,” Tersteeg said. “The question for you is, how important is advertising for the campground, marina, public access, ball field, etc. on this sign to you?”
“It makes no sense for us to pay for a sign that doesn’t allow us to advertise the park and (coming soon) new boat launch,” Stoltz said.
Taking less than a nano second, the rest of the board agreed with Stoltz and Tersteeg said he would go back to Fernandez and work with him on a sign that could be built about six feet back, just out of the right of way that could advertise the campground and its amenities.
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