What's Up in the Downtown: March 2015

[XLFD]

This is a recap of what happened at the Downtown Ludington Board (DLB, aka DDA) at their March 2015 meeting written by a spectator of those events whose general belief and perspective is that it is against the public interest for their local government to get into public-private partnerships like this where the vast majority of the funding money they are using comes from public taxes and fees.  With that inherent bias understood, I present what happened at the meeting.

The meeting started out with a lot of worry abut whether they would have enough present for a quorum, the necessary majority of people that can vote and deliberate on issues.  Even though the DLB can have up to about a dozen members, there usually seems to be about an equal mix of non-voting, ex officio members present.  About five minutes into the meeting the necessary quorum walked through the door, and the meeting commenced.

A rare public comment was made by Stephen Marx, resident/manager of 200 S. Robert in the One Ludington Place (OLP) complex nestled between the fire department and the marina.  He pointed out to the assemblage that OLP paid roughly $300,000 in local taxes each year and approximately $13,000 of that went into the DDA budget, a fact he was noting and not complaining about even though the OLP block generally gets nothing back for its contribution to the DDA.

Marx made what seemed to be a fairly simple request to get a couple of bike racks like they have throughout the downtown to be installed on the east and west side of OLP.  He also made comments about the city marina's bubblers (devices put in the water to prevent the dock areas from freezing over) were currently making a noisy droning sound that an be heard for 24 hours, and he worried that the new docks to be placed there indicate there would even be more bubblers built into the docks.  His worry was that the new bubblers would be even more noisome.

He was referred to the Marina Board Committee for the last problem, but he was engaged by the DLB Chairman John Henderson in conversation and his presentation lasted nearly seven minutes.  Those familiar with the city council meetings are aware that public comments are only allowable for five minutes and that they have a strict policy for answering any questions you pose to them.  This strict policy seems to be relaxed whenever they're dealing with the non-common citizens of Ludington. 

The next hour of the meeting was devoted to the street light situation already touched on in this previous article:  Ludington Street Lights: Off and On.  As noted, the last meeting looked at the installation of 24 new fixtures onto the lampposts of three blocks in the heart of downtown at the cost of about $26,000.  At this meeting they debated using over $100,000 to replace all lampposts in the city to conform to the new fixtures.  Here are the figures for that courtesy of a handout by John Shay.

The DLB (DDA) has 66 such lampposts, the city has 34, and four are privately owned by the Neals on the 'House of Flavors' block.  The total costs for new fixtures and installation, minus the potential rebates, would be $72,798 and $37,502 and $4412 respectively, for a total of $114,712.

The annual savings for energy was estimated to be $188.16 per pole, or $19,568.  The annual repairs savings was figured at $9104.  They figured it would take 4.5 years t recover their investment.  Member (and former city councilor) Wally Taranko was wanting to purchase the DDA's share of lampposts ($73K) with the $26K already budgeted and to borrow the roughly 46K from the City of Ludington's coffers, with council approval, of course, and several DLB members seemed to agree with him. 

Chairman Henderson was a bit wary of doing this, even when he was reminded that the DLB did basically the same thing when they borrowed from the city to pay for the recent downtown parking lot pavings.  Taranko proclaimed that he would rather see them keep the lights they have rather than see piecemeal lighting situations.  If they tried to do this year by year, there was a fear expressed that the fixture style may be discontinued, which would leave the DLB's attempt at uniformity in the lurch.

After the dust cleared they decided to do more research to come to a better conclusion as to what to do, even look at different fixture providers other than Medlar Electric by competitive bidding if need be.  What wasn't considered was the very reasonable alternative brought to this forum's forefront by shinblind on Valentine's day.  If we just changed the bulb with Afterlume's the city could retain the aesthetically pleasing light fixtures we currently have and realize the energy and maintenance savings in recovering costs almost immediately. 

 

Will this alternative be considered?  Probably not, these guys are itching to spend a lot of money, at least $26,000, to do something new and exciting.  If it was their 'own' money, I think they would not be very amenable to it.

Also discussed in the remaining minutes of the meeting was work on the North James Street public bathrooms.  When they listed off the proposed repairs and additions they said nothing about upgrading the bathroom cameras, but suffice it to say they will be devoting a few thousand to this project as well, when it is approved.  The existing camera on the men's room side is shown below.

City Manager John Shay also formally updated the board on the change that happened with the Wesco block, in that the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) changed their plans so as to only be resurfacing the south two lanes of roadway on the Wesco block of Ludington Avenue (between Robert and William Streets).  Being that the water main was on the north side of the street, this negated the chance to upgrade the century-old conduit when MDOT cleared the wrong half of the avenue. 

Also nixed was consideration a cheap construction of a boulevard for that block, since they would have to get an environmental-impact study completed by the federal government by Labor Day, just before this project was slated to begin.  Due to the road width and lack of pedestrian lights and/or stop traffic controls in that area, there has been complaints about getting across the avenue safely in that block. 

That seems a valid concern, but the boulevard under consideration would have the same problem at the street corners where people cross.  You will notice there are still five lanes  traffic there in the picture below in the crosswalks between William and Robert Streets:

So a boulevard would only encourage jaywalking and may make it actually less safe for pedestrians who may unsafely loiter in the dedicated turn lanes on both sides.  But this is unlikely to happen.

The last major concern raised was changing the standing drive-thru business restrictions incorporated into the downtown area by  city and its zoning laws through the years.  If you recall, there used to be drive-thru businesses downtown, and some of those still exist.  The two vacant banks on the corners of Ludington and Harrison, and on the corner of Loomis and James come to mind.  The A&W Restaurant also comes to mind.

Chairman Henderson admits that during the latter parts of the last century, the city and its Planning Commission actively worked against such businesses, which may have led to their departure and lack of anyone buying the businesses to conduct drive-thru operations, which they may never get the OK to do.   The special committee had not made much progress in trying to make the drive-thru regulations less restrictive, and Henderson encouraged them to take more time to see what they could do for the better.

An announcement by boardmember/treasurer Kathy MacLean acting in the capacity of Chamber of Commerce liaison for the DLB announced that their was a freshly hired Economic Development Coordinator hired by the Mason County Growth Alliance.  As we noted in the MCGA series, this foretells spending upwards of over $100,000 in mostly public funds on some executive whose worthiness for getting actual growth in the area is highly debatable.  We probably will see an increase in spending for growth, however.  The name, expectations and experience of this new growth executive was not released, but should be soon. 

[Willy]

I shouldn't be surprised that the ruling crowd, again, did not ask what I feel would be the most common sense question. "Can we change the bulbs"? Every citizen when confronted with this same scenario at their home would ask themselves, "why replace a perfectly good fixture when I can just replace the bulb". But of course, most people aren't spending other peoples money and trying to figure out the best way to get rid of the messy dollars and coins they have lying around the house.

[XLFD]

Perhaps that will be addressed at future meetings why they aren't considering such plans.  Personally, I think the downtown fixtures as they are currently, are more visually appealing, and the switch over to one fixture per post would be a step back in aesthetic appeal, though halving the energy costs (whatever system used) by making one fixture to a post appeals more to the miser in me.  But then again, you may be able to get more acceptable lighting and costs by reducing wattage of the lights if you have two per post. 

[shinblind]

Why should the city replace the privately held lampposts owned by the House of Flavors? 

Who is currently paying the cost to opperate these lights, the COL or HOF?

The answer to either one  distorts any savings claimed by Shay and his payback formula.

[XLFD]

Good catch, Shinblind.  The payback formula written on the sheets we were handed makes the four lampposts part of the overall equation.  The gist of the little discussion over these four private posts reflected the hope that they could get both Bob Neal Sr. and Bob (Barry) Neal Jr. to buy into the plan. 

I could see either Neal decide, like their manager did at One Ludington Place decided regarding bicycle racks, that the taxes they pay into the DDA millage and City would easily defray anything taken out of the DDA coffers for these four posts which would cost $4924 to replace, $4412 with rebate.  The same report notes that the City uses an estimated $350 in maintaining these four posts yearly and pays for all of the electricity going to these private lampposts which is currently around $800. 

The question to then ask is what makes these lampposts private if the Neals let the City handle all the costs and they are located in the avenue right of way?