Most people have to serve the City of Ludington for a while and retire to get their key to the city.  I served the City officially for eight years and have served it as an 'unpaid consultant' for 15 years since, so maybe I deserve a key to the city during the city's sesquicentennial, but I thought it highly unlikely until yesterday when I lucked upon a half dozen keys to the city just by being observant.

Late on the morning of May 19, 2023, the beach was totally obscured by a persistent fog and one could barely make out any details of objects over 100 feet away.

I was midway through the sidewalk adjacent to the beach on Stearns Outer Drive, when I saw a poorly parked vehicle alongside the sidewalk.  Parking in that section is angle parking and so they were taking up a couple of spaces.  On closer inspection, it appears that they may have done this so as to not project their tail-end into the roadway, and that they were probably safe from being ticketed by the LPD because it was a City of Ludington utility maintenance truck.  

Nobody from the UM department was in the area, nor were they inside the truck, and since I came right up alongside the truck just by walking on the sidewalk, I happened to notice the keys to the vehicle were in the ignition.  A prior city attorney would recognize this as an 'attractive nuisance', where a person through their behavior allows a situation to arise that presents a danger to kids and other folks passing by, who, in this case, might just hop in the truck covered by fog and take it for a joyride, possibly wrecking it and subjecting the City of Ludington to liability for that and any injuries or death that may result by consequence.

I went past the north concession stand after taking that picture while considering this neglectful act and thought that I really should do something to protect the public.  So I took the above picture about ten minutes after the first (there was still nobody around) to show the fog and the vehicle's location.  I then rechecked to see that the keys were still present and remembered a law from the City's books regarding the leaving of keys in an unattended vehicle, originally introduced by LPD Chief Mark Barnett, now the mayor:

Sure enough, the keys were still in the vehicle and after waiting a couple more minutes looking through the slowly dissipating fog and still seeing nobody, I checked the driver's side door (it was open) and removed the key from the ignition in order to secure the vehicle and prevent it from becoming a potential costly liability to the city.  

I continued my walk, since I still had two objectives to check out, and about a half hour later, during lunch hour apparently, I returned the keys to the city vehicle to the new deputy clerk at city hall, after finding out that the city manager and Mayor Barnett was not available.  I politely expressed my concerns about city employees being so careless with the people's equipment.

I've yet to be thanked by the employees whose keys I secured and so if it happens again, I definitely will have more fun with how I proceed.