AN INVESTIGATOR FROM YMCA USA has been at the local facility this week checking on the financial and operational health of the Y. More national visitors next week.
This comes in the wake of the dismissal (or forced resignation) of longtime CEO Lisa Coombs-Gerou two weeks ago amid charges of financial mismanagement. Following her ouster, the Y announced other “layoffs”–plural–but strangely, for a very public non-profit agency, it refuses to say how many other staff members lost their jobs.
Interim CEO Jenna Zdunek says she can’t comment on any substantive matters. Chief volunteer officer Dr. Gregory Jones–the Board chairman–says he won’t talk about how many people were laid off, even ballpark figures. Was it two or three? Fifteen or twenty? They’re not telling.
That’s unfortunate because the YMCA, a cherished Marquette institution with more than 6000 members, should be absolutely transparent at a time when its credibility and financial viability are being questioned.
A few things are clear here, though they’re not being aired publicly. 1) Officials at the YMCA and others associated with the Y have known about the “financial mismanagement” problems for months. 2) Morale among the staff at the Y has been suffering. For months.
So, these questions:
When did the Board first suspect problems? Were they a little slow in calling for an investigation?
Doesn’t the Y get an annual audit? How were the financial problems missed?
The Board has shrunk in recent years. Why? Could that be part of the problem?
Exactly how much debt has the Y incurred? Hundreds of thousands? More? Is a construction company involved in the Marquette Y’s recent expansion owed something in six figures?
When will the parents who’d been hoping to place their kids at the new child development facility in Ishpeming know whether it’s a go or not? Right now, it’s “on hold.”
Will the YMCA have to go back to the public–or foundations, or banks–to raise money to pull itself out of debt? Or maybe raise fees?
Will there be more layoffs?
Now, the good news. Operations at the YMCA in Marquette and Negaunee continue normally. The same with the child development facilities in Marquette and Gwinn, and the after-school program in Marquette.
Further, Zdunek, as the interim CEO, seems to be a popular choice. She’s well-respected with 15 years of seniority at the Y.
The audit and investigation by the national YMCA team should be complete within two weeks. That’s when the Board should learn how big a financial hole the Y is in…and how they propose to get out.
Final question: Will the Board then finally be totally candid with the public?
ANTICIPATION IS GROWING in Ishpeming.
Why? Because mushrooms will soon be growing there. Inside, in buckets, under tents, in a brightly colored building on Main Street.
Partridge Creek Farm, the ambitious educational farming group, is behind the indoor mushroom growing operation.
If it succeeds–and there’s little reason to think it won’t–Partridge Creek will expand it and could transform it into a major, money-making operation.
Four types of mushrooms initially: golden oysters, king oysters, pink oysters, and lion’s mane. Some will be sold at farmers’ markets, others will be given away to the community.
What’s so promising is that Ishpeming’s climate doesn’t matter here. Mushrooms can be grown indoors year-round.
What’s even more promising is that if this does succeed, Partridge Creek will train apprentices to do the growing. And the apprentices will become skilled, money-earning workers.
Exactly what Ishpeming needs.
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IF YOU KNOW the iron ore industry, the following comes as no surprise.
Essar Steel Minnesota, which is attempting to complete its $1.9 billion dollar taconite mine and processing plant in Nashwauk, has reneged on its promise to make its latest $10 million payment to the state. Minnesota offered the company enormous economic incentives to build the plant, but Essar had to pay the state back if it failed to meet certain deadlines.
Essar has failed. Repeatedly.
Best guess? The plant will never be completed because the money’s just not there.
Biggest head-scratcher? Why did they ever think they could build the plant when the market is shrinking and iron ore prices are plunging?
Just ask the 400 or so employees out at the Cliffs Empire plant whose jobs are disappearing by the end of the year.
A NEW FACE at WJMN Local 3.
Calvin Lewis, fresh out of Wayne State, has joined news director Cynthia Thompson’s crew.
And just in time. Local 3, which doesn’t have that many reporters to start with, recently lost two of them.
Kylie Khan left for a TV job in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Brittany Denny has gotten out of the business altogether while staying in the local area.
Ratings giant WLUC hasn’t been immune to the pressures, either. News director Steve Asplund is in the process of filling five recent job vacancies in his department.
Suggestion: Pay these kids, all of them college graduates, a minimum wage of $15 an hour and maybe they’d be eager to come to the U.P. and even stick around for a while.
Right now some of them aren’t even making ten bucks an hour.
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GEOLOGICAL CHANGE TAKING place before our very eyes.
A large, circular mass of rocks just south of Sunset Point on Presque Isle is no more. Just the base of the mass remains. The angry seas are doing their work and Presque Isle continues to shrink.
The photo on the left is what it looked like last fall. On the right is how it looks now.
The photos come to us compliments of Scott Stobbelaar, the former director of the Shiras Planetarium, who’s made a point of walking the gorgeous, ever-changing shoreline.
Stobbelaar believes the circular mass actually used to be part of an arch that previously fell victim to the Lake and its storms.
Makes you wonder what Presque Isle will look like at the end of this century.
FINALLY, A NOTE about a recent, anguished, pain-filled, midnight visit to the Emergency Department at UP Health System Marquette.
The kind of visit where you feel like your insides are about to burst. The kind where, if the pain lasted much longer, you’d rather kill yourself than go on.
The doctor and the nurses, after what seemed like an interminable wait on what seemed to be a slow night, were wonderful. Skilled, understanding, sympathetic.
All but one of them, anyway: the nurse sitting at the front desk, the one who signs you in and asks you, oh, about a thousand questions.
She must have been having a bad night. Or she hated her job. Or she was shorted when God handed out the empathy gene.
She offered not a second of eye contact. Just a monotone voice. A total focus on the computer in front of her. Not the slightest acknowledgment that the person facing her was in crisis.
She didn’t say this but she seemed to be thinking it: “Just shut the hell up, go sit down, get outta my sight…We’ll call you when we call you.”
This doesn’t happen often–most doctors and nurses truly seem to care–but her cold, contemptuous look was the kind that’s seared into your memory forever.
You got news? Email briancabell@gmail.com