By Scott Sullivan
Editor
New Saugatuck city planning commissioner Auston Marineau has a vision of what tomorrow can be,
The 2010 Saugatuck High School graduate, 32 now, “came home” last year with combat experience, a law degree as of June and his wife, Olivia, planning to live “the next 30 to 40 years here,” planning chair Steve Manns told city council Nov. 25.
“Auston intends to raise his family here,” Manns continued. “That and his law experience make him unique and resonated. He was our unanimous choice among three very qualified final candidates.”
He will complete the unexpired term of now-mayor Holly Anderson, who bowed out last month as council liaison to the commission in favor of new councilman Joe Clark. Other P.C. members include Manns, Christopher Bagierek, Ann Broeker, Bobbie Gaunt and Mark LaChey.
The commission meets the third Wednesday of each month in city hall at 6:30 p.m. unless noted otherwise. Marineau’s term will run through July 1, 2025.
His “road home” extends through four colleges, three army deployments to the Middle East over seven years, juris doctor degree from the University of Michigan and now clerkship for state Supreme Court Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement.
That appointment will run through August 2025, at which time he plans to join the law firm Cooley LLP working mostly at home through its Chicago office.
“I found my grandpa’s World War II memorabilia in a trunk,” Marineau told The Commercial Record last January, “and became caught up in the citizen-soldier-back-to-citizen spirit of ‘the Greatest Generation,’ as people called it.”
After studying history at Lake Forest College and DePaul University, both near Chicago, then graduating from Indiana University, “I decided to do something different,” he went on.
Marineau signed up for officer candidates’ school, went through infantry training, was deployed to patrol in Afghanistan, then served two stints running logistics for a multi-national team fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
“I served as aide-de-camp to a two-star British general on my last deployment,” said Marineau. “It was quite an education.
“I’m not sure my two summers spent as a Saugatuck Dune Rides buggy driver sharing local history and telling corny jokes made it all possible, but it couldn’t have hurt,” he said.
His wife Olivia, an optometrist who is stepping in for the partly-retired Richard Annis in the Douglas Weathervane Mall, also loves the area.
“We’ve enjoyed living in and exploring different places,” said Auston Marineau. “The Chicago area, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Boston. It was like looking for Saugatuck everywhere else. Now we’re here.
“I’m honored to have been chosen and look forward to serving our community,” he said.
“Lake Forest College and DePaul University, both near Chicago”. DePaul University is NOT near Chicago, it’s located in the City of Chicago.