ELY — It started as a straightforward request from a small volunteer commission asking to finish what it started. It turned into a tangled debate for the Ely City Council as a jurisdictional dispute over who gets to tell Ely’s story came before them.
By the end of Monday’s meeting, the council had threaded a compromise. But getting there took two competing motions and one plea from the mayor to just take a collective deep breath.
The Heritage Preservation Commission came to the council with four recommendations Tuesday night.
The third recommendation was the one that lit the fuse. HPC wanted to lead a stakeholder committee — trail groups, the Chamber of Commerce, and others — to develop a display plan for the new trailhead building and deliver it to the council by June 1. Co-chairs Margaret Egan and Pam Turnbull argued it fell squarely within HPC’s mandate to protect and enhance Ely’s appeal to residents and tourists.
Councilor Adam Bisbee, who also serves as the council’s representative to the Parks and Recreation Board, wasn’t buying it. The trailhead building is new construction and not a historic structure, and its operations fall under Parks and Rec’s jurisdiction, he argued.
“It just feels as though this doesn’t fall within the scope of the HPC,” Bisbee said. He acknowledged some conflict over the question, and said he’d be comfortable with HPC in a consulting role, but giving them the lead didn’t sit right.
“I can’t support giving that authority to them,” he said.
The council passed the HPC motion anyway, with Bisbee and Councilor Emily Roose opposed. Then things got complicated.
Bisbee had also brought a separate Parks and Rec recommendation to the meeting, asserting that under Chapter 2.55 of the city code, the Parks and Rec Board holds authority over the rules and regulations of the trailhead center. On its face, it sounded like a matter of housekeeping, clarifying which board governs building reservations, rentals, and events. But the Parks and Rec minutes make clear the motion’s implications ran deeper than that. If Parks and Rec controls the rules and regulations of the space, that authority could reasonably extend to what gets displayed on its walls, effectively reversing what the council had just voted to give HPC.
What followed was several minutes of council members talking past each other about who was in charge of what, until Roose drew a line that finally seemed to clarify things. HPC would lead the collaborative process to design the displays. Parks and Rec would govern how the building itself gets used and oversee things such as reservations, rentals, events, the day-to-day rules of a public space. Two different jobs, she argued. The council passed the Parks and Rec motion on that understanding.
Mayor Heidi Omerza, who had watched the debate spiral, offered what amounted to a closing argument for moving on.
“We have a beautiful building,” she said. “I think if we all respect each other’s decisions, we can take a step back, take a deep breath, and think: I can work with everybody in this room. We may not agree on everything, but we can figure out how to get the best of all of us and make the best product possible.”
The council’s other HPC business went more smoothly, if not without its own wrinkles. The council approved sending a historic painting attributed to artist Harvey Gregory Prushek to the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis for a $100 condition assessment. Councilors also approved exploring the cost of pursuing copyright and reproduction rights for the painting, which Egan said could open the door to merchandise and fundraising. A preliminary review suggests the artist never filed a copyright, she said.
The council rejected the HPC’s request for a feasibility study on the Basswood Lake log cabin at 1600 E. Sheridan St., a historic structure the city has already moved to list for sale. Turnbull said the commission was blindsided. She’d discovered through a review of council minutes that the property had been quietly shopped to a realtor and even flagged to the University of Minnesota’s Kawishiwi Wilderness Research Center, all without HPC being consulted.
“City council had not reached out to their own Heritage Preservation Commission,” she said.
Several councilors acknowledged the oversight but said the decision had been made. Clerk/treasurer Harold Langowski confirmed the property photography was completed this week. Councilor Al Forsman noted that any sale will require a public hearing.