02/14/2020- It’s another round of approvals for the creation of a new division within Marinette County’s Administration Department to take on economic development and tourism promotion. Thursday the Administrative Committee signed off on establishing a Development/Tourism Director position, as well as program assistant to offer support to that role. The County has been grappling for months, even years, on how to approach tourism and development, with the board most recently directing County Administrator John Lefebvre to create these new positions to allow the work to be done in-house. Lefebvre says, even if these positions are ultimately approved by the full board and filled, creating partnerships with other agencies and contracting out certain services will still be critical to their success.
The Committee also approved a Program Assistant in the Facilities and Parks Department to promote and develop specifically county-owned assets and members questioned if there may be overlap between those responsibilities and the tourism efforts happening in the Administration Department or if the Development/Tourism Director would or should be venturing into the promotion of individual county businesses. Supervisor Rick Polzin says they still have some work do to developing guidelines and expectations for these positions, but he wants to at least get the ball rolling.
County Board will be asked to give the Development/Tourism Director and Program Assistant positions final approval February 25th. If that occurs, it’s expected they likely won’t be filled for another few months.