Turning A Corner

Our title for this edition comes from the lead story
about the resignation of Al Perlongo from the Iron
River city council and city council member Bernie
Sacheck from the West Iron school board. Both of
these men had a conflict of interest between their
city council positions and outside interests. Sacheck
was a voting member of two boards that contract
with one another. Perlongo, whose service on
the Fire Department conflictd with his service on
the city council, was advised of his conflict much
earlier.

We complained, in this publication, about
Perlongo and because of his conflict and his
reticence to voluntarily do the right thing we
cited him with our lump of coal award. We clearly
spelled out the infraction in our issue of October
8, 2012, so even after attention was called to this
problem here, as well as during an earlier city
council meeting, it took till March 20 of this
year for Mr. Perlongo to accede to external
pressures.

The question this raises is whether or not any
individual who knowingly thwarts the law can
legitimately and honestly serve the public that
elected him. And what of the other city council
members? Shouldn't they have moved to expell
Perlongo as soon as he refused to relinquish his
fire department position? The mindset that
permitted the situation to continue for well over
a year cannot have concurrently served the public
as promised.

The county may have turned a corner to start
heading in the right direction because it was
pressure applied by the prosecutor, Melissa
Powell, that convinced the above named
gentlemen to finally take action. Of course
we had been pressuring in our publication,
and compalined to the Michigan Governor,
before our county prosecutor acted.

What we're hopeful of is that county officials
will now realize that there will be no negative
repercussions for doing the right thing, even
when that right thing doesn't make all
members of "the in group" (also called the
political machine) happy.

We hope that attention to misdeeds of local
politicians remains on the prosecutor's front
burner. This county would be a far better place
if action were swift and regular whenever
necessary. And once begun, it might even
spread to adjoining jurisdictions.

Our second story is about the Indian Lake plan to
maintain the water level. Even before Larry
Mellstrom wrote his guest editorial and a followup
letter a week later, there was a very elementary
discrepancy in the plans.

It does not require a second well to monitor the
water level. Only where the well driller's financial
interest prevails over common sense does such a
thing happen. The standard method of monitoring
water table level in an active well is to send
fractional inch tubing to the bottom of the well,
and connect a pressure gauge and a snifter valve
(just like the valve used to inflate car tires) to the
top end of the tubing. The after inflation, air pressure
gauge indication correlates to the height of the water
above the bottom end of the tubing. Every 1 psi on
the pressure gauge indicates 2 feet of water above
the bottom end of the tubing.

We have not undertaken any analysis of the realities
that Mr. Mellstrom has brought to light, but we trust
his analysis and suggest that much more engineering
work should have been undertaken before money was
spent on this poject.

Bill Vajk