Keweenaw Report Your Source for Local News and Sports
A potentially troublesome situation has been averted in the Village of Calumet now that replacement parts were found for their snow removal equipment.
The Daily Mining Gazette reported last week that the village’s snow-go had broken down, which put Calumet in a bind. Without a snow-go to help take the snow away, the village could do little more than push the snow out of the way with a plow.
Village President Dave Geisler said the council was scrambling to find a solution to replacing the equipment because repairing it seemed impossible. “After 30 years of service, 40 years of service, things start breaking and unfortunately because of their age, it’s difficult or impossible to find replacement parts,” said Geisler.
Geisler said the village was looking into the possibility of issuing bonds to buy a new snow-go, but no one was sure where the money was going to come from to pay them back. “The reality is that equipment costs a lot of money and we would have to finance it and by law the village is restricted to how much debt it can incur so the reality is we are looking at replacing our snow-go because we have to,” he said.
Then the unexpected happened. Geisler said he spoke with Street Department Supervisor Marc Klein who said he located the replacement parts for the snow-go that just happened to have been rebuilt years ago and stored at a facility near the Houghton County Airport. Geisler said, “Surprisingly, the part was still there and we had to purchase it but Marc’s comment to me—and I actually went over to the Street Department—he said the snow-go hasn’t run this smooth in years! So talk about just a very, very luck break!”
Geisler said the story in the newspaper not only helped to get the village in touch with the person who had the parts, but he was getting calls from all over offering to sell them a snow-go.
