After serving as Glen Arbor’s chief executive for 16 years, township supervisor John Soderholm is stepping down for several reasons. “Sometime it gets so you need new blood in the system,” he said. For Soderholm himself, it’s a case of “service fulfilled. We accomplished a lot and there are some new challenges.” Plus, Soderholm feels he is at a point in life where time is getting short. He prefers now to focus on his personal life.
Have you had the Glen Lake Fire Department come to your home for your free safety inspection? The program is new. Its purpose is to advise residents and point out potential fire and safety hazards. Plus, the department will not cite you for infractions.
“The Park has got to figure out how to address the dead fall hazard,” declared Glen Lake Fire Department chief John Dodson after the October Glen Arbor Emergency Services meeting. The “Park” he refers to is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL). All that dead wood, he says, “is fuel building up. Our fire department does not have the staff to maintain a wildfire the size of Alligator Hill.”
Cedar’s fire department, like others in Leelanau County, is experiencing noticeable growing pains, with increased demand from the four townships it serves: Solon, Centerville, Cleveland and Kasson. The latest available data is from 2012, where Fire Chief Dan Petroskey wrote that the CFD had “the most calls ever in the history of the department, with a total of 686 responses.” These included 444 ambulance responses, 242 fire runs, and 17 mutual aid responses to other emergency servers, for a total increase over 2011’s 544 calls.
Runners and walkers will take the starting line in Glen Arbor on Saturday, June 16, for the inaugural Glen Arbor Solstice Half Marathon & 5k. With something to offer both hardcore endurance junkies and recreational athletes, the 13.1-mile race and 3.1-mile run/walk is expected to draw 400 participants.
On the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, Glen Arbor Sun writers Anne-Marie Oomen, Mike Buhler, Mary Sharry, Pat Stinson, Waleed Al-Shamma and Jacob Wheeler reflect on September 11, 2001.