By JIM ANDERSON

News Editor

IRON MOUNTAIN — Dickinson County Board will try reducing its regular meeting schedule to once a month, which is down from three sessions monthly as recently as December.

The board voted 3-1 Monday to adopt the change. Commissioner Joe Stevens voted no and Commissioner Peter Swanson was absent.

“This is just a way of taking away two citizens’ times,” Stevens said, adding, “We serve the public.”

Stevens this year is the only returning member of the five-member board. Chairman Dan Harrington and commissioners Victoria Jakel, Kevin Sullivan and Swanson were newly seated in January.

The previous board had two regular meetings monthly, along with a separate finance meeting. In January, the board began having a regular meeting on the second Monday and a finance meeting on the fourth Monday. Typically, finance meetings have also included other agenda items, essentially making them regular meetings.

Controller Brian Bousley said he believes the board can handle its business with one meeting a month, while also scheduling special meetings as needed. Some past regular meetings have been very short because there were few agenda items, he said.

Stevens objected, saying if a special meeting is called with little advance notice, “no one knows about it.”

Harrington, in response, said with social media “people know about it.”

Bousley said if the schedule is too limited, the board can always return to having two meetings per month.

The board’s next scheduled session will be a finance meeting Tuesday, May 27. The new once-monthly setup will begin with a combined finance and regular meeting on Monday, June 9. Subsequent meetings will be on the second Monday. Meetings begin at 6 p.m. in the circuit courtroom of the courthouse.

Special meetings in the past have most often been during the day in the correctional center conference room.

In other action, the board made five three-year appointments to the county’s Solid Waste Management Planning Committee. Ray Anderson of Norway, Barbara Kramer of Iron Mountain and Anthony Edlebeck of Kingsford will fill industry seats, while Andrew Wiltzius and William Rice, both of Kingsford, will represent the general public. One vacancy remains in each of the respective categories.