Cook County News Herald

Hold off on publicizing Grand Marais until workforce stabilized




So Grand Marais is in another contest; this one being the best small town in Minnesota, sponsored by Minnesota Monthly and the winning town wins $15,000.

I’d like to clarify why some people may not be excited about Grand Marais being in another contest.

On WTIP Jim Boyd said there are people south of the Twin Cities who haven’t even heard of Grand Marais and that we could target those with our winnings if we were to win this. Then I read his quote in the Duluth News Tribune, “We simply do not have the workers we need to support our tourism industry,” indicating that we need our J1 and H2B workers.

Our international workers program is in crisis. Many of the businesses in Cook County will be affected by this, and until we can establish a healthy work force, maybe we need to put aside all these fun promotions that could potentially bring thousands more to our little town. We also need to fix our inefficient public restroom problem and treatment plant, so that the visitors that we already have have a place to go to the bathroom, and when they’re staying in their $200 a night hotel room they don’t have to smell the poop!

Dee Brazell
Grand Marais



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.