Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette
Canal View administrator Kim Salmi submitted her resignation this week.

HANCOCK — Houghton County — Canal View Administrator Kim Salmi submitted her resignation this week to the board overseeing the long-term care facility.

In an email Friday afternoon, Salmi said she is retiring from the long-term care industry.

“There’s not much more to it than that,” she said. “I am working with the (Department of Health and Human Services) Board and facility leadership to create a successful transition plan, hoping to be done sometime this spring or early summer. I appreciate the support of the community during my tenure. It has been an honor to serve the Houghton County community.”

Salmi gave 30 days’ notice, and will help with the transition, said Ed Jenich, chair of the DHHS board, which oversees Canal View.

Jenich said the board had been happy with Salmi’s performance.

“We’re more than well satisfied with her,” he said.

Leaving the position has been in the back of Salmi’s mind “for a while,” Jenich said. Although he did not list specific reasons she had given for resigning, he said conditions since the start of the pandemic played a part.

“It’s been a rough few years, with the pandemic, with decreasing census, trying to maintain a bottom line,” he said. “We’re a very solvent organization, but it’s hard to find workers.”

Right now, Canal View has about 120 residents, Jenich said.

The board has enlisted a headhunter to find potential candidates for the position. An internal current employee is studying to pick up their administrator’s license, but isn’t in a position yet to be hired, he said.

“Whoever’s going to pick it up will be qualified in that regard,” he said. “You just can’t put anybody in there. You have to have the criteria and the credentials to serve in that position.”

Jenich said anyone interested in filling the position should submit their letter of interest to the Canal View Board.

Salmi had briefly resigned from the position last September, after the Houghton County Board voted down a resolution asking for support of the facility by calling for relaxed masking and surveillance testing for nursing homes. The Canal View board did not accept Salmi’s resignation, which she retracted after the county board approved a modified version of the resolution at an emergency meeting later that week.