This Thursday, I sat through about eighty minutes of Ludington's Municipal Marina Board. The minutes of that meeting just covered a little over a page, but it misreported that I had stated at the beginning of the meeting that I had attended the State Waterways Commission meeting held the previous day at Ludington's Comfort Inn, when I had not and was interested in hearing what may have happened there from the board members that may have attended. The minutes also left out perhaps the most revealing statement of the meeting made by City Marina Manager Jim Christensen.

For he had given a general update on the City's negotiations with the State concerning the future of Harbor View Marina, the Ludington Torch noted a lot of particulars about that possibility back in October. The gist is that now (and possibly even then) the State has only one view of Harbor View's future; they have no alternative other than to have the City lease it from them and run it as a second public marina in Ludington.

It's worth reiterating that these publicly built and owned marina facilities are not sustainable by their design. Witness the forty year history of the City's marina, if we ignore that it took millions in state and federal funds to create the marina in the first place, they have still fallen short of being a successful enterprise fund which is how they are set up. An enterprise fund is a government entity that provides goods or services to the public for a fee that makes the entity self-supporting.

The last few years, they have looked to the State for money to replace their docks with Meeco-style floating docks, which would cost a couple million, they've started to receive some of that. Before that, back when water levels were much lower a handful of years back they had the State pay for dredging their marina for about $300,000. The State contributed over $500,000 for John Henderson's transient docks shortly before then.

Truth is, the State has footed the bill for almost all capital improvement projects over the city marina's lifespan even when the marina's funds were much larger than the $500,000 they have saved now. Yet Manager Christensen and others affiliated with the city and state can call the marina an 'enterprise' without bursting into laughter over the ridiculousness of such an idea.

With millions thrown into the harbor at the Ludington City Marina over the years, the State now has no alternative to letting the City take over Harbor View so that they can continue doing that, but they can now feel better about it since it would be more like a real public marina and in so doing they wouldn't have to explain to other private marina entities why they are showing favoritism to a private leaser by gifting them money for upkeep.

Now, we surely do not know why the State has decided that they could not entice a private leaser or even try to sell Harbor View Marina to a private concern, but we can look at what the City has already with what is supposed to be a public facility: The City Marina.

This public facility has plenty within it which restricts the public from enjoying the facility unless they are a paying customer. Signs let you know that the fish cleaning station and even all the restrooms are all off limits to the general public, lest they have a boat in a slip. I must mention an anecdote from over twenty years back where my young daughter needed to use the bathroom and was denied access to the locked facility in the middle of the day because they were only available to boaters at the marina.

But let's look at a couple of other things that you would not expect to see at a public facility. There is only one entrance and exit street into the city marina, you will see one of their decorative city sawhorses covering over 25% of the street (a quarter-horse?) with a sign on it, and what does it say?

"Parking by marina permit only, all others will be ticketed and towed at owner's expense". Such a nice greeting to the public at this supposedly public facility. It seems to convey extra menace since they block over half of a lane of the thin street, making it impossible to have vehicles going in and out at the same time. They have another sign that effectively says the same thing on the other side about halfway in.

And then you might see another sign on the grass of the opposite side of this street, partially obscured by the crimson maple. Thinking this might be the welcoming sign you missed, it turns out to be something different:


The bottommost sign reinforces the street-blocking sign on the way in, and reinforces the notion that it is strictly enforced. The top sign says that camping, rollerblading, skateboarding, and bike riding is prohibited.

It sounds like the marina is a total killjoy, until you read the fine print that most miss as they pass by in their car, saying that this only applies to sidewalks and docks. Funny thing is, if you come up into the marina on the sidewalk about twenty feet to the left of this sign, there is no sign or pavement marking that tells bicyclist, skateboarders and rollerblading folks about this, neither is there at the beginning of each dock.

Likewise, there is no codified prohibition against such travel modes in the city code, traffic section or the marina rules. So rollerblade on the docks and bicycle on marina sidewalks without fear of lawful reprimand.

So even though the City of Ludington wants to tell us that their municipal marina is a public facility, they want to convey that you cannot park in their lot and you cannot use their 'public bathrooms' unless you are a boater (these bathrooms/bathhouses were made to be publicly accessible as part of the contract when the state spent all that money making them). They also want to restrict all forms of traffic from coming in, except for pedestrians and those driving with permits.

This is the type of 'public facility' the City is currently running, and you will find that if you go to all other private marinas in Ludington, even Harbor View under current management, that they do not have similar methods to keep the general public out from their facility: locked bathrooms that say 'boaters only", arbitrary rules against non-motorized traffic, sawhorses that block the street that say only boaters with slips can park in their lot. This 'public facility' tries all it can to be as exclusive to the public as it can be.

Epilogue:   A couple of city council meetings ago I made a point in my public comment that spending $600 for a Memorial Day pig roast by the city marina seemed excessive and something that should not have been in their budget in the first place since it had nothing to do with operating or maintaining the marina. You'd figure that among all those people who could afford thousands each year for slips for hundred thousand dollar boats, they could pass a hat around to get such a shindig off the marina budget.

I went to the marina throughout Memorial Day weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, during the afternoon and early evening hours and saw no sign of an outdoor pig roast at the marina. I saw no advertising for it either, nobody setting up anything, nobody taking anything down. I learned at the recent marina meeting that this was an annual event that many of the boaters would miss if it wasn't offered, but I didn't learn how come it was so damn secret that I couldn't find any signs of it through the whole weekend.  Probably had limos take the boaters over to Scotty's or something.

So with all that public funding the marina is getting through the state (via grants. tax-free status and improvements) and the city (through access to services not available to private entities, tax-free status, etc.) you would think that the public would be aware and could attend the affair if they so wished. Nope, let the public subsidize the party, let the boaters enjoy the pork.

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This was the first year I ever heard of a Municipal Marina pig roast, and I heard weather cancelled/postponed it to a later date, just rumor.  I also agree this is against our own city charter to have public monies pay for it, and then not be able to attend either. Harbor View initially was set up to be privately leased the first 20 years, a new concept, that allowed a second municipal marina be funded in the same town, then pass to the COL at no charge. They too have specific rules about no commercial vessels, like charter boats being allowed in. Yet, about 8 years ago, they did take charter boats in, about six of them so far. So again, both marinas have broken their own rules from the State of Michigan in requiring they follow certain policy. Both marinas were paid for by the SOM, some with grants, others with special funding, all at taxpayer expense as usual. But, both will emphasize that they make enough monies to pay all their bills and keep up with expensive updating and maintenance, when nothing could be further from the truth. The COL is too greedy to let HVM be leased again to private enterprises, but should do that or sell it to pay for badly needed infrastructure, but that is a lost cause for locals to ever benefit from.

The original lease was for 25 years, with the option of a five year extension from what I've read.  It was a new concept and one that had the usual public/private partnership defects that doomed it to eventual failure.  The state thought it could be a landlord, but a renter is not going to be bearing a deficit in order to fix up the place for the next renter's benefit.  That always falls on the landlord, which happens to be the state. 

They will fix it up with money that could be going towards needed public works or programs, and let the City of Ludington do exactly what they did with their marina.  And then the state will be coming around to fix things when they break and add the latest gadgets.  Unlike your successful private landlord, the state is destined to take more losses than what they charge for rent.

Why there are people who cannot see how politicians have given them fluff instead of needed fixing of infrastructure is beyond me. We have millions for fishing and boating, kayakers, beer tents, subsidized housing, unneeded school buildings, unnecessary new fire station, etc, while ignoring truly needed repairs and additions to important daily necessities, such as lead piping, no sidewalks near schools, deteriorating sewage system and treatment plant, eliminating corruption, promoting transparency in Government, ect. Excellent article X.

Thanks for the brief primer on the non-public uses our public money is being spent on, and realizing there just isn't enough left to do what's really important for the public.  The end result is you get public marinas competing in an unfair playing field with private marinas and almost continuously begging on 'pledge drives' (aka grants and political favors) to get more and more money from the state to keep them at tip-top shape-- while in the meantime, they adopt practices and policies to keep the general public out of their elite acreages that a private marina would not even consider.

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