MARQUETTE — The League of Women Voters of Marquette County hosted the first of its two scheduled candidate forums on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming general election on Nov. 3.

The next forum, which will be for Marquette County Sheriff candidates, is scheduled for Thursday.

Wednesday’s forum featured the six candidates who are vying for three open seats on the Marquette City Commission.

The candidates are Margaret Brumm, Jessica Hanley, Cody Mayer and Mike Plourde, as well as incumbent commissioners Paul Schloegel and Fred Stonehouse.

Due to COVID-19, the forum was held virtually via Zoom with no in-person audience. The link to the recording of the forum was posted to the League’s website and Facebook page for the public to view the morning afterward.

Marquette County League of Women Voters member Jo Foley was the moderator for the forum. The candidates were all given a chance to provide opening and closing statements and answer questions submitted in advance by area residents.

Debate among candidates was not permitted. Each candidate had one minute for opening and closing statements and to answer each question.

One of the questions posed to the candidates was what they think the two highest priority issues are that the city needs to address, and what actions each candidate would take as a city commissioner regarding those issues.

Each candidate’s response to the question has been listed below in the order that answers were delivered during the forum.

The order in which each candidate could respond was determined in a briefing before the forum.

Several candidates brought up COVID-19, affordable housing and economic development as priority issues.

Margaret Brumm: “The two highest priority issues that Marquette needs to address is No. 1, the safety of the community in the time of the COVID virus, and No. 2, the continuity of the functionality and accessibility of the lakeshore.

“No. 1, the COVID virus is not going away. Even if they had a vaccine tomorrow, by the time it got to Marquette, it would be the middle of next year. Therefore, things need to be monitored. New cases, outbreaks. I think Northern (Michigan University) is doing a fantastic job with testing. I would increase the number of testing sites and I would make it routine that people got tested once a month, even with or without symptoms, just to make sure they were on the track to keep going. Also, the commission has to stand firm when people want to have large gatherings like they did this past summer against the gentleman who wanted to have a gathering at the Lower Harbor (U.P. CityFest).

“As for the lakeshore, I’m running on the slogan ‘She’ll clean up the lakeshore.’ Physically, the lakeshore needs attention.”

Jessica Hanley: “I think the two highest priority issues are: No. 1– being housing affordability in the city — the rent has highly outpaced the wages that we are getting in the city right now. And it is causing a lot of students, a lot of people, seniors and the general population to have to choose to live elsewhere, simply because of affordability. It’s a lack of middle-income housing, which there’s not a lot of wants to build that housing. There’s not a lot of money to be made in it, so we have to find ways to encourage and initiate building, whether it’s loosening zoning so we can have more duplexes, having more medium-density areas, things like that.

“The second thing, I’m going to second what candidate Brumm said, but in a different way. I think it’s more how this COVID-19 is going to affect the small businesses in the area. I think over the next six months, we’re going to see a lot more small businesses who’ve held on through now close down because they lost all of their reserves that they had before for the summer and didn’t make the extra money that they normally do, due to being closed down or halfway closed down.”

Cody Mayer: “I would say the top two biggest priorities moving forward is one, affordable and middle-income housing, and two, economic recovery. First, we need to be able to support our small businesses and give them the tools and flexibility they need to be able to recover from this pandemic. Whether that be increasing mixed-use zoning, allowing more outdoor seating as a permit aspect — which the commission temporarily allowed for due to the 50% capacity restrictions put in by the governor — to making an entrepreneur’s dashboard on the city website for people to figure out how to start up a business in the city.

“We also need to look at how we can improve affordable housing. Forty-five percent of Marquette residents are either in poverty or unable to afford a basic housing budget. Not to mention, one in three Marquette residents are cost-burdened, meaning they pay over 30% in their housing expenses. We need to increase medium-density, allow for more duplexes and triplexes and increase housing.”

Paul Schloegel: “I have to stick with some of the other statements made, there’s the health, safety and well-being of our community during COVID. This is one of those things that when I signed up, I never imagined we’d be dealing with it. It’s been a very real situation to be on the ground floor running, dealing with a lot of the inner workings of the city, whether it’s the city employees or the residents, it’s just all been very overwhelming, quite honestly. But we’re doing a good job of it and that’s certainly one of the things that’s on the forefront. If I were to say I had an agenda, it’s got to be right there.

“The other thing for me, it’s infrastructure. We’ve been dealing with some larger rain events, larger weather events that are taking its toll on other communities. I want to make sure that we’re not going to be part of that group of people that are sitting there, wondering why we weren’t taking care of our infrastructure for such a long time.”

Fred Stonehouse: “The two biggest issues I see is No. 1, COVID-19 and that is obviously overwhelming all of us. We had 151 people, I think, in the Upper Peninsula (Wednesday) test positive, and eight of those were in Marquette. We’re doing a little bit better, but that is going to be with us for a long time — whether it’s (the) better (part) of the year or two years or three years — we’ve got to deal with it. We’re doing it in an effective way. And now we’ve got to be more effective in what we’re doing with it. We obviously do that in cooperation with Northern Michigan University, our county health department and our partners in the governor’s office. We have to approach this thing as a team, not as individuals.

“My next point would be solid economic development, because if we have solid economic development and we direct some of that towards dealing with the businesses that are in trouble because of COVID, then that becomes critically important and a methodology to approach it and to help solve those problems.”

Mike Plourde: “Being last is a big advantage in a particular question and being able to say that COVID-19 is a huge issue, I agree with all of that. I’ve followed what the city has done, I’ve followed what the state has done, the U.P. in the last two months, the cases have gone up exponentially. And we’ve got to find a way to deal with that. We have to be able to deal with it proactively, but we have to be able to deal with it firmly to keep cases down. We cannot allow our hospital to become way overused and way too extended. That being said, I also agree with commissioner Stonehouse when he says economic development is huge. I’m on record already on the city commission for supporting economic development, and I’m going to continue to do that. In my mind, the site of the We Energies plant and the site of the Shiras energy plant are going to be two very, very big subjects to deal with fairly soon, certainly next year.”

Brumm, Mayer and Plourde all ran in the 2019 election for two vacant commission seats, which were won by current commissioner Evan Bonsall and Andrew Lorinser.

Lorinser resigned on March 16, roughly five months into his first term.

The commission voted to appoint Sally Davis to take his place for the remainder of Lorinser’s three-year term shortly after his resignation.

Schloegel’s, Stonehouse’s and commissioner Pete Frazier’s terms are all set to expire in November. Frazier has served consecutive terms on the commission and therefore cannot run again in the upcoming election.

Marquette County League president Darlene Allen thanked the candidates for their participation and those who made the forum possible in a virtual world.

“I appreciate all of the candidates participating in the forum,” she said. “I am very honored to work with such a great group of the League members who made this forum possible with their time, talents and volunteering spirit.”

The link to the full forum, which lasted just over an hour and a half, can be found on the League of Women Voters of Marquette County’s website at www.lwvmqt.org, or on its Facebook page.

The forum is also available on YouTube at https://youtu.be/TQ9f6hHZ9Ww.

This week’s forum will involve the two candidates for Marquette County Sheriff, Democratic incumbent Greg Zyburt and Republican challenger Joseph Kozub.

The forum will be made available for public viewing the following day, organizers said.

The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization that encourages informed and active participation in government, works to increase understanding of major policy issues and influences public policy through education and advocacy, organizers said. The league never supports or opposes political parties or candidates, according to the league.

Membership is open to anyone 16 or older.

For more information, contact Darlene T. Allen at 906-225-9103 or dthomsona@gmail.com.

Ryan Spitza can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 248. His email address is rspitza@miningjournal.net.