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As the nation honors fallen service members this Memorial Day on Monday, the tourism industry marks the start of the summer season.
A bill in the U.S. House would re-designate the Apostle Islands as Wisconsin's first National Park.
The 21 Islands and 12 miles of mainland off Lake Superior in Northern Wisconsin is already a national lake shore.
Supporters say the designation as a national park would boost tourism and local economies.
Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany introduced the measure and it passed committee this spring.
But local governments in and around Bayfield County and the red cliff band of Lake Superior Chippewa opposed the re-designation.
The county and the tribe drafted a formal resolution together opposing it.
We asked Bayfield County Board Chair Jan Lee, why? And thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So we've done some reporting in Bayfield kind of during the summer season and the crush of tourists can be difficult for small businesses.
How would a national park designation increase those crowds?
Yes, thank you. So I think to start, like you said, the tourism area here in Bayfield in particular at the gateway to the Apostle Islands hasn't been a problem in the summer times.
There's never been a problem with not having enough tourists up here in the late spring, summer, early fall, basically through Applefest every first weekend of October.
As a matter of fact, we're pretty much bursting at the seams in terms of what we can accommodate in terms of lodging and restaurants.
And that affects workforce, of course, and we don't have housing for people up here.
It's hard to have to have workforce come in that can accommodate all these tourists for the businesses.
So I know that Mr. Tiffany has touted this re-designation as a boon for tourism, but we're basically looking for tourism in other directions.
I think as a whole, we've done a lot of work over the last 15 to 20 years trying to create tourism in an industry up here, getting people all the way up to Northern Wisconsin to enjoy Lake Superior and the inland lakes that we have.
And we've done a really good job of that, but what we've really been trying to do subsequently also is to try to do that in the shoulder seasons and in the winter to expand tourism in those areas.
And the big problem with Mr. Tiffany's bill at this point in time is that we don't know where the infrastructure is going to come to support it.
Infrastructure like roads and lodging and parking, but wouldn't the federal park service be responsible for that?
Well, we are responsible as a county for our roads and I mean in the highway department for our county roads and County Highway 13 is what gets you up to Bayfield.
It runs through Washburn, which is also a small city about 12 miles south of Bayfield, and that is also sort of a gateway point to the Apostle Islands, as well as the north of Bayfield where the red cliff,
Lake Superior Band of Ojibwa live about two miles north of Bayfield is where the reservation starts.
And they have treaty rights, of course, to the area.
Another issue that we've been sort of trying to address is the treaty rights and then the fact that we've invited Mr. Tiffany to come.
We want to be a part of the dialogue.
We want to share our concerns and have our questions heard, but he hasn't come.
And so we received about a year and a half ago, or we, and by that, I mean the county board and the red cliff tribal council first heard about Mr. Tiffany's bill or resolution HR 911.
And when we heard about it, we found out that the resolution had basically already been written and was already on its way to Washington, D.C.
Without consultation with the county board or the city of Bayfield or the tribal council.
And so we never got a chance to express our concerns or ask our questions.
And that pretty much left us in an area of the only option that we have left at the federal level is to enact some resolution.
So that's what we did.
We don't normally like to enact negative resolutions.
We like to work in the positive.
But this is an instance of where we felt that since we hadn't been heard or consulted that we really didn't have another option.
What would you be seeking from the federal government or the federal park service to make this thing work?
I think, first of all, what we've never heard is a deeper explanation of why the national Lakeshore designation is already a part of the parks.
It's a part of the national parks programming of designation of land matter and bodies of water.
And right now, as the national Lakeshore, it is one of the highest, if not the highest level of protection because it is a wild area.
It's a wilderness area.
Even though people live in these small communities on the shoreline, the lake itself and the islands are subject to very dramatic weather shifts and very cold water.
As we know, if anybody who knows this area knows has been responsible for hundreds of deaths, either in ships or boats or people out kayaking or canoeing who aren't familiar with how unpredictable this very big lake, which is actually more of an inland sea.
How quickly the weather can change, how cold the water is and how prepared and knowledgeable you have to be in order to embark on it.
So that's one of our concerns, is just the safety of it, of it all as well.
Well, we will watch this bill as it moves through and prepare to visit and do some field reporting up there.
I'd love to have you come up.
Take a look and join the area.
All right.
Jan Lee from Bayfield County.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
That was great. I didn't consider.
Yeah, I didn't consider that piece about, you know, the safety of it, because obviously you're absolutely right. That is, yeah.
The other thing I'm going to say besides the county, the other county responsibility is EMS.
So if you can somehow in your future visits or arguments about it, we are, we just, and it's not a failure of the people here because we've run on a voluntary EMS system because our.
Bayfield County, many people don't know is the second largest county and the most rural. We only have 16,000 people here. So our tax base.
We are responsible for providing emergency services.
And but in order to cover that, excuse me, we have to, you know, raise our levy. We have to raise the taxes. We have to do something to be.
It's a responsibility statutorily that we have to do.
And we want to do and require to do and it's the responsible thing to do.
But we are shifting in our demographic to older and older people up here, more and more people are, you know, aging out of the workforce and more people are coming in retirement age.
And we're trying to address the housing issue to get more working families and also to increase the workforce to help with more tourism.
But what we, what we're failing at is EMS because our volunteers are aging out and we don't have a county run system.
And because we're so rural, the expanse of the state, you know, we're missing calls. We don't mean to be, but we don't, we're having trouble manning our EMS.
We're already in a pretty dire situation.
Some of our county is doing great or doing fine, but other stations or areas of the county are really not.
They are tapped out. And so that's one of the major things that we're going to try to be addressing over the next few years with the county board here within the next year or two.
It's to figure out what kind of program we need to implement, whether it's a combination of local control and the individual stations and the county's involvement.
Because right now it's been solely local control with individual stations and volunteers.
And now we need to really, you know, ante up and we have to figure out how we can get from a failed system to a functioning, responsive 100% of time, EMS system.
So that's a big concern of mine personally. That's my own personal take. Not on record as a board member necessarily, but on behalf of the board, the resolution that we pass two of them now.
In 24 and 26, 25 and 26. And they both passed by significant majority, you know, 11 to 2 or something like that.
So we and as well as working with the tribal council on this as our very respected neighbors.
So that's those are our concerns.
That is super interesting. We have a new project. Well, it's not really a project, but we have a new emphasis on rural reporting with a Wisconsin public radio reporter and a designated PBS Wisconsin reporter and videographer.
And the story, the issue you just talked about, about Bayfield County and EMS is right in that wheelhouse.
So expect a call on that, Madam Chair.
Well, we're pretty overrun at the moment with trying to figure out we're heading into budget season.
So we're trying to work with our EMS. We knew have we knew for the first time in the state.
This is news. I mean, you may have heard of this already, but we have, I know you probably have to get going, but Bayfield County and Ashland County are the first.
We are the first counties to collaborate and combine our dispatch service.
And we just started that last year.
So we're still transitioning and making that work. The transition has happened.
It's going. Ashland and Bayfield County are functioning out of one dispatch center.
But of course connected to that is this EMS situation. So that's the next sort of piece that we're, we really have to try to solve.
So yeah, so I don't know if immediately is a, is a, is a, is a great opportunity for option for us.
But I think because people are pretty, pretty consumed right now and busy with trying to figure out solutions.
But yeah, anytime you could talk to Megan, Megan, Megan, quanderer is our dispatch coordinator for Bayfield County and EMS.
And I could, you know, we could reach out to her and suggest that I mentioned her and.
Great.
Make connection if you'd like.
Great. Well, thank you. No, super interesting. Really appreciate the information.
Thank you for all you do. Thank you. Okay.
Thank you.
You too. Happy Memorial Labica. Thank you.