Country Commissionar Adopt Amended Sales Tax Proposal

WTIP Grand Marais- Commissioners unanimously supported a resolution to amend the use of the 1% sales tax that currently goes toward paying off the hospital bond to include other community, civic and economic infrastructure projects.

Commissioners also gave their support to the Economic Analysis Council, a group of business owners advocating for the betterment of the county’s economy through efforts designed to bolster tourism, endorsing their proposal to increase tourism-related taxes countywide. The approved resolution would increase the lodging tax by half a percent and would institute a 3 % tax on recreation and entertainment in the county. The resolution would direct funds collected via these taxes into a new countywide event and visitors’ bureau.

A proposed 2 % tax on restaurant and bar sales was dropped from the group’s proposal after a meeting held Monday evening with local business owners. Many restaurant and bar owner had expressed their opposition to extending the sales tax to include restaurant meals and liquor.

New Sales Tax Meeting Monday

From: Sarah Hamilton- trailctr@boreal.org

Subject: proposed new county sales tax meeting

There will be special meeting concerning the proposed 1/2 % lodging, 2% restaurant/bar and 3% entertainment sales tax proposal that goes before the County Board this coming week.

Birch Terrace
Monday, February 26th
6:30 pm

All business owners are urged to attend -for more information contactTeresa SternsEast Bay Suites651-338-2180 cell651-310-0128 office

Trail Center Quits GTA Over Tax Increase Proposal

Sarah and Anna Hamilton, owners of Trail Center informed the Gunflint Trail Association (GTA) that the new proposed Cook County restaurant, recreation and lodging sales taxes would directly impact their customers. Yet the GTA Board of Directors which is supporting these new taxes, never bothered to contact Trail Center concerning this issue.

Yesterday, in an email to Shari Baker, Association President, the Hamiltons wrote, "Because of the recent actions and decisions made by the GTA board. We at Trail Center will no longer be a part of the GTA. If what you do as a board is going to affect our business, we believe as members we should have a say. Or the courtesy of a phone call or e-mail. We will not be a part of something so big we are insignificant in choices being made that directly affect us.

Sarah Hamilton along with many others in the county contend that the new taxes, particularly the restaurant tax, will just place an additional finance burden on many already "cash strapped" locals. According to Sarah, she contacted all the other restaurant in the Grand Marais area and she found only one that had even hear of this new sales tax. Sarah, when on to question why no one even bothered to ask the restaurant owners what the they thought of this new tax, that if approved, they will have to collect.

Sarah went on to say, "We are against another local tax and we are outraged that a small group of powerful people have decided they speak for us. "

The new tax was presented to the Cook County Board on February 20 by a group of business people calling itself the Cook County Economic Analysis Council.

The Cook Country Board is schedule to make a final decision on the sales tax proposal at its' February 27 meeting. The proposal then must be approved by the State Legislature and signed by the Governor before it becomes law. It is unclear at this time if a referendum will be required in the County on this sale tax proposal.

The Show Must Go On -Dog Sled Race in the Tradition of the old Gunflint Mail Run

You can cancel the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon but you can’t take away the passion for the race altogether.

Grand Marais, MN- The 25th running of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon will not happen as scheduled in 2007, but a race will happen in its place. The Beargrease was postponed and then cancelled altogether due to the lack of snow in Duluth, MN. The Beargrease Board of Directors decided it would not be "fair" to the sponsors to run the race entirely in a remote area so they cancelled it. According to Sue Prom, Voyageur Canoe Outfitter, at the end of the Gunflint Trail, "What the Board may have forgotten is the strong tradition isn’t just about the sponsors; it’s about the mushers, the volunteers, the dogs, and the spectators."

"While running a race in a remote area may not give sponsors the biggest bang for their buck, it doesn’t seem to make all that big of a difference to everyone else." Prom continues, "The Gunflint Trail is a remote area that has not only traditionally been a part of the Marathon, the Gunflint is the home of the old Gunflint Mail Run- the forerunner to the Beargrease.

The Mail Run was run from 1977 until 1980 taking various routes along the Gunflint Trail. In 1980 the organizers of the Mail Run, at the urging and later sponsorship of WDSM-Radio in Duluth, put-together a new Dog Sled Race. Starting in Grand Marais with a mass start and ending just outside of Duluth, the 1st Annual Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, as the new race was billed, took place on March 15 and 16, 1980, and the Beargrease was born.

Ted Young, owner of Poplar Creek B&B and one of the organizers of the Mail Run states that, "there is going to be a dog sled race this year on the Gunflint. While the race may not be the official Beargrease, it follows in the footsteps of the Beargrease's predecessors- the Gunflint Mail Run. Even while the route of the Mail Run changed each year, the old Finn Lake Road (now the Little Ollie Road) was always part of the race's route. Since the return of the Beargrease to the Gunflint Trail the race is again using this road to get on to Poplar Lake and Trail Center. Part of this year's race route will continue this tradition and travel along the old Finn Lake Road to Poplar Lake."

This year's race will start at 10:00 am, on Sunday, February 25. Instead of racing as scheduled from Duluth, mushers will race on up the Gunflint Trail. Beginning with a mass-start at Devils Track Landing Resort, the race will follow along much of the original old Gunflint Mail Run route. Plans are to have two race classes- a long race and short race. The dogs on the long race well run up to and through Trail Center on Poplar Lake continue on to Gunflint Lake then return and finish at Trail Center. The shorter race will also start at Devils Track and finish at Trail Center without continuing on up to Gunflint Lake.

There are already over thirty teams interested in participating in the one-day event as well as many volunteers to help coordinate the race. Sarah Hamilton, owner of Trail Center on the Gunflint Trail is no stranger to dog racing or the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. Her business has been a rest stop for the marathon and she along with many others wants to see the tradition of the sled dog race continue this year. According to Hamilton, "With the help of eager volunteers and business owners on the Gunflint Trail there will be a dog sled race this year on the Gunflint.

Race aficionados, mushers, dogs and volunteers get ready for a sled dog race on the Gunflint Trail. The prizes may not be as big as the Beargrease, the media coverage will surely be small, but the hearts of the people involved will be big. After all, sled dog racing isn’t about the sponsors, it’s all about passion, a passion that can only be found in the hearts of those who love mushing. The people on the Gunflint Trail love mushing, so with open arms and welcome hearts there will be a dog sled race on Sunday, February 25th, 2007.

Logging in Yesterday's Boundary Waters

Before the 1978 BWCA Act and even well before the 1964 Wilderness Act logger were busy harvesting timber in much of what we today know as the Boundary Waters. Three of the largest timber harvesting operations took place just south of the Gunflint Trail in what was then called the "Roadless Area. These three logging operations were; 1947 Vista Lake , the 1948 Davis Lake and the 1953 Finn Lake Timber Sales.

For more information about the history of these important logging operations click on Vista Lake Sale, the Davis Lake Sale and the Finn Lake Sale .

Order Trees for Spring Planting

Cook County Soil and Water is again offering high quality conservation trees at lowprices. Trees are bare root and average 6 to 36 inches, depending onspecies. They come in bundles of 20-25 little trees. Thirty-five species of trees and shrubs are available including White Pine, Norway Pine, WhiteCedar, Tamarack, and Sugar Maple.

Order before April 13th for pickup in Grand Marais in early May. Order forms can be printed fromwww.southstlouisswcd.org/tree.html or www.co.cook.mn.us/sw or may be picked up at the Soil & Water Office in the Courthouse. The web sites includes links to species selection and tree planting tips. Order early forbest selection. Assistance for Woodlot Owners - If you are a private woodlot owner andwould like technical assistance or cost share, contact Tim Byrns, Area Soil& Water Forestry Specialist at (218) 723-4865. Tim can help with tree and shrub planting, timber stand improvement activities, streambank and shoreline erosion control, gully erosion control.

CWCS Question Never-ending BWCA Lawsuits

By Nancy McReady, Conservationists With Common Sense (CWCS) Ely

It appears Marshall Helmberger’s blinders have finally come off in regard to the agenda of the many preservation groups who file lawsuit after lawsuit. (As I See It, Feb. 2) These lawsuits have very little to do with protecting the Boundary Waters and the surrounding area. It’s all about access to public lands and how they can deny or reduce access, and delay timber management.

Presently there are three lawsuits. Is a fourth lawsuit on their horizon now that the Echo Trail Management EIS has come out?CWCS believes the Forest Service, for the most part, is doing a good job. We may not agree with everything they do, but we don’t file lawsuit after lawsuit and have the courts micro manage what the Forest Service should do. In fact, we have joined the Forest Service as interveners in the Chain of Lakes and South Fowl lawsuits.

I had a very long talk with John Roth after he was fired from the Friends of the Boundary Waters. We discussed issues that should be addressed by these national environmental groups, such as cleaning up the Mississippi River or pushing for legislation that would have American companies that take their companies to Asia and elsewhere adhere to the same strict pollution regulations as we have here in the United States. It’s that pollution that is causing much of our acid rain.Instead, the Friends, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and others sue over three truck portages that caused great polarization in our communities. Two of the truck portages were barely back in operation and they were challenging the Chain of Lakes permits. Then the Forest Management Plan, and now the South Fowl Snowmobile lawsuit.

The good done by the environmental movement of the 1970s has been tarnished by all these frivolous lawsuits over the Boundary Waters and surrounding area. It is industry that is taking the lead in protecting the environment with cleaner, safer technology with coal gasification and mining projects. Even recreational industries are looking to protect the environment with 4-stroke boat motors and snowmobile engines.

I disagree with your opinion that their political muscle has become like the 98-pound weakling at the beach who gets sand kicked in his face. The above mentioned groups are the bullies on the beach doing the kicking of the sand. It’s so much easier to bully the people who just want to fish the lakes of the Boundary Waters with the use of allowable motors rather than tackle real environmental issues that impact far more than the 200,000 people who visit the BWCA each year.

The make up of the Friends of the Boundary Waters board of directors is very questionable. Five directors are lawyers, three with the Faegre & Benson law firm, the very firm that files all the lawsuits. This is the firm the Forest Service has paid nearly $300,000 to over the past 10 years in attorney recovery costs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. Attorney General’s office looks into a conflict of interest here.In the meantime, we’re still waiting on the Friends to sit down and discuss the recalculations of the Chain of Lakes permits and awaiting the judge’s decision in the South Fowl lawsuit.Editor’s Note: Conservationists With Common Sense is an organization devoted to “preserving access to and multiple-use of public lands and waters.”

It appears Marshall Helmberger’s blinders have finally come off in regard to the agenda of the many preservation groups who file lawsuit after lawsuit. (As I See It, Feb. 2) These lawsuits have very little to do with protecting the Boundary Waters and the surrounding area. It’s all about access to public lands and how they can deny or reduce access, and delay timber management.

Presently there are three lawsuits. Is a fourth lawsuit on their horizon now that the Echo Trail Management EIS has come out?CWCS believes the Forest Service, for the most part, is doing a good job. We may not agree with everything they do, but we don’t file lawsuit after lawsuit and have the courts micro manage what the Forest Service should do. In fact, we have joined the Forest Service as interveners in the Chain of Lakes and South Fowl lawsuits.

I had a very long talk with John Roth after he was fired from the Friends of the Boundary Waters. We discussed issues that should be addressed by these national environmental groups, such as cleaning up the Mississippi River or pushing for legislation that would have American companies that take their companies to Asia and elsewhere adhere to the same strict pollution regulations as we have here in the United States. It’s that pollution that is causing much of our acid rain.Instead, the Friends, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and others sue over three truck portages that caused great polarization in our communities. Two of the truck portages were barely back in operation and they were challenging the Chain of Lakes permits. Then the Forest Management Plan, and now the South Fowl Snowmobile lawsuit.The good done by the environmental movement of the 1970s has been tarnished by all these frivolous lawsuits over the Boundary Waters and surrounding area. It is industry that is taking the lead in protecting the environment with cleaner, safer technology with coal gasification and mining projects.

Even recreational industries are looking to protect the environment with 4-stroke boat motors and snowmobile engines.I disagree with your opinion that their political muscle has become like the 98-pound weakling at the beach who gets sand kicked in his face. The above mentioned groups are the bullies on the beach doing the kicking of the sand. It’s so much easier to bully the people who just want to fish the lakes of the Boundary Waters with the use of allowable motors rather than tackle real environmental issues that impact far more than the 200,000 people who visit the BWCA each year.

The make up of the Friends of the Boundary Waters board of directors is very questionable. Five directors are lawyers, three with the Faegre & Benson law firm, the very firm that files all the lawsuits. This is the firm the Forest Service has paid nearly $300,000 to over the past 10 years in attorney recovery costs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. Attorney General’s office looks into a conflict of interest here.In the meantime, we’re still waiting on the Friends to sit down and discuss the recalculations of the Chain of Lakes permits and awaiting the judge’s decision in the South Fowl lawsuit.Editor’s Note: Conservationists With Common Sense is an organization devoted to “preserving access to and multiple-use of public lands and waters.”

It appears Marshall Helmberger’s blinders have finally come off in regard to the agenda of the many preservation groups who file lawsuit after lawsuit. (As I See It, Feb. 2) These lawsuits have very little to do with protecting the Boundary Waters and the surrounding area. It’s all about access to public lands and how they can deny or reduce access, and delay timber management.

Presently there are three lawsuits. Is a fourth lawsuit on their horizon now that the Echo Trail Management EIS has come out?CWCS believes the Forest Service, for the most part, is doing a good job. We may not agree with everything they do, but we don’t file lawsuit after lawsuit and have the courts micro manage what the Forest Service should do. In fact, we have joined the Forest Service as interveners in the Chain of Lakes and South Fowl lawsuits.

I had a very long talk with John Roth after he was fired from the Friends of the Boundary Waters. We discussed issues that should be addressed by these national environmental groups, such as cleaning up the Mississippi River or pushing for legislation that would have American companies that take their companies to Asia and elsewhere adhere to the same strict pollution regulations as we have here in the United States. It’s that pollution that is causing much of our acid rain.

Instead, the Friends, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness, the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society and others sue over three truck portages that caused great polarization in our communities. Two of the truck portages were barely back in operation and they were challenging the Chain of Lakes permits. Then the Forest Management Plan, and now the South Fowl Snowmobile lawsuit.The good done by the environmental movement of the 1970s has been tarnished by all these frivolous lawsuits over the Boundary Waters and surrounding area. It is industry that is taking the lead in protecting the environment with cleaner, safer technology with coal gasification and mining projects.

Even recreational industries are looking to protect the environment with 4-stroke boat motors and snowmobile engines.I disagree with your opinion that their political muscle has become like the 98-pound weakling at the beach who gets sand kicked in his face. The above mentioned groups are the bullies on the beach doing the kicking of the sand. It’s so much easier to bully the people who just want to fish the lakes of the Boundary Waters with the use of allowable motors rather than tackle real environmental issues that impact far more than the 200,000 people who visit the BWCA each year.

The make up of the Friends of the Boundary Waters board of directors is very questionable. Five directors are lawyers, three with the Faegre & Benson law firm, the very firm that files all the lawsuits. This is the firm the Forest Service has paid nearly $300,000 to over the past 10 years in attorney recovery costs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. Attorney General’s office looks into a conflict of interest here.In the meantime, we’re still waiting on the Friends to sit down and discuss the recalculations of the Chain of Lakes permits and awaiting the judge’s decision in the South Fowl lawsuit.

Editor’s Note: Conservationists With Common Sense is an organization devoted to “preserving access to and multiple-use of public lands and waters.”

For the BWCAW, global warming is the fight that counts the most Cook County

By Marshall Helmberger, Editor of the Tower-Ely Timberjay, February 3, 2007

Are environmentalists winning the battles but losing the war? That is certainly one message that can be drawn from our story this week on the impact of environmental lawsuits on the Superior National Forest and its funding for wilderness management.

In the case of the Boundary Waters, environmental groups have spent much time and political capital pursuing litigation that can be argued to be of questionable value. While environmentalists can point to some legal victories as a result, those victories have come at significant cost— both to the Superior’s wilderness budget and the broader goal of protecting the environment.

Many have wondered in recent years, whether environmental groups have allowed a focus on narrow, often legalistic concerns, to undermine their efforts to regain the political initiative on the truly big issues. It’s easy to forget these days that the environmental movement was once very powerful politically. In its heyday in the 1960s and 70s it was successful in passing sweeping legislation, like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Wilderness Act.

But times have changed, and a movement that once had incredible political muscle has become like the 98-pound weakling at the beach who gets sand kicked in his face. On what is clearly the biggest environmental challenge of this century— global warming— environmentalists in the U.S. have achieved virtually nothing. Europeans, on the other hand, are making huge strides in reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases, and have committed themselves to impressive long term goals. Holland, for example, has committed to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent within 40 years, and Britain will reduce its emissions by 60 within 50 years.

Even developing nations, like China, have now enacted tougher automobile fuel economy standards than in the U.S. Far from an environmental leader, the U.S. is now widely considered the world’s biggest environmental outlaw when it comes to climate change. And blaming the situation on President Bush only goes so far. Even under the Clinton/Gore administration, environmentalists lost political fights over global warming every time.
It’s not that environmentalists haven’t tried to make progress on the issue. But the movement seems so stuck in old ways of operating, and is so damaged by its own miscalculations, that it has become largely ineffective on the political front. A movement that once enjoyed tremendous grassroots support is now seen by many Americans as elitist and dominated by uncompromising attorneys. If progress on cutting greenhouse emissions is eventually achieved in the U.S., it will likely be because corporate America finally joined the case—as is now happening— not because environmentalists got their groove back.

Yet even as global warming threatens to completely reshape the Boundary Waters, we see environmental groups still focused on minor issues that achieve little in the end, other than inciting continued ill will from many residents who live near the Boundary Waters. And there’s a cost to that ill will on the political front.

Take a look at relations between environmentalists and many union workers in our area. If you sit down and actually talk to an environmentalist, you’ll find that 90 percent of them are as progressive as any union leader. They’re pro-union, pro-living wage, and support trade policies that protect workers as well as the environment. They also want single payer, universal health care, good workplace safety rules, and major investment in new, green technologies that promise hundreds of thousands of good-paying union jobs here in America. But ask a local steelworker what environmentalists want, and you’ll hear about nothing but motors in the Boundary Waters. For the chance at a minor, technical victory, environmental groups have burned important political bridges, and they’ve done it time after time.

And for what? If the predictions of forest ecologist Lee Frelich and others come to pass, as now appears increasingly likely, the Boundary Waters that so many of us have known and loved for years, could disappear within many of our lifetimes.

I have a tough time seeing the point of fighting over motor quotas on a handful of lakes, when so much more is clearly at stake. To hear environmentalists tout legal victories on technicalities, while the forests of the Boundary Waters could well turn to dry brushland and its lakes shrivel to ponds within 40 years, hardly inspires confidence.

I’d feel much better knowing that environmentalists had decided to join in coalition with local residents and organizations to mount a full court press at the Legislature to achieve real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in order to save the entire Boundary Waters ecosystem, and the region’s tourism economy at the same time. They could do that by shredding the false “jobs versus the environment” propaganda put out by the oil and coal industries and laying out a bold new initiative aimed at putting the U.S. back in the lead on environmental technologies of the future.

Far from costing jobs, a major push to develop new energy technologies and greater efficiency could reinvigorate America’s industrial sector to a degree we haven’t seen in decades. Converting to a new energy economy is a job creator, not a job destroyer, yet environmentalists have too often inadvertently helped the oil and auto industries stymie progress by alienating potential allies, such as unions, who could help environmentalists start winning again on the issues that really matter.

It’s time for environmental groups to start picking their battles more carefully. Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s time to tackle bigger and more important goals and rebuild the political coalitions to make it happen.

Editors Note- All I can saw about this wonderful editorial by Marshall is- Right on! I could not agree with him more. Ted Young

Don't Tell Me Sled Dogs Are Not Smart

Several days ago on our local Internet news these two posts were made:

January 17-Brown male husky/hound cross, Bosco. Lost at the Greenwood Road and Blueberry Road intersection, just off the Gunflint, late Thursday afternoon. Could have gone east on trails toward Camp 20 Road, or southeast toward Trout Lake Road. He may be traveling the Gunflint Trail, in either direction.

January 28-Bosco found his way home! He was found just a few minutes ago in his dog house. We will never know the story, but we are all happier now. Thanks to everyone for their assistance and concern.

The return of Bosco to his kennel reminded me of another story of a missing sled dog that occurred in March, 2000. I wrote the following article about that incident but I never bothered to published the story, until now:

Lead Dog- Brass Comes Home

During the first week in March one of Boundary Country Trekking's dog sledding touring party was traveling through the BWCA south of Poplar Lake. The members of the group were each piloting their own sled. In the party there were two guests from New Jersey, a guest from California, one guest from Michigan, two musher-guides and some forty Alaskan Huskies.

On a portage out of Gaskin Lake, the head musher Erick Larsen's sled struck a rock and in the ensuing commotion Brass the teams lead dog's line snapped. Finding himself freed from the sled and the rest of the team, Brass took-off on his own.

Erick radioed into Boundary Country Trekking's office at about two P.M. that Brass had gotten loose and was heading toward Little Ollie Lake where the dog truck was parked and where the trip had originally started. Sure enough when Boundary Country's Ted Young arrived at the Dog Sled truck at about three PM there was Brass patently waiting. Brass was tied up to the truck by rope and Susan Weber was dispatched from Arleigh Jorgenson's Kennel some thirty-five miles away to pick Brass up.

Arriving at the truck one and one half-hours later, Susan found the rope had been chewed and Brass was nowhere to be found. The neighbors around Little Ollie and Poplar Lakes were alerted to look out for Brass. Meanwhile Susan continued to search, without avail, for Brass till after dark. However, that evening two loggers traveling from Poplar Lake to their home in Grand Marais spotted a dog fitting Brass' description sleeping along the way about twenty miles from Poplar Lake.

The next morning, at about 11, who should come trotting into the Arleigh's Kennel but Brass-hungry but glad to be home. According to Young, "it is a mystery how Brass found his way home. While Brass has traveled in the BWCA and in the immediate area around the kennel before, he had only traveled between the two areas by truck." Young jokingly continued, "maybe Brass had a map or simply read the road signs along the Gunflint. But actually the fact is there are just some things that dogs such as Brass can do that we just don't understand and they certainly are a lot smarter then any folks I know when it comes to finding their way home."