Zero Genie

A disagreement with Emmet County has some Northern Michigan astronomers cutting their ties.

The Northern Michigan Astronomy Club had been volunteering their expertise at Emmet County’s International Dark Sky Park.

After a disagreement on some financial decisions, the group decided to walk away from the county.

As president and vice president of the Northern Michigan Astronomy Club, Bryan Shumaker and Rod Cortright are passionate about astronomy

“We volunteered to go there and help them do astronomy outreach types of activities,” Cortright said.

When Emmet County needed programming for their International Dark Sky Park, they stepped up.

“We’re all volunteers, we don’t take any salary, it’s just something we like to do, its fun,” Cortright said.

Before the club, another non-profit ran the programming and when they disbanded, they left money to the county.

The club feels that money should go toward their program’s needs.

“We told them right from the beginning, we need to have those types of things and once this money comes through we hope you consider funding something like that,” Cortright said. “At that point in time they said sure, they’d be happy to do that.”

But the county went in a different direction using the money for other portions of the park, and purchasing different astronomy equipment.

The county says there was no agreement.

“There really was no agreement,” said Charlie MacInnis, Emmet County Commissioner. “It really is the county staff’s responsibility to allocate the money in the way the county folks believe is best and they’re doing that.”

Because of the county’s decision, Shumaker and Cortright decided to cut ties with the park.

“I’m very frustrated by it, I feel it was wrong, it was inappropriate, we discussed it, we had an agreement which I assumed would be valid,” Shumaker said.

“It was very much a slap in the face,” Cortright said.

The county hopes they’ll reconsider.

“I’m sorry they feel that way, but it wasn’t intended that way,” MacInnis said. “The work they have done has been spectacular, the reality is we have scarce resources and we have to allocate them in the way our staff believes best.”