Beach Ordinance Correction

This is ABC 10 / CW 5 senior reporter Mike Hoey writing here, and I have a correction to make.

One of the stories I covered for us last week involved a proposed Marquette city ordinance involving beaches.

The story said the ordinance would ban swimming on all city beaches other than publicly-designated swimming areas.

Marquette has two of those areas — South Beach and McCarty’s Cove.

This is wrong.

I made a a mistake about it.

The ordinance would give the city Harbormaster the authority to ban swimming temporarily on any beach if the water conditions merit it.

That’s what the people I interviewed for the story told me.

However, I misunderstood them.

I thought they were saying something different, and I wrote the story to reflect what I thought they’d said.

An outright ban doesn’t appear in the Waterfront Safety Task Force’s report to the City Commission, and I knew even at that time that it doesn’t.

I believed an outright ban was something the Task Force had discussed since releasing the report.

About 12 hours ago, one of the people I interviewed for the story told me it’s very possible to interpret the ordinance the way that I did, but he also told me the city will *not* interpret it that way.

Several of you have contacted the station to alert us to the situation.

Thank you for doing so, because I wouldn’t have noticed the mistake that I made otherwise.

I apologize for making it, and I am sorry for the confusion and worry that I caused with my error.

The City Commission is expected to approve the ordinance — on giving the Harbormaster the power to temporarily ban swimming in rough water conditions — on May 9th.