Rajala

Keweenaw County Board Vice Chair Del Rajala is seeking re-election representing District 3. He is being challenged by write-in candidate John Kaura, who is a trustee on the Allouez Township Board, but has not responded to multiple attempts for comment by the Daily Mining Gazette.

Rajala is a retired United States Air Force Combat Communications Maintenance Master Sargent, as well as Gulf War combat veteran, with 21 years of service.

For the past 29 years, he has been employed as a network communications technician with the Michigan Public Safety Communications System. In his position, he maintains 911 communications in the western third of the UP. In addition, he has also owned and operated a small business, maintaining critical infrastructure for local law enforcement agencies for 20 years in Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw Counties.

Rajala has been a member of the Keweenaw County Board for more than 14 years and lists several accomplishments in that time. Among them, one of which he is quite proud, is being instrumental in making natural gas available in southern Keweenaw County along U.S. 41.

Rajala said he worked closely with SEMCO Energy early on with the project wanting regular updates.

“When they told me they were not going to consider the project due to lack of community registered interest,” Rajala said, “I asked them to give me a week before making that final decision. I then started an information campaign.”

The campaign included using newspapers, radio, and T.V. to raise awareness and spark interest.

Not long after he began the campaign, Rajala said he was contacted by the president of SEMCO Energy, informing him the project had been approved, and asked what he had done to raise interest from 24 to over 300 in a week.

“When SEMCO finally installed this natural gas line, it brought value to Allouez, New Allouez, Mohawk, and Fulton” Rajala said. “Value seen as savings to not only residential properties, but also business and local government. This action continues to save hard-earned money by everyone as well as increase property values, while lowering business and governmental operating expenses keeping consumable costs low.”

Rajala has also been instrumental in securing a substantial revenue stream to the county by obtaining the abandoned National Park Service tower infrastructure at the Calumet Radar Station, on Mt. Horace Greeley. He continues to advise on contract negotiations for commercial lease space on the tower for various communication companies, being well informed in this field.

Rajala relies on his training and education to advise the county on technical remedies needed by the Keweenaw County Sheriff’s Office, Keweenaw County Courthouse, Keweenaw County 911 as well as Keweenaw County Search & Rescue. Keweenaw County has no formal IT department to assist and advise on technical issues, he says, they only have vendors who are willing to make money.

The county is facing major challenges that continue to intensify. At the top of that list is the cost to the county for doing business.

“Being able to provide health coverage, and fair wages for the employees, not only at the courthouse, but the Sheriff’s Office,” Rajala said, “and trying to remain competitive, so that we keep those valued employees, and not have them hired off to the counties south of us, because we just don’t have the revenue base of the other counties.”

Rajala said that since the COVID pandemic, Keweenaw County has become a nationally recognized destination, particularly for skiing, hiking, bicycling and the trail networks that it has.

“We can potentially tap into this growing interest with a use tax that will generate revenue from (tourism) businesses.”

Rajala said he would like to see Keweenaw County initiate the same use tax as seen in Marquette County and elsewhere to help pay for the increasing demand on our essential services.

“We’re busier, but we’re trying to do it on the same budget – public safety and public services. Keweenaw County can’t even outnumber the residents of the city of Houghton. Our resources are being stretched to nth degree, and we need to figure out how to do that and still take care of our residents, as well as the visitors.”

Rajala said he has encountered substantial misinformation in the county on what his position is on several matters, including the zoning controversies that have plagued the county for years. He wants to set that record straight.

“I am for zoning. I am for property protection,” he said. “But what I am not in favor of it the vast number of ordinances that came to us in a pre-packaged book from Downstate, in which we put our name on top it, then tried adding to it. I am for property owner rights, and I’m also for protection of those rights, which would protect you from having your neighboring property owner do something offensive to you or the environment.”

The problem is, he said, that the current county ordinances were not written with Keweenaw County values, they were written from an area that does not match the demographics for this county. Yes, excellent work and additions have been made, but deletions still need to occur, and we are working on that!

The Blueprint for Tomorrow, the county’s master plan, based on that of Traverse City, was adopted three decades ago, before Rajala was elected to the board. It has been his stance for the longest time, he said that the board needs to clean it up. He has wanted to remove the nonsense ordinances to reflect the wants of the residents, not the residents of Traverse City.

“What’s going now, even with the planning commission, in regards to other ordinances that were laid out on the table and criticized for – I believe that there is a faction in the area that would like to see the zoning bard act as its own private HOA (Home Owners Association), to cover their interests, which are far from the interests of the rest of the county – it’s just wrong.”

People need to become informed and understand what is going on, said Rajala, and that is what he is fighting for, to preserve the rights of the property owners, but people need to go to the meetings to understand and ask questions. That is the part I would like to drive home with this.

Rajala is also in favor of ensuring that Keweenaw County maintains a voice and shared control of large land sales, use and administration, further preserving its availability for future generations.