Happy Belated Mother’s Day, A New Pope and New University Presidents, Nation’s Longest Serving Mayor in the UP, and UP Tourism Spending Increases

– INFORMED BREVITY –

This Week in Rural Insights

Next week we will be publishing a new op-ed by Bill Vajda. Watch for that on Wednesday of next week.

A Belated Mothers Day to All

Spring has sprung. Everyone is tuning up their lawn mowers and hopefully we all can put away our snow blower.

A New Pope and New University Presidents

Almost one in five Michiganders are Catholic and they are celebrating the appointment of a new pope–Pope Leo XIV. Michiganders and Midwesterners were thrilled to learn that Pope Leo was born and raised in the United States and even better in Illinois.

This week we also learned that Northern Michigan University had appointed an Interim President to replace the departing President Brock Tessman. Interim President Gavin Leach has decades of experience at NMU.

As Vice President of Finance he has been involved in every aspect of operations at NMU and can hit the ground running. He is an alumnus of NMU and a true Wildcat. Congratulations to my friend and former colleague President Gavin Leach.

Gavin Leach will be the third President of NMU who has a degree from NMU.

The NMU Board of Trustees is in the process of forming a search committee to hire a new permanent president. We hope and trust that we will see a solid representation of alumni on the search committee. They bring an important and valuable perspective to the search process.

This past week we also learned that University of Michigan President Ono has resigned to become the President of the University of Florida after just a couple of years at the U of M. An interim president has been appointed and a search committee will begin their work.

These presidential searches are very, very, very expensive. More on that later.

Nation’s Longest Serving Mayor in Upper Peninsula

The Mayor of Mackinac Island is Margaret Doud and was reelected to her 50th term. She was first elected in 1975. That makes her our nation’s longest serving Mayor, and yes Mackinac Island is part of the Upper Peninsula. Congratulations to Mayor Doud.

Tourism Spending in Upper Peninsula Increases

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) recently issued a report that says that spending by tourists in the UP has increased 7.7% over the last three years.

The report compiles spending on food, beverages, lodging and outdoor recreation. The eastern end of the Upper Peninsula saw the highest spending in Mackinac County ($300.4 Million) and in Chippewas County ($176.2 million). The central Upper Peninsula had Marquette tourist spending at $268.3 million. (MEDC and WBUP).

Quotes That Make Us Go Hmmm

“God invented economists so that meteorologists wouldn’t be the ones wrong most of the time.” Anonymous.

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