Courtesy Photo This image shows what the upcoming Besser Museum Planet Walk installations will look like once installed along the Alpena Bi-Path.

ALPENA — Last week, the Alpena County Youth and Recreation Committee allocated its final allotment of funds from the county-wide youth and recreation millage.

The long-standing tax has supported many improvement projects to recreation facilities, helped keep sports registration costs low for local families, and will need to be renewed if the financial support is to continue in 2027.

For next year, the committee allocated a touch over $483,549 to 28 projects, which includes $100,000 for the operations for the Alpena County Plaza Pool and $78,514 to the Michigan State University Extension for its youth programs and 4H.

A total of $75,000 was kept in reserve for future mini grants for smaller projects in Alpena County.

Youth and Recreation Committee Chairman Tony Suszek said the committee is in the early stages of determining what the direction will be in terms of seeking another millage, which would likely be in August 2026. He said the Plaza Pool and MSU Extension depend on the tax money desperately and if the financial assistance provided from the millage were to dry up, each of them would likely need to drastically change operations and programming, or even close.

“We will likely have a discussion in February to come up with a plan and then make a recommendation to the commissioners,” he said. “We’ll have the discussion about if we need to ask for more, less, stay the same or not have one at all. I can say, we will never ask for more than what is needed.”

Suszek said the millage has done a lot of good in the community, but funding requests continue to come in. He said each year, the committee receives about $1 million worth of funding requests, but the committee is only able to dish out about $500,000 each cycle.

“A lot of good things have been done with this millage and things like the pool, MSU Extension, and 4H depend on it,” he said. “It benefits the Northern Lights Arena, it helps the Boys and Girls Club and so many other organizations that work with our kids. I believe it has been very successful.”

Suszek said many new groups and organizations have been seeking funds and some have asked for money in the past that are less reliant on the funds, at least for now. He said the committee committed $22,000 for a project proposed by the Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan. When complete, it will change the dynamic of portions of the Alpena Bi-Path and also be an educational opportunity for the people who use it.

The museum intends to create a “planet walk” on the bi-path where stations dedicated to each planet are established. The museum will be the sun and the planet stations will be set up in the order they are in the solar system as you move away from the museum.

The museum also intends to create a history trial on the bi-path where there will be information about special events and key dates in Alpena’s history.

The youth and recreation millage was originally passed in 2010 and has been renewed three times over the years. It is typically a four-year, 0.50 mill tax that costs people who own a home with a taxable value of $100,000 about $25 a year.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 or sschulwitz@TheAlpenaNews.com. Follow him on X @ss_alpenanews.com.