Ludington City Council Meeting July 8, 2019: Freedom, Fireworks, and Fifth Wheels

[XLFD]

The Fourth of July celebrates freedom in great form in Ludington thanks to the Ludington Area Jaycees; the Eighth of July at the Ludington City Hall celebrated the lack of individual freedoms on a couple of fronts, thanks to a few officials who have no qualms with taking more rights of the people away.

Featuring perhaps the least crowded agenda yet of City Manager Mitch Foster's brief tenure, two issues saw some controversy in the hour-long meeting: a reworking of the fireworks laws to restrict consumer fireworks to a dozen days a year around four holidays, and an off-agenda discussion over parking and storage of recreational vehicles in the city.

Other issues came up and were passed or acknowledged by the council without problems, these were:

-Approval of a 3 year contract with Engineering Protection Services (EPS) for upgrading communication services at the water treatment plant. The service will cost a little over $100 per year over the previous amount, marking a 9% raise.
-Deb Luskin and Jackie Steckel (as alternate) were appointed to represent the City at the Michigan Employee Retirement System (MERS) meeting.
-Approval of an easement for electrical conduit at the West End Project for Consumer's
-the monthly code enforcement report
-Setting a public hearing at the next meeting to discuss vacating the alley adjoining 801 N Rowe requested by Lofts on Rowe LLC

City Manager Foster updated the council on a variety of projects that he and other staff has been working on and is a refreshing change from the previous city policy of John Shay where such topics usually only came up on the night they would be passed by the council, if at all. Among the stuff he mentioned was getting the local college a city water supply contract to be considered at the next meeting, the flooding problems at the Maritime Museum and the difficulties pushing that further back, and various meetings he had over topics, including attracting cruise ships to the area (for his full report, see p.78 of the council packet, other documents of interest are also therein.

Public comment involved Rebecca Hunt thanking the city manager for fixing a problem she had had at her house (no specifics), Cory (and Benjamin) Rickett of the Jaycees and Planning Commission thanked the city police and DPW for the Freedom Festival and fireworks show running smoothly.

And at 4:20 into the meeting, just before Lyla McClellan told the council that the deer problem in the city is getting to a tipping point, I got up and had a few words about freedom and fireworks myself before the council would later unanimously pass this regressive ordinance:

July 8th, 2019 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

XLFD: "When you chose to serve the public as a city councilor did you do so in order to better protect the rights and property of your fellow citizens and keep city hall's power in check, or did you do so in order to take rights and property from citizens and expand city hall's power over most every aspect of their life?
I hope it was the former, for if you did, then you must be at least internally troubled over the fireworks ordinance tonight. For the most part of 140 years, the City did not have any ordinance regulating the use of fireworks on certain dates, rather they had a disturbing the peace ordinance which effectively prohibited fireworks at socially-unacceptable times. This ordinance before you limits the use of fireworks to about twelve specific dates per year, bans them outright the other 354 days.
As a kid reared locally on firecrackers and bottle rockets, I find these ordinances an offensive and arbitrary grab of rights we should all hold dear. Our French visitors and repatriated citizens will not be able to celebrate Bastille Day this Sunday, those with a strong English heritage will not be able to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day. Those from China will not be able to celebrate any part of their long new year celebration, nor will those from India be able to properly observe the 5 day Diwali festival.
Such laws in a tourist town like Ludington looking to appeal to an international crowd make the City look provincial, if not xenophobic. For each and every day is celebrated in some way across all cultures, and if a citizen should want fireworks to celebrate a birthday, a wedding, a job promotion, an anniversary, a graduation, a bar mitzvah, or some other cause, and if that day happens to not be on or just before New Years Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day or Labor Day, they will be totally out of luck in Ludington, even with quiet pyrotechnics. That's unacceptable.
Instead of going arbitrary why don't you consider a meaningful tweak of the existing disturbing the peace ordinance? That ordinance seems to work out pretty good, you generally have an injured party making a complaint, where the police convey a warning and/or ticket to the fireworks user if the complaint is viable.
With this ordinance, if an officer sees a kid doing an urban renewal project on an anthill with an otherwise legal firecracker, 98% of the time he's obligated to give the kid's parents a $1000 ticket; there's no heart in this ordinanceand a big incentive for the police to enforce it because of the $500 bounty their department gets. Thank you

I would have liked to add an anecdote of what happened at my house on the Fourth of July, but it would have probably seem contrived to the councilors. I was out in my backyard talking with family that was in town for the Fourth after the fireworks and a group of about a dozen people, half adults half children, set up their own fireworks show just across the street at the Kaines' parking lot just before midnight. These guys probably didn't have permission from Kaines but they spent nearly an hour shooting off some quality fireworks.

Rather than being annoyed or offended that my visitation would be interrupted every so often by the fireworks, we enjoyed them while they lasted, enjoyed seeing the others enjoying setting them off. It's the sound that goes with freedom in this country, and frankly, if your pet has a problem with them, the best cure for that is to expose them more often rather than less often.

I had a kitten that was very frightened the first time he heard fireworks, by the end of the 'fireworks season' this kitten's curiosity had him going towards the noise. A relative has property out by the shooting range, and it's interesting that the deer don't even flinch when the sound of rifles goes off in the near distance, though they'll run when they smell you.

When they passed this ordinance with little discussion other than by the attorney reiterating the new state standards it was a loss for freedom. I think even the COLDNews Noah Hausmann may have been a little in my camp for this issue, as he presented my points about disturbing the peace ordinance tweaks, alternate holidays and even quoted my 'reared on firecrackers and bottle rockets' line verbatim in Tuesday's newspaper. I'm additionally pleased that no other citizens at the last two meetings came forward and indicated why this was bad lawcraft, this was strictly motivated by city officials.

Just because the State has said there are periods where cities cannot ban fireworks, cities should not automatically ban the maximum amount they can-- it says a lot about how they think of your rights when they do. This leads into the second issue of the RV Ordinance Draft.docx which came up by dint of the report from the Public Safety Committee.

The most spirited discussion began with Councilor Serna's concerns with the legitimacy of the complaints which led to the need for the ordinance and the broadness of the proposal. The proposal also limits how many 'toys' you can park on private property, limiting each property to two (including utility trailers). It also makes it unlawful for you to use an RV on your own property for temporary habitation.

Under these new rules, tents are not considered 'recreational equipment', so you could have a tent city in your backyard, but you couldn't have someone staying in a pop-up camper. Councilor Serna brought up some good points regarding how the ordinance is unfair to certain properties and had some additional support surprisingly from Councilor Johnson and Lenius. The fun begins at around 16:00 in, and continues for the next 16 minutes. This ordinance is likely to see revisions before it comes to the council once again, and if they are smart, they will observe the rights of people to enjoy the maximal use of their property, rather than cave in to some informal complaints that haven't been shared. The Ludington Torch will be asking for such complaints.

Nobody spoke up at the second public comment period, I had a prepared statement about the way the 'emergency' project at North Washington Street appeared to have been handled improperly, but decided that I may just talk it over with the city manager to see why the records were inconsistent.  

[stump]

Freedom Seeker brought up a good question about the police pension.  As I recall , the police retirement fund was / is $2,000,000 in the hole. Just who is drawing from this fund ? that's a lot of money for past police department employee's who had lower wages. How many are on the retirement payroll? whats the amount they draw per month? Is the retirement package for part time officers? Wana be volunteer cops? How many years do they have to be on the Ludington police force to draw  retirement?