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City gets help from two-county inspector

MENOMINEE — The City of Menominee has begun receiving help as they deal with the departure of former building inspector Thomas Lesperance, who left earlier this month. Dan Menacher, who is the building and zoning administrator for Delta County and the building inspector for Menominee County, will be performing some of the duties associated with the city’s building inspector position over the next few months.

Menacher is not a newcomer to the Menominee area — he has been employed with Menominee County since 2010. Later on, he accepted a job with Delta County. However, he retained his position with Menominee County when he did so, and the two counties now have a contract to share Menacher’s services.

“I was there before I came here,” he said.

Menacher’s involvement with Menominee’s city government will not be long-lasting, he said. He officially started performing duties associated with the city’s building inspector position on Feb. 22, which marked the beginning of a 90-day memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the City of Menominee and Delta County. This MOU will end in late April.

“The city’s just a temporary thing,” he said.

While his involvement with the City of Menominee has added extra work for Menacher, he said that his workload has not become dramatically higher than it had been. This is because winter is a relatively slow period of time for building inspectors.

“It’s just not that busy right now,” Menacher said.

However, the same will not be true later in the year.

“In 60 days, it’ll get too busy for me to handle it,” Menacher said. As a result, he will presumably be unable to continue performing the duties of this position after the MOU ends.

Making matters easier for Menacher is the fact that he will not be responsible for all of Lesperance’s former duties during his time with the City of Menominee. He will handle building inspections and plan reviews, but all other duties associated with the building inspector position will be taken care of by Assistant Code Enforcement Officer Stephen Jensen.

As a result, Menacher said that he does not expect to spend much more time in Menominee than he already does on a weekly basis in the coming months.

“I don’t anticipate it adding much at all,” he said.

Menacher said that he hopes Menominee County and the City of Menominee will eventually be able to share a single building inspector.

“That’s what I’d like to see happen,” he said.

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