Ludington Rental Inspection Fees Expected to Double

[XLFD]

If city councilors have their way, Ludington landlords, many already dealing with recuperating lost income from their rental properties because of an eviction moratorium in Michigan that lasted between March 20, 2020 to July 16, 2021, will have to deal with an increase in their per unit rental inspection fee from $50 to $100.  The punitive fee taken for 'no shows' (where the rental inspector shows up but can't access the unit) also doubles from $75 to $150.  

Other fees with this program will also increase, the registration and renewal fees will go up modestly 25%, from $20 to $25, these started off as $15 and $10 back in 2016.  The secondary/reinspection fee will remain unchanged at $50.  

The first reading of the ordinance with these stark increases will come up at the October 25th meeting of the Ludington City Council held at city hall at 6:30 PM.  A review of the first Building & Licenses Committee where this first came up shows that Heather Tykoski made the false representation that all the fees had not changed since they were first implemented.  She would go to the next committee meeting with a proposal of raising the inspection fee to $60 and all registration fees to $25, but all three city councilors (Terzano, Stibitz and Cain) that make up the committee felt that it wasn't enough to support the program, and these representatives of the public all agreed that $100 would be a nice figure to bump the inspection fee up to (see p. 42 of the packet).  

To those who have been paying attention, this major increase was to be expected after city executives without city council approval, made Shaun Reed a full-time employee receiving the extra hours and massive benefits package that all city hall workers receive, which crests over 75% of their regular salary.  This happened last fall, when few were actually able to pay attention due to the pandemic distancing the government from review by the people, and while the city wasn't even conducting these inspections.

This program, about to enter its third cycle of invading renter's privacy and looking at the same units for the third time, is arguably past realizing its worth, were one to claim that it ever had value.  Everybody at city government tried to bend over backwards to extend some type of accommodations for the hardships the small businesses in our downtown had during the pandemic, many received some form of assistance from state and federal resources.  

Did they ever try to help cash-strapped small business landlords providing a valuable service to the community?  Never, and now they are doubling fees from a program that has lost any value to the community.  

[Willy]

That extra cost will be passed on to the tenants along with all the other expenses these rental inspections require. So, thank you renters for digging deeper into your pockets. Ludington's progressives appreciate your donations.

[AQUAMAN]

Very well said and true Willy. Also, many renters have just quit and moved on elsewhere because of just this kind of crap being done now. The COL just doesn't know when to quit, or allow things to remain unchanged. They keep pumping the citizenry for more and more money, never realizing or caring about the bridges they are burning behind them.

[Willy]

Very true Aquaman. I wonder just how much these out of towners who have tried to control Ludington  along with the Henderson, Shay types, have really cost the taxpayers and citizens with all of their progressive garbage.What about  all of the BS that X has uncovered Including ignoring businesses such as the old marina's while catering to Government owned and subsidized marina's. The water tower fiasco, waste water treatment fiasco, contamination of the bayou, lead pipes, wasted money on bone head projects like Ludington Ave beach, Legacy park, splash park, the City Hall's attempts to hide it's back door deals, cronyism running rampant and a slew of other anti citizen political conniving schemes that have been going on for to long. There has been so much waste, abuse of power, ignored infrastructure needs that it's almost to difficult to count it all. And in a town as small as Ludington. Shameful. And we wouldn't know about most of it if not for X.

[AQUAMAN]

Yes Willy, and it's cost us local taxpayers hundreds of Millions of $$$, as seen by the recent city bond issues for all this crap on infrastructure that was ignored for decades. Yes, X has been the only one to fully investigate all this over the last decade too. And all he got for his earnest and revealing work was to be mocked, ridiculed, and banned here and there. An honest and caring gov't. here would have been grateful and dedicated to resolve the issues, instead, they keep covering it all up, and simply ignore and go on in the same fashion to no end.