Opinions/Editorials

The sun was shining late Wednesday afternoon and temperatures were more summer-like than spring.
It was a perfect day to be outdoors and it seemed like a healthy chunk of the community decided to congregate on the area from Whiteside Park over to Veterans Memorial Field.
Had someone been looking down from a helicopter or a low-flying plane, it would have made for a wonderful picture - and served as a heck of a marketing tool for Ely.
Here’s what the camera operator would have seen:
• Whiteside Park filled with young families, including a couple dozen or more kids enjoying the playground equipment and roaming free on the grass, while a few adults relaxed on the benches;
• Ely’s LIttle League field occupied by one of the community’s 10 or so Little League teams, with coaches and players tuning up for a season that will make the area a hub of activity for the next two months;

by Senator Amy Klobuchar
Minnesotans in rural communities across our state are at risk of losing their access to a free and open internet. People like Lane from Avon, who at 21-years-old is worried about getting his graphic design business off the ground. The internet has helped him get the word out about his designs and he plans to use that momentum to set up his own company, but he’s worried that recent changes to net neutrality rules could make it harder for his small business to succeed. Minnesotans and Americans across the country share this young entrepreneur’s concerns.

The number is staggering. A total of $91,000 in scholarships was given away at Wednesday’s Awards Assembly to seniors at Ely Memorial High School. Of that, just over $82,000 came from local sources. Over 50 different scholarships, many from alumni, will help the 40 Ely seniors as they head off next year to get their university or college educations.
Now the math doesn’t work out perfectly of course. Each graduate didn’t receive $2,000 and, just as in previous years, there were deserving seniors who didn’t receive an award.
We wouldn’t advocate for simply divvying up the total amount but we do believe there’s always room to make the system work better. This would mean those awarding the scholarships would have to be more flexible. It’s great to give your scholarship to the top of the class, but that doesn’t always make sense. There’s plenty of kids just as or more deserving who get overlooked.
With that in mind, there was one award that caught our attention.

We’ve had a very good county commissioner manning the post for our area for the past three and a half years. We were very disappointed to hear Tommy Rukavina will not be able to run in this fall’s election.
Health must come first for all of us, even elected officials. All kidding aside, our best wishes, thoughts and prayers are with Tommy, one of the toughest politicians we know. He’s never backed down to a fight before and he won’t now.
On the front page of this week’s paper, Rukavina is pictured with the first winners of the St. Louis County mineral royalties scholarships at Vermilion Community College. It’s only fitting he’s in the photo, if it weren’t for Tommy, this would have never happened.
We sat down with Rukavina a week ago, to talk about his health, his past accomplishments and what kind of legacy he will leave on the Iron Range.

The Ely Echo’s annual Progress Edition is a great example of people believing in our area’s future and stepping up to the plate to make this a better place to work and live.
Yet, even with 21 pages of stories, photos and advertising there are some disturbing trends happening here.
This year all indications point to three restaurants not re-opening. Three. Plus Ely’s oldest outfitting business closed its doors and had its assets auctioned off. How many jobs were lost for the summer? If our tourism economy is doing so well, how can this be?
For one, we don’t know how our tourism economy is doing because there isn’t an accurate way to measure it. Even those who point to the Ely area lodging tax know this is a flawed report.
The lodging tax income is derived as a percentage of what was charged. This isn’t a reflection of the number of rooms rented or the number of heads in beds.

Dear Editor:
A large number of mining supporters recently attended a presentation at the Senior Center by Steve Saari, sponsored by Up North Jobs, who presented information and data regarding copper-nickel mining and why copper-nickel mining would be in the best interest of the United States. First, the environmental controls would be far more strict than in any other country currently mining copper-nickel.
China’s mining standards, the current leader in the mining of copper in the world, does not have the strict standards that have been established within the state of Minnesota and the U.S. This should concern all citizens within Northern Minnesota because it is more detrimental to the earth’s environmental condition and “global warming.” It also would put the United States in a compromised position due to the reliance of imports from communist China.

How many St. Louis County jobs have been relocated to Duluth? How are our tax dollars being appropriated regionally? If a renewed push to answer these two questions comes to fruition, then it will be worth all the fighting to find out the truth.
Now joined by elected officials across the Iron Range, St. Louis County commissioner Tom Rukavina is no longer standing alone. He’s joined by fellow commissioner Mike Jugovich, and a unanimous vote by the 18-member elected officials on the Range Association of Municipalities and Schools.
We’re surprised St. Louis County commissioner Keith Nelson of Virginia has continued to throw up road blocks on this study and that he continues to side with the Duluth commissioners. Maybe he’s afraid of what the truth will reveal.
Ely and Virginia are perfect examples of how the county has been consolidating jobs in Duluth, taking families and school kids out of communities in the north half of the county.

by Jim Pumarlo
Strike up a conversation about press rights, and many individuals likely conjure a picture of editors and reporters demanding access to top-secret data from government officials. No doubt, that occurs more often than most people would like to believe.
The reality, however, is that your newspaper’s push for access to government meetings and public data at local, state and federal levels is simple. We want to deliver information that affects our readers’ everyday lives, and do so in a timely fashion.
Reminding citizens and public officials about the public’s right of access to government information is the focus of “Sunshine Week: It’s Your Right to Know,” March 11-17. At its foundation, Sunshine Week underscores preserving the free flow of information for an open, effective and accountable government.
Consider these examples:

The fifth grade students at Washington Elementary participated in a writing contest on Americanism sponsored by the Ely American Legion Post 248 Auxiliary.
The winners’ essays are listed below. Congratulations to these students for telling us a little bit about what America means to them.

Dear Editor:
A closer look at our new neighbor:
I recently read a letter suggesting that “another argument should be brought forth that dealt with science and common sense” when referencing Antofagasta Mining.
Antofagasta is the owner of Twin Metals Mining near Ely. I would like to think that a letter based on honesty, facts and logic might be a better place to start.
The author used some pretty caustic language to depict Antofagasta mining as “a water-polluting, water-depleting, corrupt corporation responsible for severe environmental damage in Chile”. She highlighted the fact that the port city of Antofagasta, Chile’s copper mining hub, is a cancer capital in the country; it is, but not because of Antofagasta mining. Here are the facts.