The DDA with ADD

[XLFD]

I vaguely remember going to the June Ludington Downtown Development Authority (DDA) meeting and hearing them discuss holding the next meeting (and others later in the year) earlier than 3:30 PM because meetings were seeming to last longer, and some people had to be at some other places at five.  It's kind of in the minutes of that meeting:

Of course, if you weren't actually at the June meeting and just reading the minutes, you might be wondering "Starting time of what?".  And you'd probably be unclear that the motion was not only for the next meeting of the full DDA but for every meeting for the rest of the year.   Downtown Development Coordinator Heather Tykoski, DDA's acting secretary, apparently has learned that leaving important things out is not only helpful when applying for grants, but also when taking meeting notes.  In her defense, she does add an 's' to Jason Adam's last name.

Now, most every citizen of Ludington gets a City calendar each year which is kind of nice, but if you count on that for the next regularly scheduled meeting time of the remaining DDA meetings, you're out of luck-- it says that each meet at 3:30.  That includes the August 5th meeting:

It's been over two months since the DDA voted to move their meetings a half hour back, you think they would post that change on their bulletin board at city hall, which is where they post all of their meeting notices.  But even there, the notice still says all meeting will be taking place at 3:30 PM, without an amendment in sight.  I looked thoroughly after today's meeting.  I then went over to the courthouse before it closed, and the notice the City posts there said the same:  3:30 PM.   

Surely they notified their friends at the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) about the change in the 60 plus days it has been in effect.  Nope, my edition for today told me it wasn't 3:00 PM:

Bulletin boards, newspapers, courthouses must seem to be outdated according to the DDA, so they must have put this change out on their various internet sites.  Yet the only thing on the official city site is this notice posted June 4:

I'm confused; if there is no July meeting, how can it be moved back a half hour?  Unless they're talking about June's meeting, where they decided to shift everything back 30 minutes.  MCL 15.265(3) says: "If there is a change in the schedule of regular meetings of a public body, there shall be posted within 3 days after the meeting at which the change is made, a public notice stating the new dates, times, and places of its regular meetings."  On the internet, and on their notice board.

There are no dates, there is no venue stated, hence this is not close to being a public notice.  Nothing more recent is on that website, but the Downtown Ludington Board (another name for the DDA) has a Facebook presence; at great risk to myself, I scrolled past all of those "Talk of the Town" videos and still could not find one notice that their meeting time was a-changing since June 3.  

The DDA also has their own webpage, Downtown Ludington, but their calendar is also not updated:

Their welcome page on that site says meetings are held at 3:30 PM.  Their published agenda doesn't notice any time, so I guess if six different sources tell the public that a meeting is being held at 3:30 PM, and none says that the August 5th meeting is being held at 3:00 PM, the public should expect the meeting taking place at 3:30 PM.

But when I arrived 'early' at 3:25 PM today in the basement of city hall, I walked into a meeting already through the first part of its agenda, at the tail end of the talk of Legacy Park updates.  I missed a bit of stuff I was interested in, and public comment too.  

Some of the information I wasn't shut off from was the resignation of Kaye Holman from the DDA, that the senior apartments on Loomis Street in the bowling alley block would be ready for occupancy by October, the low-income units on Ludington would likely be ready by the year's end.  Mayor Miller read the code of conduct to the DDA membership and was confident that it would not pose a problem in the future for them.  Jason Adam couldn't disagree.

The mayor and the city manager have both been contacted late this afternoon in regards to the DDA's violation of four sections of the Open Meeting's Act by not publicly noticing their 3:00 PM meeting.  I do hope they express both contrition and a willingness to correct the problems before their next meeting:  September 9th at three-something PM.

[shinblind]

The DDA sounds like high school didn't luv them enough.

Have to form their own secret cliques.

Will there be a sequel ''The Revenge of the DDA.'' ???

And what the hell ever happened with the alley abandonment? 

Is it  now a bad fit with the Road Diet?

[XLFD]

The DDA consider themselves some kind of illuminati, but in actuality they possess the worst features of high school cliques, fraternities, and other secret societies.  The closure of the alley was supposed to happen after the June 25, 2018 council meeting-- yes over 13 months ago-- and be re-evaluated in October 2019-- yes that's 2 months in the future.  Here is what was approved at that June 2018 meeting:

My evaluation at this point is that nothing has been done, it seems to still be open and still seems to be deteriorating.  Maybe the business owners are waiting for the MEDC or the DNR to come through with a grant, since anybody involved with government never seems willing to do something without subsidization by the general taxpayer.  On that same idea, it was learned that the Depot Apartments on Madison Street will not materialize, due to the developer failing to get any/enough help from state taxpayers after two attempts.