By Joe Knaapen
For The News-Chronicle
STURGEON BAY - A passion for small-town character and a strong background in observing government drives Tom Torinus into the center of political and social turmoil in Door County.
But, by his own admission, Torinus has a temperament that keeps him from running for elected office to steer that turmoil toward a solution.
"I'm at an age where I want my ideas to come forward," Torinus said. "But my temperament is not attuned to the political process."
That admission came in a recent interview with Torinus, the man whose ideas created the current momentum for challenging the political establishment in Door County. His efforts were integral to forcing a recall election in 15 of the 20 County Board districts on Tuesday.
A Green Bay native, the 63-year-old Torinus spent his career in newspapers, a vantage point from which he observed, reported on and wrote about the social, political, economic, educational and environmental issues of his lifetime.
He grew up in the family that owned and managed at different times the Green Bay Press-Gazette and Appleton Post-Crescent. Most recently, he owned his own newspaper in Menominee, Mich.
From that experience, he drew a parallel with a simple memory of his father, John Torinus. In his latter days, the elder Torinus became a bit of a curmudgeon who spoke his mind with little regard for the niceties of the day, his son said.
"I remember him listening to someone complain about a story or an editorial or something. And, finally, he said, 'If that's the way you feel about it, buy your own paper,'" said the now-retired Torinus. "That's the way I feel now. Sometimes I get frustrated waiting for people to catch up."
From his home in Baileys Harbor, Torinus now finds time to indulge his passion of preserving the notion of "small-town character." Since 1996, Torinus has tried to define the local social-political-economic scene and generate a community consciousness from which to translate those ideas and dreams into specific action, another reality.
A major step for Torinus occurred in 1997, when he organized Future Search, a group-dynamics process that sponsored a conference called "Imagining Together."
Representatives of the geographic, political, religious, economic and professional diversity of Door County met to discuss the issues of the day.
"I'm passionate about community development," and Future Search was meant to channel that energy into trying to bring the community together, Torinus said. It was an experiment in bringing together a variety of county residents in an effort to "find a common vision" for how the county ought to look in the future and how to achieve that goal, according to brochures produced in the wake of the gatherings.
But Torinus and his associates did more than talk and meet. In 1998, he took on a county proposal to establish the office of administrative coordinator, a hired manager to carry out day-to-day policy of the elected County Board.
Opposed to the notion, Torinus organized Citizens for Community Dialogue to promote the idea of creating a county executive - a stronger manager elected directly by the voters - who would also set policy and offset the power of the 20 elected supervisors. The idea went to a countywide referendum, but voters rejected the county executive by a 60-40 percent vote.
Undaunted, Torinus looks back at Future Search as a kind of first step toward success. The process "was a way to bring people together to talk creatively about community problems," he said. "Government doesn't do that very well; government can't think outside the box." And a government solution such as a $20 million Door County justice center "is just building a bigger box to handle a problem," Torinus said.
Finding a better, cheaper, more user-friendly way to solve the problem - whether it be an overcrowded jail or security in the courtrooms or accessibility for handicapped people - is the kind of challenge "that gets my juices flowing," Torinus said.
The real impetus for challenging the justice center came to Torinus last February 2001 when he heard a presentation by Jay Allen Johnson, then director of the Green Bay Multicultural Center. The discussion revolved around developing a church-based social ministry and centered on jail and alternatives to incarceration, Torinus said.
At one point, Torinus said, a number of residents complained about local community issues, including the county's determination to build a justice center.
Johnson "listened to us whine, and then he challenged us: 'What are you going to do about it?" Torinus said. "'You live in a democracy. If you don't like what they're doing, run for office. It's all about numbers. The majority wins. Do you want it?' And that's how COG came together."
COG - Citizens for Open Government - was kind of a "coming together of community activists around a single issue," Torinus explained.
The organization that eventually asked for the recall provided a forum for a number of county activists: Roy Aiken and Pat Miller, both of the town of Sevastopol, who had a background in Future Search, as did Nancy Skadden of the town of Gardner; Larry Smith of the town of Nasewaupee, who had worked with Aiken in establishing the Door County Stewardship Council and land-use forums affiliated with the state Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Green Bay; Christie Weber of Sturgeon Bay, who Torinus called "a high-profile activist from city issues"; and Allin Walker, who is involved in community affairs through the private social service agency HELP of Door County.
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