No Playing Around with Ludington School and City Officials

[XLFD]

Five years ago on the first Tuesday of May, the Ludington Area School District (LASD) was successful in getting a $101 million bond passed.  About half the bond would be used to construct a new elementary school out in PM Township, consolidating the neighborhood schools spread around the city limits of Ludington:  Lakeview Elementary in the First Ward, Pere Marquette Early Learning in the Fourth Ward, Franklin School in the Fifth Ward, and Foster Elementary in the Sixth Ward.  

These school properties have been sold and have either been demolished or repurposed.  In May of 2021, Lakeview was sold, demolished, and will be the site of new homes.  Foster School would be sold in November 2021 to a housing developer with initial plans to demolish the building and put up townhouses.  After the new Ludington Elementary School opened for business in January 2022, The former PM Elementary would be sold to a fishing lure manufacturer in April 2022.  In July 2022, Franklin Elementary would be demolished and be replaced by a parking lot.  

The impact of the loss of these public facilities in our Ludington neighborhoods was not well understood by the public who were under assault by propaganda to pass the bond "for the kids and their future"  from the district, the project managers and West Shore Bank, all who would benefit greatly from the $101 million bond back in 2019.  The main reason the Ludington Torch came out against that bond was the hollowing out of Ludington neighborhoods by the removal of these community centers, not only in the physical sense but in the spiritual sense.  

Yet, we didn't know at the time that the overall shift of the neighborhood school to a remote satellite school for our young children would be so devastating to their physical and spiritual development.  Each of the four school grounds taken away from the public sphere had three common traits:  indoor gyms, playgrounds, and outside basketball courts.  As the new elementary is outside of the city limits and mostly inaccessible to the children it serves after the school day ends, our children have lost access to twelve different play areas around the city.  The school district itself has lost a net total of nine athletic facilities, as the new school offers only the amenities of one of the former schools.  

There was nothing to offset this loss of athletic facilities for the children of the district made by school administrators and project planners who are very close to the end of spending the $101 million.  At least two different times since 2021, the school board was besieged by concerned coaches and parents about the lack of indoor practice facilities for the kids since the old schools were taken offline.  They have not officially addressed the topic in any fashion.  

According to those coaches and parents, the amount of publicly available basketball courts around town has went from twelve down to two.  Indoor gyms to practice are at a premium as the six that used to be available are now down to three.  The loss of city playgrounds at Lakeview, Foster, Franklin and PM, has removed all playgrounds at areas away from the shoreline other than the one south of the Legion Hall.  

These facts were known to Ludington city hall leaders in May 2022 when they could have had (and did) receive playground equipment from the LASD and their abandoned facilities.  Did they comprehend the impact on our area's children made by our neighborhood schools closing and taking all of those playgrounds away from them?  Nope, they looked at two lots up on Monona Drive specifically gifted to city hall several decades before for the building of a playground, and decided rather than doing that, they would have the property revert back to the donor.

The two lots on Monona Drive donated to the City of Ludington five decades ago for playground use only.

In the COLDNews March 8, 2022:  Two parcels of land in the Forest Hills subdivision have brought the City of Ludington to an impasse with a descendant of one of its major families, the Cartiers, that could result in legal action...  There’s no need for a playground there now, with two already at nearby schools, said City Manager Mitch Foster. And a recent survey of city staff yielded no other uses for the land than selling it for development.

"[The deed] doesn’t say what happens if the restriction is broken, lacking an “enforcement mechanism” ordinarily found in deed restrictions, [City Attorney Hammersley] said. It reads simply that the lots are “to be used only for playground purposes for children.”

One can't easily discern what two nearby school playgrounds Foster means other than the one at St. Simon's (a private, parochial school) and the one at Ludington Elementary, where a child cannot easily walk or ride bicycle safely to.  The phrase "used only for playground purposes" is clear enough, and even with the loss of four neighborhood playgrounds, coupled with the gain of surplus playground equipment, our city representatives determined that a playground would not be in their plans.  

Later, in the COLDNews May 4, 2022:  The city had weighed whether to press for ownership of the two parcels. But officials decided the future property taxes were worth more than a court fight... The city council never expressed much support for prying the parcels away from Cartier. When Foster told the building and licenses committee in April that Cartier had no interest in removing the [playground use only] restriction and wished to sell the parcels, the committee voted to deed them to her.

By October of 2022, the first grumblings from LASD coaches were finally catching the ears of the LASD board about the lack of gymnasium availability, but totally ignored in their minutes.  In August of 2023, LASD boosters invaded the board meeting wondering why the basketball courts they put in 17 years ago near the middle school were tore down without their knowledge and made into more parking areas.  Once again, it was totally ignored in the minutes of the meeting and over the course of the meeting other than some lip service by the superintendent suggesting that they may find their way back.

And while the city hasn't turned down any more donated property in two years simply because they don't want to make it into a playground, they have found a novel PR stunt in order to show they actually care about the community's children by hopping on the backs of charitable private individuals who are trying to solve a problem the city and school district created.

Heavy equipment preparing the ground east of Emmanuel Lutheran Church for future basketball courts on May 1, 2024, with the last pair of public basketball courts in the background which will be tore down when Foster Elementary property is developed.

Pastor Mick Shriver of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church and the board of that church saw that the soon-to-be-demolished-by-Foster-school-developers courts to the north of the church would leave the city with a vacuum of such public facilities.  They stepped up by donating their land, and Rieth Riley stepped up by donating their services to make sure there was places for the kids to play hoops.  The playground-pooh-poohers in the city tried to steal their selfless deeds of charity and virtue by trying to bask in some of the glory, as seen in the minutes of the April 22, 2024 meeting.  

Their recent past deeds, such as denying the construction of a playground and twice trying to call those basketball courts on school grounds commercial property in order to subsidize out-of-town developers is duly noted.  The school's desire for more parking lots and less basketball courts constructed by community members is also speaking louder than any of their hollow words.   As our federal government continues to spend more money than they can print, putting our future generations into debt for the short-term privileges and pleasures of a select few adults, our city and school local governments have been busy selling off the facilities that make our next generation's childhood meaningful now. 

[Willy]

I am very pleased that you have revisited this situation. I have been upset with those in charge since this happened. The short sighted school district, leaders, politicians as well as the brain dead citizens who voted for this, created a condition that should never have happened. Now what is to be done?  Stupidity  does not begin to explain this. Fixing this ain't going to be cheap and guess who's going to pay?

https://ludingtoncitizen.ning.com/photo/03-06-20-lud-schools-ground...