Community Planners Meet with LIAA to Create an Agenda; 21 Points to Ponder

On Wednesday, February 19, 2014, the Land Information Access Association (LIAA) came to town for a semi-formal workshop with community leaders and planners at 6:00 PM.  The meeting took place in the basement of the Ludington City Hall (the Community Room),  and was billed as a joint community meeting between officials of the communities of Hamlin Township (HT), Pere Marquette Township (PMT), the City of Ludington (COL), and County of Mason (COM) to discuss a joint master plan.

I attended, audio-recorded the event, took the literature available to the general attendee, and have the following to report:

1)  The Meeting was advertised-- sort of:  The City of Ludington noted this potential meeting at the previous city council meeting, and had a meeting notice normally used for announcing open meetings on their public board at City Hall.  The Mason County Court House had no such notice on their board for the County.  None of the four agencies had a public notice for the meeting on their website, within 18 hours of the meeting, however, there was a small box notice in the Ludington paper mentioning the meeting.  None of the notices made clear that the meeting was open to the public.

2)  This was not the first meeting between a joint group of community officials and the LIAA:  As noted in Shay Sashays... there were at least two meetings prior to this between LIAA and the officials of at least three of the entities, on November 12, 2013 and on January 23, 2014 as admitted here by LIAA

3)  Before this meeting the County Zoning Administrator seemed very receptive to LIAA's dicta of disaster-mongering and specious science:  As seen in this Jan 24 E-mail, Mary Reilly states in relation to LIAA's efforts:  "Much of the focus of this planning will be based on "resiliency" and how that relates to climate change and extreme weather events"

4)  LIAA already has a name, and graphics for this project:  The graphic designer created a design to accommodate the project "Resilient Ludington" earlier this year.  Just so you know, according to the literature:  "A resilient community is the path to a safe, prosperous, and vibrant future for us, our kids, and our neighbors — despite an increasingly chaotic world."


5)  LIAA already provided services for Mason County:  For years, Mason County has enlisted LIAA services in the topic of land parcel services.  If you own land in Mason County, that information is at your fingertips.  One can use this service to see who has land, and where in Mason County, without a fee.

6)  LIAA and the unified governments chose their meeting time apparently to avoid media coverage:  The time is conveniently taking place during the same time a high profile murder case (Eric Knysz on Tpr. Paul Butterfield) was scheduled to occupy the interest of the news dogs.  A look at the City of Ludington Daily News the day after the meeting shows the trial coverage occupying the first three pages in force (similarly with MCP). 

7)  The Mainstream Mason County Media avoided even coming to the meeting or printing out any news release on what happened from the meeting:  Of the 31 people attending the meeting, there were 28 officials from the four public bodies, and three citizens.  I was the only one who claimed to represent a media outlet (this humble social networking site).

8)  LIAA proudly promotes sustainable development:  In their company brochure (which they handed out at the meeting) they subhead their name with the phrase "Innovative Ideas for Sustainable Communities since 1993" on their front cover, and develops that throughout the brochure, mentions various things about sustainability throughout at least six times, but never fully explain the concept.

9)  Sustainable development has a disturbing history:  The concept of sustainable development arose after the 1974 United Nations adoption of a Declaration for the establishment of a "New International Economic Order" .   The document was written by undeveloped countries and showed clearly that the delegates to the U.N. General  Assembly accepted the idea that governments should virtually control the economy.

"Land...cannot  be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject  to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market.  Private land  ownership is also the principle instrument of accumulation and  concentration of wealth, and therefore, contributes to social  injustice..."

This preamble sets the stage for 65 pages of very specific land use recommendations. Among the many recommendations are:

• A-1. Redistribute population in accord with resources • D-1. Government must control the use of land to achieve equitable distribution of resources • D-2. Control land use through zoning & land-use planning • D-3. Excessive profits from land use must be recaptured by government • D-4. Public ownership of land should be used to exercise urban and rural land reform • D-5. Owner rights should be separated from development rights which should be held by a public authority.

This established the direction of the U.N.'s recommendation.

10)  By 1993, much of the same template and more of sustainable development was codified by World Socialists in the UN into Agenda 21:  In it's 40 chapters, Agenda 21 addresses virtually every aspect of  life. Each chapter presents many policy recommendations that member  nations are expected to adopt.  Six months after his inauguration, President Bill Clinton issued  Executive Order #12852 which created the President's Council On Sustainable Development on June 29 1993.  LIAA is incorporated as a non-profit shortly thereafter to assist this council, apparently, as is an American version of Agenda 21.

11)  The Planning Commissions of all public entities were out in full force, but none properly noticed the meeting to the public:  Each of COL, PMT, and HT had five members of their Planners attend, which is a quorum, while the County had six of its members present (this is my unofficial count based on a round robin of introductions by each participant).  It could be debated strongly that they did deliberate over public policy, which would mean they were in violation of the Open Meetings Act, and there never was a time allotted for public comment.  The handout below shows my tally of officials.

 

12)  The Ludington City Council was represented by a quorum of its members:  Kaye Holman (at-large), Kathy Winczewski (2nd ward), Les Johnson (3rd ward), and Gary Castonia (6th ward) all showed up and some participated in the deliberations.  Like the above, this can only happen in an open meeting, which this one wasn't noticed as.


13)  Future illegitimate meetings are planned:  The Community Planning Committee (CPC) was defined by Joe VanderMeulen, Executive Director of LIAA, as a committee made up of all four Planning Commissions, and all four legislative bodies involved.  Each of these eight bodies have to notify the public if a special meeting is being held by them at which a quorum of their members are present, so when a full CPC convenes either in person or in a conference call (see the last line above), the public must be notified, allowed the right to attend, allowed to record, and allowed the right to comment. 

 

14)  No public official present, or any of the organizers had any qualms about conducting illegal conference calls and meetings:  Oddly enough, when talk of meetings and conference calls were discussed, nobody considered ways to notify and include the general public in the process in order to be transparent and follow the Open Meetings Act.  I saw that immediately.

15)  The funders of 'Resilient Ludington' are all steeped in the concept of sustainability or publicly funded:  Joe mentioned three other sponsors. 

The first was Kresge, already discussed here

The second, is public-funded dollars from the Coastal Zoning Management arm of the DEQ, here's your state taxes being used to help control what you do along the coast.

The third mentioned was the University of Michigan Water Center, which is a subgroup of the U of M Graham Sustainability Institute, which deals with great lake and coastal sustainability. 

So what you have are corporate (Kresge, Detroit), state (DEQ, Lansing), university (Water Center, Ann Arbor), and non-profit (LIAA, Traverse City) forces from 100 miles plus away from us deciding what our comprehensive master plan is supposed to look like and training our officials accordingly.

 

16)  To sell the concept of global warming disastrous effects they used the 2008 storm, not the recent Alberta Clippers/Polar Vortex:   Joe treaded lightly on the concept of climate change in his speech, but it is the main, necessary bugbear behind why we may have to make some of the changes for sustainability they will no doubt endorse.  Sustainability and resilience are based on disastrous effects of global warming and our vulnerability to it which just have never developed unless you illogically blame every weather based phenomena on the workings of mankind. 

 

17)  Taubman College (part of UM) has professors of urban design and planning working on our master plan with specializations in sustainable developmentDr. Richard Norton had an interesting dissertation on the topic of planning at the meeting.  A survey was to be taken among the officials of this county getting their idea on topics involving climate change, and those present were told that after they had been further indoctrinated trained by the LIAA team they would be given that survey again.  Master programming.

18)  The audience was asked to brainstorm on current problems that might be 'planned' out of existence:  The resounding consensus was the problems that bicycles and pedestrians had along the US 10/31 corridor between Scottville and Ludington.  Not surprisingly, our planners have never really addressed this problem before, only made this problem worse over the last forty years by poor planning.  They also mentioned congestion among the corridor, connectivity of bike routes, and the lack of bike paths/trails. 

As an avid bicycle rider, that sounds promising, but seriously, besides the lack of rideability along the corridor, and those rumble strips along the PM Highway, we have excellent bicycle facilities throughout the county.  But reducing motorists and creating bicyclists and mass transportation users is the ideal of sustainable development, so our planners seem to be on the same page with our new masters.  I also bet that I rode my bicycle more miles last year (5336 mi.) than the 28 mostly-bloated public officials there. 

19)  They plan a lot more CPC meetings over the next two years, and more brainwashing training:   The sheet below shows that the LIAA team is to meet with the CPC (remember the eight public bodies this is composed of) regularly throughout the planning process, when they are not teleconferencing with them.   They have scheduled one, exactly one, public forum, where maybe they will allow the general public to speak and notify them better of what's happening.  This is held in June, so that most of the important decisions can be made outside of public forums before that, for your protection.  The CPC officials are also strongly encouraged to have supplementary training to facilitate their progress in resiliency: Agenda 1  Agenda 2

20)  LIAA asked for suggestions on who else should be sitting at the table:  Nobody mentioned the media of any type; Ludington City Manager John Shay indicated the MDOT would be a good partner because they control a lot of the corridor defects (he had a good point).  Ludington Councilor Kathy Winczewski suggested the schools, probably because she is a teacher and perhaps looks forward to teaching our kids about resilient, sustainable communities herself.  Others suggested the City of Scottville and other neighboring townships, in some hope of assimilating into a giant collective organism.

21)  There is little doubt about this, we have Agenda 21 taking root in Mason County through this contract and our compliant officials looking for control over your property, your rights, and your property rights.  The Community Planning Committee is going to be little more than Communists Planning Communism in our backyard in secret meetings that will be dictated by people with secret agendas using us as an experimental community, our University of Michigan professor said so himself.  Fight back while you can, if you appreciate your basic freedoms.

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Excellent job X. This article should be front page on the LDN. Unless LIAA told those at the meeting that they represent the ideals and goals of Agenda 21, I'm wondering how many of the local officials realize what the meeting really encompassed  and if any of them are even aware or have any knowledge of Agenda 21.

I was sitting in the back, towards the far left side so that I was able to observe the reactions of those present when the speakers touched on some of the topics that were based on Agenda 21 concepts, or some matter-of-fact mention of the effects and future of climate change (LIAA never used the term "global warming" at the meeting, but they are used synonymously in some of the literature) and there was nary a smirk or snicker amongst them.  Nor did any of the 'question and answer' periods have any question as to the reliability of the science behind this new type of planning being proposed.

If anything, the replies by our officials as to the navigability of the county and US 10/31 corridor for pedestrians and bikes and gripes about the congestion, show that they are wanting to convert Mason County away from an automobile-centric society.  Which is funny, because I was probably the only one present at the meeting (other than, maybe, Les Johnson) who didn't drive there.  Probably about half of who were there added to the congestion of the corridor on their way in and out.  Sustainability hypocrites.

Further hypocrisy in Ludington as to their involvement with sustainable development:

1)  The City Council passed a "Complete Streets Resolution" back in May 2011.  Summarized, this stated that pedestrian and bicycle facilities would be considered strongly in the planning of each future road project the City would be working on.  Since this time the City has worked on Staffon Street, replaced several driveways, but didn't install any new sidewalks in a school zone area which needed them.  The plans for this project had no consideration for 'complete street' ideals. 

At their work on Mitchell Street, Brother Street, Fifth Street no sidewalks, shoulders, or bike lanes were added, and likely not even considered and dismissed.  On Dowland Street and Washington Bridge work, they added new sidewalk facilities only to place that were publicly owned, they actually reduced the width of the sidewalks in some areas. 

2)  Famously, they adopted a new Downtown Dining policy this last year which allows the downtown merchants to take over 2/3 of the sidewalk up in dining or outside displays of their products reducing the peds and bikers to 5 ft of weaving passageways (see the Blu-Moon set-up) where the merchants have adopted it. 

3)  And of course, since it is now nigh impossible to navigate in the downtown area with a bike, and still against the local law to ride on the downtown sidewalks anyway, they put up bike-frame bike racks last year all around the downtown's sidewalks.

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