Ludington Target Market Analysis, Where You Are the Target

[XLFD]

Heather Tykoski, the Community Development Director  gave a presentation at the last Ludington city council meeting of housing initiatives (1:01:15 in).  Like many have conjectured, the RIO is only part of a bigger plan that the city plans on implementing without telling us the details and how it will ultimately affect us. 

October 26, 2015 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

She informs us that the city had competed a target market analysis (TMA) about a year ago (more on this later, as more information comes in) for the housing market and the retail market.  She mentioned they formed a housing task force, here's a membership list of their earlier version of this task force mentioned in the TMA:

Never heard of the Housing Task Force before, join the club.  The only mention I could find in public records and local media about it was a MCP article in August where Scottville City Manager Amy Williams was being tapped to join it.  What's scary about the task force is that none of the members actually know anything about running housing, being either local charity or government heads, intersecting with the many other task forces which have given us things like the Ludington Historic District and Cultural Economic Development (remember those?). 

She did admit the full task force only started meeting about three months ago and are looking at things in Grand Rapids and Detroit for guidance.  Detroit!?  She claims that they want to fix what's going on here, but doesn't state the problem they plan on fixing.  She snarkily remarks that several people offloading properties right now are on the city's code enforcement actions list, in the context insinuating that some of the 'problem' landlords were selling 'problem' properties.  The coalition is not a formal board (hence their meetings and objectives are unknown to the general public).

We were then told by Mrs. Tykoski that the city that she's been the community development director of for nearly ten years (since March 2007) has a major blight problem, and that it was evenly distributed between rental and owner-occupied properties.  Incredible, how it takes her nearly a decade to figure that out and to actually look around the community she develops and directs.  Heather is a Grand Rapids area transplant to the area after all.

She makes the statement that the Fourth Ward is one of the city's better neighborhoods.  I love the ward, but I automatically throw up a red flag when she makes a statement like that.  Similarly, she makes a blanket statement about the blight on North Rath, but once you get a couple blocks away from the downtown where the biggest blight is arguably the beautiful building of the City of Ludington Daily News, the street's houses are charming; look for yourself.  This is the second time this fair street has been maligned in as many meetings.

She further claims it will take more than a rental ordinance, and says erroneously that for a Neighborhood Enterprise Zone (NEZ) the city would need a RIO, but as already noted, that's not the case simply because Ludington has under 20,000 people.  She then describes a Home Purchase rehabilitation loan which is eerily similar to Michael Krauch's efforts at MSUE.  For those who may still think Krauch's other job as MSUE regional director won't benefit from the Ludington RIO and its subsequent effects on the community, compare those programs.

Lastly she infers there is a big problem in affordable housing, a statement whose irony wasn't lost on many of the landlords present that actually offer affordable housing.  She claims that her coalition is approaching these problems holistically, but her whole presentation is vague and what she shows is in-the-box and linear, and totally dependent on large-scale government grants and factors that they cannot control.

Even though they believe they can with their limitless intellect and savvy in looking at Detroit and the Fourth Ward as exemplary models, while spending more of your state and federal taxes as well.  If history shows us anything, centralized government planning never works for a very long time and is contrary to how our American system has worked and prospered.

The people of this country and this town helped defeat such tyrannies in World War 2 and the Cold War, and I am confident they eventually will here.

Take a look for yourself at Ludington's Target Market Analysis, courtesy of the city website, paid for unknowingly by you with your tax dollars.  Please comment about them if you can wade through the data with your own empirical observations:

1. tmaresidentialreport072015
2. tmaretailrevised082015
3. tmasupplydemandresdworkbook072015
4. tmaworkbook072015

[Willy]

X. I haven't read all of the information you posted but I will. If it weren't for your bringing all of this backdoor bull_hit together no one would have noticed how this bunch of deceiving sneaky people are trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes and institute more tax guzzling freedom robbing regulations, again! They will not stop until they get their way. The same jokers who can't keep their political crap to themselves. Look at Henderson. His name is still in the mix. He's got to be the center of attention, anyway he can. There are enough familiar names on the above list to raise mile high flags. I wish these people were do-good-er busybodies but they're not. They are conniving politicians who crave the control their appointed offices afford them.

[XLFD]

Consider me a modern day Prometheus, complete with getting my liver ripped out at every council meeting.

These are the same great minds that gave us ideas like the community garden, where the weeds are once again over your head, and where scrap wood and unfinished projects look like they will stay there for the winter.  This is one of those ideas borrowed from Detroit (a CG in Detroit is pictured), just wait for the boarded up houses and the municipal bankruptcy to help us achieve our full potential, according to these great minds. 

These are also the same visionaries who felt it best for our community's safety to put its future fire station in an extreme corner of the city, well away from the downtown, but very near to the schools.  Idiots like myself can't conceive why this would have any merit.

[Willy]

I drove by the community garden yesterday and the back portion is a mess. The City should either make an official park out of it and properly maintain it or sell it to someone who will develop it. I'm not questioning their good intentions to make it a community use area but with the "trashy" appearance along with the graffiti type murals it just doesn't fit the communities image.

[AQUAMAN]

Well said Willy, a "trashy" site appearance. And they want to come after landlords for the same? Also of note, after I repeatedly posted pictures of the city workshop on the north side of town, where numerous drums of chemicals sat outside rusting for years, and leaked all over the land, they finally got DPW to clean that mess up. Not that the land underneath isn't contaminated to beat the band though, lol. 

[XLFD]

How can we question their intentions, when they always tell us how much they love Ludington and insinuate that anybody who questions their odd acts doesn't?

Our imported appointees and out-of-town consultants are more than happy to remake Ludington so it can be more like Grand Rapids and Detroit.  Our current mostly home-grown elected leaders give them free range to develop ideas, some of which are in conflict with each other, and most of what are in conflict in what Ludington really is. 

I love Ludington for what it has been in the past before these social architects took control of our city, they do not love Ludington because they want it to change from what it essentially is.  If you love somebody, really love them, you don't want them to change, unless they really want to.

[AQUAMAN]

There are a number of wives out there that might disagree with changing their husbands and such XLFD, but, I know what you're saying, hardy har. IF you treat a town that you say you Love so much in the way you conduct city business nowadays, then I'd love to see how you treat a town that you hate. These stooges can't even keep up with infrastructure that's their main and dominant responsibility to the taxpayers to start with. Look at the sewer, water, and water treatment plants just to start with, their own reports indicate in severe disrepair and failing at all levels, holding by a thread. Even extended 6 year exemptions by the DNR on the treatment facility that ALL downtown locals use in drinking, cooking, and bathing. It's not only incompetence and arrogance, methinks it is, or at least should be, illegal to carry on like this. Imagine Dowland St. with hollowed-out logs carrying your water to your home! Icky, and over 100 years old when finally replaced 2 years ago. That's just a small example of reality checks around Ludington.