While the intentions might have been good, the initial results of a public opinion online survey posted on the city of Grand Marais Facebook page and city’s website garnered over 500 opinions, but many of them were scathing in their reaction to the city posting pictures of people’s homes and property.
The city council met on Wednesday, August 14, and spent over an hour discussing the matter, opening the meeting for comments past the allotted public speaking time.
More than 70 photos were posted online. Some of the pictures showed well-cared-for houses and lawns while some of the photographs were of older homes with yards that were messy. Businesses were also depicted, as well as water skipping by snowmobiles over the harbor.
The survey went live on Friday, August 9.
People who took the opinion poll were asked if a picture of a property enhanced, detracted, or was neutral to the community health of Grand Marais.
Mike Smeja appeared before the council during the public comment time to address the matter. Smeja, who works two jobs and is a potter, told the board, “My house was on there. I have a completely messy yard. I own that 100 percent.”
But Smeja told the council that an attorney who has another client contacted him and asked if he wanted to join in a class-action lawsuit against the city.
“What I am upset about is that we as a small community where our taxes are going up year after year, and something like this opens us up to litigation.”
Smeja suggested that if this goes to litigation and the city loses, someone should be fired.
Councilor Kelly Swearingen said, “There is firestorm” on Facebook about the pictures. But she added, she was standing behind city staff who posted the photos, and if people wanted to contact her, she was ready to “engage in nicer conversations than what is occurring out there right now.”
Mayor Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux said the survey wasn’t meant to target or single out anybody, and the pictures were taken of random things around town. Since the posting of the pictures, he added he had received messages from people who suggested the city could get the same results through other means, “to gather the information that is accurate.”
Pastor Dale McIntire asked to speak. He said part of his doctoral study was learning how to conduct community surveys, and the way the town had gone about taking this survey could be much improved.
He said one photo showed a trailer home with a bunch of toys in front of it. It’s a young family with small children, he said, and the survey asks, does this detract, enhance or is it neutral to the community? Instead of that image, he suggested using “oblique, neutral images,” instead of shaming people.
Councilor Craig Schulte asked the city to take the picture down and reconsider how they were conducting the survey. “Maybe there are other images from other cities (we could use), I don’t know. Maybe there is a different way we can go about it.”
Arrowsmith DeCoux said he was “vacillating back and forth” about the survey. “These are our neighbors. We need to respect their property. But this is exactly what we are talking about,” he said, adding he didn’t think of the pictures as being good or bad but were ways to get information the city needs to update zoning ordinances that have not been updated since the 1970s.
City administrator Mike Roth told the council that forming new zoning ordinances with enforcement policies “is always going to be an uncomfortable process.”
Judi Johnson was one of the people in the audience, and she asked to speak. Johnson asked for the city to change the photos on the survey, so it didn’t look like the city was picking on people, and she asked, “Can you talk to other communities to find out what their codes are?”
The mayor questioned, “What’s the next step? We still have a job to do. We still have to build code. We still have to ask hard questions.” He added that the city residents needed to be a part of the process. “The five of us can’t sit in a smoky room and decide what the people in this town need to do.”
Councilor Tim Kennedy made a motion to close the online survey for now. He also asked city attorney Chris Hood about the threat of potential legal issues involving the survey. Chris, who was in attendance remotely on speakerphone, was also asked if he could gather information about how other communities had dealt with this matter.
Kennedy’s motion passed unanimously. That evening the survey was removed from the city’s Facebook page and its website.
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