View from the Green
Bob is a retired education administrator who was an academic administrator for a local university for 28 years and spent almost 10 years as an administrator/manager at an educational association in Brookfield. He and his wife now run a small consulting business called DeRoche Consulting LLC.
Wisconsin Should Buy the U.P.
Last week I was in the Greendale Village Center where I came across a family from Marquette, Michigan who was visiting Greendale and the Milwaukee area. The family consisted of parents and two adult female children. I started talking to them because they were looking for directions to either Brookfield Square or Mayfair Mall on there way back to Michigan. Since I had been stationed in the Upper Peninsula many years ago in the Coast Guard, I asked the two young ladies how the economy was in Marquette, MI and if the state had developed the old K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base. Sadly they said there had been no real development of that site and that the city and state were really hurting economically. More importantly, they indicated that they relate much more to Wisconsin, than to Michigan. They thought that Michigan really didn’t care about the U.P., particularly the western U.P.
This got me thinking: Maybe Wisconsin should make an offer to Michigan to buy the U.P. and make it part of Wisconsin. After all, it is attached to Wisconsin anyway. It’s only attached to the rest of Michigan via a bridge. According to Wikipedia:“The Upper Peninsula contains almost one-fourth of the land area of Michigan but just three percent of its total population.” So Wisconsin would get a lot of land for its offer, but not a lot of people. Sounds like a good deal, but how much money should we offer? After all, we have our own financial problems. The U.P. land area is 16,420 square miles that equals 10508800 acres. How much should we offer them per acre? This idea could cost Wisconsin a lot of money.
There might be a better way: Let the people of the U.P. vote on becoming part of Wisconsin or staying part of Michigan. As of the 2000 census there were 319,258 people living in the U.P. so a percentage of them would be voting. I wonder how the vote would turn-out. I do not think we should allow all the voters in Michigan to vote because then Wisconsin might not stand a chance. Besides, shouldn’t the people of the U.P. decide this issue? Maybe they are all Packer fans. What do you think?
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