Peninsula Pulse Named City’s Official Newspaper

by KEVIN BONESKE

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Peninsula Pulse readers will now be able to read the City of Sturgeon Bay’s legal notices in the weekly newspaper. On a unanimous voice vote, the Sturgeon Bay Common Council agreed Tuesday to switch to the Peninsula Pulse as the city’s official newspaper.

Council members made the change – which will become effective starting May 1 and run through April 30, 2023 – as part of the council’s reorganization following the April 5 spring general election, when Mayor David Ward and three of the seven alders were reelected to new terms.

City Administrator Josh VanLieshout said municipalities must designate their newspaper every year.

“Official newspapers are actually a pretty regulated thing,” he said. “Under the [state] statutes, you can imagine, there’s a fair amount of money at play, given the amount of notices that municipalities and other government entities are legally required to post.”

VanLieshout said that for decades, the city’s official newspaper was the Door County Advocate, but a change in state law now allows the Peninsula Pulse to be designated for publishing the city’s legal notices.

“[The Peninsula Pulse does] meet the circulation requirements and the subscription requirements as prescribed by statute,” he said.

Council members voiced their support for switching the city’s legal notices to the Pulse.

“It reaches more people, and I think it’s a good move,” said District 6 alder Seth Wiederanders.

District 5 alder Gary Nault said the move makes sense because the Pulse also publishes Door County’s legal notices, so readers will no longer need to look through two papers to see both the city’s and the county’s legal notices.Of the 19 municipalities in Door County, 12 of them, including Door County government, already publish legal notices in the Peninsula Pulse, as do three of the five school districts within the county.