KEWEENAW COUNTY — Don Piche, a resident of Lac La Belle, is running for re-election to County Board, representing District 1.

Piche, a Keweenaw County native, was born and raised in Mohawk. After graduating from Calumet High School, he worked for a time at Savolainen’s Service Station, in Mohawk briefly. For 35 years, Piche worked for the Keweenaw County Commission, the last eight and a half years as the maintenance foreman.

He resided in Mohawk for 57 years, before relocating to his current home, which was originally the family cottage, and was expanded into his parents’ home.

After he retired, Piche said his intention was to run for a position on the Board of the Road Commission. The former county prosecutor, and good friend, Gordon Jaaskelainen, along with former county sheriff, Ron Lahti, convinced him to seek election on the County Board.

Piche said he has been on the County Board for 14 years and has been his passion ever since.

Piche said in that time, the most controversial issue, in his opinion, was the challenge with the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge.

“I worked along with Chuck Miller (the County Prosecutor), and with Julie Carlson (County Clerk), and with the rest of the board.”

Piche said Miller, Carlson, and he, spent hours engaged in phone calls and meetings to finally get to the point of the county being permitted to sell the facility. That, said Piche, is far and away a big accomplishment.

“I mean, the county was four and a half million dollars in debt,” he said. “We were blackballed from getting grants and things of that nature, but that all came back after the place was sold.

In addition to that, Piche continued, the KML was draining $100,000-120,000 per year from the county’s general fund.

Another issue Piche said he took on when he was elected to the Board was the problem with the courthouse. The roof, he said, was in very bad shape. A ½ mill Courthouse Improvement fund had lapsed before he was elected. He was instrumental in getting it approved again.

“That’s where we’re getting the funding to put into the building,” he said. “We sided the place; we put new furnaces in; we put a new septic system in; we built the new entrance. We put new offices in the Sheriff’s Office. Right now that’s getting a new roof. We eventually built a new garage there. That all came from the Courthouse Improvement Fund.” He also pushed hard to get a new fire escape on the courthouse, and most recently, with ARPA funds, just this summer, an elevator was installed in the courthouse, and new carpeting was installed in the courtroom. With the improvement fund, the courthouse is really taking shape.

“That is the people’s house,” Piche said. “It’s the taxpayers’ house and you’ve got to take care of it.”

Currently the most challenging issue facing the county is its budget and maintaining it, Piche said. The bulk of the revenue comes from the taxpayers, he said, and with a population of 2,180, Keweenaw is the smallest county in the state of Michigan. The county, he said, gets a few grants “here and there,” including from Operation Stonegarden, a federal grant program administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the State Homeland Security Grant Program. Operation Stonegarden provides funding to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to enhance their capabilities to “support joint efforts to secure the United States’ borders.

With a budget of over a couple of million dollars, a major financial strain on the county is the Sheriff’s Department, which Piche is rightfully so. But tourism pressure is beginning to have a negative impact on essential services.

“And it’s getting tougher here,” he said, “with the influx of people in the summertime and in the wintertime with the snowmobiling and the ski hill, and whatever else goes on, they (the Sheriff’s Dept.) is busy.”

Aside of that, said Piche, another major problem facing the county is the increasing issue with zoning.

People don’t like zoning, he said. Former Building Codes Clerk and Zoning Administrator Ann Gasperich did a great job, but it got to her.

“People aren’t happy, said Piche. “They’re in there screaming and hollering, and it got to her. It was the same thing with her replacement. It gets to the point that they can’t take it.”

Moving forward, Piche said one of his biggest goals is getting the zoning issue resolved.

A major element is that the 300+ page zoning manual is based on the Master Plan written by Traverse City, which was adopted back in the mid-1990s before any of the current members were on the BOC.

A plan written for Traverse City simply does not work for Keweenaw County, Piche said.

“And we’re living in a county with a lot of elderly people who have been here their entire lives,” he said. “They’ve seen what it was to what it is now, and they want to be able to do what they want with their yards and with their homes, and they should have a right to that – within reason.”

There have to be guardrails in place, he continued. With health codes, building codes and set-backs in place, he said homeowners should have the right to do what they want with their property.

The County Board needs to continue to maintain and manage the budget, he said. Safety is an ongoing issue. Search and Rescue needs to be funded. While tourism has some advantages, it’s gotten to the point of the county needing outside funding to maintain an adequate search and rescue and public safety net.

“The future for the county,” he said, “we have to keep a solid budge, we’ve got to have a good public safety program, and with the off-road rescue, we have to have a building.”