5 running for spots on November ballot
5 running for spots on November ballot
By SCOTT SWANSON Journal Staff Writer
John Kivela, Jorma Lankinen, Don Potvin, Frank Sciotto and Fred Stonehouse are running to fill two seats on the seven-member commission. The seats are non-partisan and carry three-year terms.
The seats are currently held by Mayor Tony Tollefson and Commissioner Dan Dallas. Tollefson is running for a seat on the Marquette County Board and Dallas opted not to run for another term.
Kivela, 37, is the general manager of Marquette Automotive. He is currently the chairman of the Marquette Board of Zoning Appeals, a member of the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum board and a member of the U.P. Builder’s Association.
Kivela said the city is currently going about work on Founders Landing, the city’s lakeshore development, in the right way, with an ad hoc committee in place to consider developer proposals.
“We don’t want it to proceed too fast, but at a consistent rate,” he said. “We want quality development, I think we can’t settle for cheap places. I think we need to allow the developers to have some flexibility.”
Kivela said the city needs to look at regional cooperation with the townships — such as joining together to provide police, fire or public works services — in order to save money.
“We have all the recreation facilities (used by township residents) in the city, yet the city taxpayers are paying for all of it,” he said. “To me, that’s where the real budget savings would come in.”
Lankinen, 58, is the owner of Jorma Lankinen General Contracting. He is a member of the Marquette County Landfill Authority, the Finlandia University Council and the Home Builder’s Association.
Lankinen also said he believes regional cooperation with townships and the consolidation of services would save the city money, and stressed personal, face-to-face communication with township officials in repairing relationships between them.
“That’s the key,” he said.
Lankinen added that he’s become familiar with city government by attending commission meetings and budget-setting sessions.
“Not to take potshots at anybody, but none of my colleagues were there,” he said. “It takes so much info to run the city... you can’t take anything for granted.”
Potvin, 76, is a local businessman who owns several rental properties. He is a former city and county commissioner, a Boy Scout leader and the former chairman of the Marquette County Transit Authority.
Potvin named communication between the city and its residents as an area that needs improvement. If elected, Potvin said he would set up regular times when he would be available at city hall to speak with residents and answer their questions.
“They have had a year (since last year’s recall of four commissioners) to do things right — perhaps to give the citizens of Marquette confidence in their ability to handle problems,” he said. “I think they have not risen to that occasion, to have a user-friendly city commission and city government.”
Potvin added that he would be more thrifty with city tax dollars.
“They get sucked into things without knowing the consequences,” he said of the commission. “I think I can look further ahead. I’m more conscientious with other people’s money. I’ve always been better with other people’s money than my own.”
Sciotto, 81, is a retired assistant fire chief with the Marquette City Fire Department. He served five terms on the city commission, and also sat on the Local Officer’s Compensation Board and the Central Dispatch Policy Board.
Sciotto called the Beckett and Raeder plan for development at Founders Landing — the original plan which called for townhouses in the middle section of the property, a hotel in the north and single-family housing in the south — “the finest thing since sliced cheese.”
“I think it was a good plan and we should follow through with it,” he said.
Sciotto stressed that the city’s relationships with neighboring townships needs to be improved. Officials with Marquette and Sands townships were angered last year when the city bought land within their borders.
While Sciotto still said he supported the $5 million, 2,400-acre land purchase, he said it should have been done differently.
“We can all become friends again,” he said. “I am in favor or working with those folks. We alienated them, and it was wrong thing to do. It was as wrong as two left feet.”
Stonehouse, 58, is a retired army officer, a part-time professor at Northern Michigan University and a freelance writer. He is chairman of the Harbor Advisory Committee and has chaired the Mayor’s Harbor Master Plan Development Committee and the 2005 income tax task force. He is also the chairman of the Marquette Maritime Museum board.
Regarding Founders Landing, Stonehouse said that “it’s been studied to death, and now it’s time to get it moving.
“We need to take it to next level. Send out the RFPs to developers, list the things we find acceptable, control the development through a (planned unit development) or pattern book. Allow developers to come back with what their proposals are, and select the one that best fits the vision of the city.”
Stonehouse said that the city needs to rebuild its trust with the citizens.
“The most basic function of government is to communicate, and we need to do a much better job,” he said. “Once that’s done, everything else falls into place. It’s certainly very critical that the city commission be composed of folks that have new ideas and new energy, and a willingness to really dig in and get the work done that needs to be done.”
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