Cook County’s 22nd annual emergency services conference April 29 and 30 is going to be exciting. It will be a fullscale exercise that will look as though a plane attempting an emergency landing has crashed on the southwest shore of the Grand Marais harbor.
The first day will include information sharing, preparation, and practice, but the real excitement will start the second day. “Saturday morning will begin with an incident/exercise briefing in a format that complies with the National Incident Management System,” Emergency Management Director Jim Wiinanen wrote in a memo describing the event. He presented the scenario at a February 24 quarterly joint powers meeting attended by county commissioners, Grand Marais city councilors and the mayor, and ISD 166 representatives.
“Following the briefing,” the memo continues, “an anonymous 911 scripted phone message will be called in to Cook County dispatch, which in turn will page out the call to Cook County emergency response agencies and begin the exercise.
“This exercise will provide an opportunity for the interested public and elected officials to observe our emergency response agencies in action. Viewing will be available from a safe, secure area near the incident site.”
Responding adequately to the incident will require a host of emergency entities and a lot of organization. “There’s a lot that goes in,” Wiinanen said, “when the bad thing happens.”
Wiinanen invited elected officials to participate in some way, including by volunteering to be one of the “victims.”
1% project updates
ORB Management co-owner Tom Wacholz reported on the community center project to be funded from proceeds of the county’s 1 percent sales and use tax. “The project itself is still in the very preliminary stage,” he said, but the steering committee hopes to see the building up by fall 2012.
Wacholz indicated the planning process is important. “Changes during design are expected,” he said. “Changes during construction are expensive.”
The committee will be gleaning ideas from other successful projects. “We’re not looking at reinventing the wheel,” Wacholz said. They could break the project into pieces to make it easier for local contractors to play a role in the project, he said.
County Commissioner Jim Johnson said the county board believes ORB’s role as owner’s representative is helping them be accountable for public money. “We are not an added cost to the project,” Wacholz said.
The Community Center Steering Committee welcomes comments and questions, committee chair and county commissioner Sue Hakes said, and their meetings are open to the public. They are looking at a multi-purpose space that can be scheduled for use by many community groups, she said.
“This is a community center,” Wacholz said, “and it’s got to be something that serves the community.”
“It won’t be perfect,” Hakes said, “but it’s going to be awesome!”
Regarding another of the 1 percent projects, the Grand Marais Library addition, City Councilor Bill Lenz said, “I’m a little uncomfortable with the library project, and that’s because the city owns the building, and the county has the money.”
Sue Hakes said the city and the county, which both help fund the library, will need to work together on the project, especially if maintenance costs rise with the greater size of the building.
State funding
School superintendent Beth Schwarz said funding is uncertain with the changeover from a Democratic to a Republican majority in the state legislature. She wondered if the city and the county worked with lobbyists. “I think it’s important that we support each other in what we want,” she said.
Jim Johnson said that entities such as the Minnesota Rural Counties Coalition and the Association of Minnesota Counties lobby for Cook County. Services such as law enforcement, schools, and hospitals keep society organized and functioning, he said.
Johnson also noted that in order to balance the state budget, the state is considering taking back some of the extra reserves counties have put aside, something the state has a legal right to do. The county board has been advised that the more they put into designated accounts, the safer their money will be from being used by the state.
“Welcome to the school system!” Schwarz responded.
Leave a Reply