Sawyer Community Center Deserves Another Chance | Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes

Less than a week after one Community Hand-UP leader, Lisa Johnson, received a community service award for her work in trying to reopen the KI Sawyer community center (check out our December article for some background), the Marquette County Board voted, 5-4, against helping Johnson’s citizen group purchase the building, turning down a 15-year land contract option, with a 60-day “out clause.”

Already West Branch Township (the current owner) is selling off equipment inside. It took vigilant citizens and a phone call to the police before everyone realized what was going on. The building, prized by a community that already lacks many of the amenities found elsewhere in the county, might soon be reduced to a gutted-out scrap heap after an auction slated for May 21st. Turns out the county could’ve bought it for only $110,000.

There’s plenty of money left in a multi-million dollar stabilization fund the U.S. Air Force designated to help build a community at Sawyer when the feds left in the mid-1990s. A small bit of this could be used to help the community center. Certainly, most of it has been drained to pad annual losses for the regional airport and to give to a number of companies eager to benefit from the tax-free “Renaissance Zone” located there.

Last year Cliffs Natural Resources posted record quarterly profits on its global operations; at its iron mining complex, visible from Sawyer, business was booming. At the same time, this mining giant was exempted from paying state and local taxes at its new Renewafuel biomass plant for another 15 years.

Argonics, a small plastics manufacturer, also benefited from the generous tax breaks, moving from its facility in the city of Marquette to Sawyer. In fact, the county spent $900,000 to refurbish the building Argonics now operates out of, and gave the company well over a million dollars in loan funding. The rationale was that Argonics would possibly create 15 jobs at Sawyer. While some county officials brag that they created 1,200 jobs at Sawyer, it’s unclear really how many new jobs were created (nowhere even close to the claimed figure) and no one seems to know if Argonics made good on its promise to create even 15 jobs in exchange for millions in benefits.

One county commissioner is on the board of Argonics. Brazenly, Paul Arsenault voted against helping the KI Sawyer community by buying the community center for a small fraction of what he helped to give to Argonics.

Now, we understand the importance of attracting and retaining jobs to the area, and many of the companies at Sawyer provide much-needed jobs without taking too much from county coffers. While it’s debatable whether the millions of dollars in profligate tax breaks, free money, and generous loans was necessary to create new jobs in the area, or if that many permanent new jobs were even created, a focus on subsidizing some private businesses at Sawyer so generously smells a little bad when county government can’t cough up some of the stabilization money to help the regional community, as well.

As Community Hand-UP’s Lisa Johnson will tell you, the Sawyer community center once served folks from all around the Upper Peninsula, kept school kids off the streets, helped keep seniors healthy, and provided an exercise venue for one of the most physically unfit counties in Michigan.

According to commissioner Mike Quayle, who voted in support of the community center, “It is embarrassing to me to not furnish this money…We took $900,000 dollars out of the county stabilization fund to move a business that promised only 15 new jobs…yet we can’t find $100,000 dollars to take care of these kids?”

Commissioner Bill Nordeen, who represents KI Sawyer, was more blunt:

“I’m ashamed of this commission. Marquette County went to Sawyer, took all the resources, and has yet to give anything back. They used south Marquette County and do nothing for them. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a terrible atrocity.”

But the fight’s not over yet. The auction isn’t for another month and we suspect county officials will catch some fire from citizens upset at last night’s unsettling vote and ready to fight for their community. Hopefully county officials will have another opportunity to do the right thing before the community center is gone for good.