Beaver Island Transportation Authority

Organization

Founded

1993

Coordinates

45.7477° N, 85.5194° WGoogle Maps: Beaver Island Transportation AuthorityDownload KML

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

governancetransportation

Within

Beaver Island

Summary

The Beaver Island Transportation Authority is a public-transportation body attested in a held planning document and approved St. James Township records. The 2023 Master Plan states that St. James Township established BITA in 1993 under Michigan’s Public Transportation Authority Act. In the circumstances it describes, BITA owned a ferry named Emerald Isle, contracted its operation to the Beaver Island Boat Company, and was managed by a board and an executive director. That is not the 1955 vessel — see the note below.

In September 2024, St. James selected three people for vacant Authority Board positions; in February 2025, it appointed one further Authority Board member.

What kind of body it is

The structure the Master Plan describes is worth separating into its parts, because they are easy to run together and the archive holds different evidence for each.

A public authority, not a department. BITA is described as established by St. James Township in 1993 under Michigan’s Public Transportation Authority Act. That makes it a distinct legal body with its own board, not a township office — which is why the township appoints to it rather than staffing it, and why its seats are posted as vacancies like those on the airport commission and the planning commission.

Owning a vessel is not operating one. In the arrangement the plan describes, the Authority owned the Emerald Isle and contracted its operation to the Beaver Island Boat Company. Public ownership of the asset with private operation of the service is a common municipal-transport pattern, and it means a question about the ferry has two possible addressees: the Authority for the vessel and the capital behind it, the Boat Company for schedules, crew and fares. An account that treats them as one organisation will attribute decisions to whichever name it happened to meet first.

Note on the vessel. More than one ferry has carried the name Emerald Isle, and this article previously linked the wrong one. The 1955 Emerald Isle was built at Sturgeon Bay, reached Saint James Harbor in April 1955 and had left the Beaver Island run by 1962 — it cannot be the vessel in a 1993-and-later ownership arrangement. That is a later boat of the same name, for which this archive holds no article. The link has been removed from the summary rather than left to imply an identification the dates rule out; this is the archipelago’s recurring name-collision problem in a small compass.

Seats, terms and a run of vacancies

The Authority’s board is appointed by St. James Township, and the minutes are the only held record of how. They give the term length once — on 16 August 2023 the board moved “to appoint Bob Tidmore and Mike Green to the Beaver Island Transportation Authority for a three-year term” — and otherwise show a seat changing hands repeatedly.

What the record shows across two years:

• September 2024 — Authority vacancies on the agenda for posting, alongside an airport commission vacancy.
• October 2024 — a vacancy again; a member newly appointed that year resigned on 11 October.
• November 2024 — the board moved “to replace newly appointed member of the BITA, who resigned on October 11, 2024, with another applicant, Victor VanDeventer”.
• January 2025 — the supervisor was authorised “to post the vacant Beaver Island Transportation Authority Board position”.
• February 2025 — Neal Green appointed a board member.
• June 2026 — the board moved to post vacancies for two weeks on the Authority, the planning commission and the telecommunications committee together.

That is six separate vacancy or appointment actions in under two years on a body whose terms run three. The minutes record the turnover without explaining it, and this article does not supply a reason it does not have.

Evidence and limits

The Plan is a dated planning-document account, not the founding instrument or a current asset, contract, route, funding, or operations record. The held sources do not establish the Authority’s full powers, membership or terms, complete finances, or service outcomes. The 2023 Master Plan names it as a possible partner for several transportation recommendations; that planning reference is not evidence that the Authority committed to or completed any of them.

Added 2 August 2026. Recent changes