Today, only a few thousand people live there, and the town relies on nostalgia tourism.
Today, the town relies on county and state law enforcement, a move Ms. Puglisi says saves taxpayers $1 million a year.
"They didn't feel it was worthy of preservation, and that is what the town relied on," Mr. Collins said.
With only 4,500 residents, the town relies primarily on part-time employees to staff town hall, and "most of the government work is done by volunteers," she said.
The corporation kept smaller crews on each shift than the surrounding nonprofit fire companies did, increasing the extent to which the town relied on its neighbors for reinforcements.
Gary Heckman, the St. Ignace city manager, said residents here are worried about tourism, on which the town relies almost completely for sustenance.
"Ninety per cent of this town relies on tourism, directly or indirectly, so now everyone is suffering," says Salah Lahjouhi, who has worked in hotel restaurants here for 20 years.
Sandy destroyed those really cool old beach bungalows that I loved seeing filled with summer beachgoers, a tourist economy that my town relies upon.
Most of the town relies on the reservoir, which collects snow melt, but the population has grown and that's no longer enough.
Mr. Mullane, the president of the Council of Governments, said that because towns rely so heavily on the property tax to pay for schools, roads and any other services, towns would rather encourage commercial or industrial development, which pays more in taxes than it consumes in services.
