Strong Towns Meets Ludington

[XLFD]

On Tuesday, January 28, 2020, the Strong Towns Tour, featuring Chuck Marohn, came to Ludington spreading its message of rebuilding American prosperity.  Marohn himself, is a civil engineer who was confronted with the realities that the highways he was contracted to design showed negative return on investments.  He noticed that the local taxes generated by building roads and expansive growth projects didn’t cover the costs of the roads and the municipal services of the growth.  If it takes four decades to realize and recoup the costs of building a block of a suburban street from the adjoining property taxes, he wonders, how can it be a sound financial policy?

Sponsored by the local newspaper and chamber of commerce, desired by the new Ludington city manager who appears to be an acolyte of the Strong Towns movement, Marohn was introduced to the community at a State of the Community breakfast on that day occurring at the newly constructed Lake House and presumably gave a teaser preview for his lecture on his Strong Town concepts later that evening.  

The $20 per chair event was attended by those who could afford two hours plus the cost and featured Mayor Steve Miller's address and presentations by other movers and shakers of the community telling the gathered mass of the accomplishments their organization had in the previous year, undoubtedly patting themselves and their peers on the back whenever possible. 

The scheduled two-hour breakfast may have had its points of interest, but had the prospect of too many egomaniacal sycophants kowtowing about to be interesting.  Suffice it to say, I had a couple ten cent waffles, three six cent eggs, and homemade maple syrup and saved almost $20 for my Tuesday breakfast.  Without having to produce or endure one false smile or listen to one phrase of hyperinflated rhetoric; now there's value.

Nevertheless, I also saw value in the evening session since that had Chuck Marohn as the sole attraction talking about his engineering/planning concepts and doing it for free at the same venue.  I was received by the proprietors of the Lake House Jeff and Jean White.  They were gracious hosts and they have a pleasant new edition to the lakefront.  I am hopeful they understand that the underlying reason I have made waves with the Brownfield TIF Plan scheduled to raise over $200,000+ for mitigating environmental damage from ferry operations over the years at their building spot, should have been mitigated long before by the previous property owner and LMC President Bob Manglitz at his expense, not the public's.

Attendees at the event included Ludington City Councilors Winczewski, Rozell and Brandy Miller, City Managers Mitch Foster and Jackie Steckel, City Clerk Deb Luskin, CDD Heather Tykoski, and a variety of representatives from the Ludington Planning Commission and DDA.  LASD Superintendent Jason Kennedy, Patti and Andy Klevorn, Thom Hawley from WSCC, and representatives from other county agencies also made it, among others.  I sat on the opposite side of the room so as to have the best seat to view the presentation and the faces of those attending.

After a brief intro by City Manager Foster, Marohn got into his lecture on what makes 'Strong Towns', introducing Detroit as an example of a once-strong city that had run into challenges over the last few decades.  Rather than explore that in detail, he transitioned to looking at how towns organically grew prior to the twentieth century on up to the Great Depression.  He contrasted that to how growth changed after the second world war with the change to suburbia culture.  

According to Marohn, the current approach is a “growth Ponzi scheme.” New developments, like housing subdivisions or industrial parks, require little maintenance for many years after their initial construction. Tax revenues they produce now are used for other purposes. Infrastructure inevitably needs repairs, and a city's financing generally can’t cover the cost when it may come all around the same time a couple decades after the growth.  If the city goes ahead with the maintenance work, it will either need to go into deeper debt by issuing bonds or they need to once again boost economic growth to generate the necessary revenue to pay for the fix.

Traditional communities organically form in easily-adapting increments, however, modern neighborhoods are commonly built in uniform blocks intended as 'permanent' developments.  Zoning and building codes ensure this outcome in many cases.  Redevelopment costs have contributed to the decline of many suburban areas across America, which is an argument Marohn uses for the more resilient and sustainable traditional method of growth.  

'Thigmotaxis' is a word I thought I would never hear outside of a science class, but Marohn used this biology term in order to illustrate why suburban growth is against mankind's normal affinity to stay close to the security of walls and away from wide-open areas. 

He covered several other topics in his 90 minute lecture and 20 minutes of answering questions, that were of some interest including how poor neighborhoods often subsidize wealthy neighborhoods (and not just by Brownfield TIF Plans) with some topographical maps showing that case in several cities.  The lecture he gives below uses many of his graphics and explanations that were given at the Ludington stop of his tour; it definitely gives one a flavor of his specific ideas.  

I've asked for and sought out some input from those who attended this Ludington event, nobody wants to share their thoughts.  I think it's unfortunate because he had a couple of good ideas that the City of Ludington has overlooked through the years and others where they have historically done the opposite.  A TV 9&10 story had Chamber President Brandy Miller offer the following about Marohn's arrival.  

“Just to have him stop here and the opportunity for him to look at our community.  I think it just gives us greater vision and maybe a more pointed purpose moving forward.  We’re working together affordable housing, we’re working together on transportation and making that accessible for everyone and I think just having that greater vision is just everybody is doing their part.”

Her comments are devoid of anything that pertains to the Strong Town message she would be listening to twice about on Tuesday, which best illustrates why she doesn't understand the 'bottom up' approach that is core to the message (and part of his book's title), because the agencies she is part of use primarily, if not exclusively, the 'top-down' approach. 

A bottom-up style features a decision-making process that allows the agency staff to have a voice in working towards goals, rather than have an executive or executive committee have all the say.  In a public agency, the staff should ideally include the public, who may not be constrained by the same limitations on ideas that the agency may have.  Ideas like the West End Project, Legacy Park, rental inspections, putting a splash pad in Copeyon Park, etc. have originated from the top, while the bottom looks on in disbelief on how their public resources are being wasted.

If the City heeds any advice from Chuck Marohn, they should take heed to his four step process of earning public investment into making a strong town:

 

Marohn explains:  "The key to the first step is humility. Emptying our minds of as many pre-conceived notions about the problems and solutions in a place as possible, we humble ourselves to observe as a proxy for lived experience. We are trying to understand, from the perspective of those who struggle to use the city as it has been built, where the struggles are. A great way to observe is to walk with someone – literally treading the path with them – to understand how they struggle.

Observation is so much more powerful than even asking. When cities do surveys, focus groups, or public hearings, they are engaging in a format comforting to the decision-makers, not those they are seeking input from. Subsequently, public officials are not going to get the insight they really need. This is why I wrote that most public engagement is worthless. If we want to identify the best investments, we need to get out of our comfort zone."

Can Ludington's leaders exercise humility after decades of exercising hubris exclusively and start learning what's important from those they have ignored input from in the past?  Why not?  Do that thing.  Do it now.  Repeat.  

Marohn says a strong town is when a community comes together despite their differences.  “When we sit down together and kind of balance all of these different objectives, what we wind up with is a place that…it winds up to be the best ultimately."  Truly revolutionary.

[Willy]

Whenever I hear the term,"resilient" I can't help but think that this is more propaganda from the leftists who use such words as equality, sustainability and all the other key words used by the know it all globalists who want to control us. This sounds fishy to me. The Strong Town situation reminds me of the groups that came thru here a few years ago to help with the City and neighboring communities Master Plans. Who called these people here and why. Are Ludingtons citizens to stupid to make Ludington a nice place to live. Why all of this obsession with calling in outsiders to solve problems that were created by years of defective politicians. The real problem has not changed since humans collected into larger and larger groups. The strong always ends up in charge whether it be strength thru wealth or strength thru force and let's not forget strength from corruption. Most of the time wealth and strength breed with each other to create power like the feudal kings. The only form of control for the ordinary citizens has come from democratic styles of governments and republics where citizens are supposed to control the outcome of their own lives. This is the problem with Ludington. A very few have taken control and have used the power to benefit themselves and their cronies. This plays out all over the World even in Democracy's. It's very simple, a town spends only what they take in and puts some away for emergencies. They take in only what citizens agree on. They do not raise taxes, fees, service charges,etc without a vote of the citizens. Is strong towns the follow up crew to see if Ludington is still on the progressive leftist agenda course?

[XLFD]

You refer back to when LIAA out of Traverse City came to town and created the Master Plan for 2015 and called it Resilient Ludington.  Very liberal in belief, climate change concerns were dotted throughout the City's MP as were other progressive policies that would not pass muster with most of the electorate in these parts had they been concerned. 

Oh distinctly I remember their MSU climatologist Jeff Andresen preaching to the Ludington elite choir,  About how man-made climate change was going to give us the climate of Oklahoma, how our shores were drying up and how our winters were getting milder.  After the first time I heard him, we had the coldest February on record and current water levels show he was full of the brown stuff on that aspect too.

I would however caution you on suggesting that Marohn has a political/partisan message like LIAA's.  The neo-traditional approach he urges seem more 'conservative' in scope and non-partisan in nature.  His ideology seems to go counter to the headstrong corruption that was at the head of Ludington in the recent past-- it's even against it now, and I am of the belief that if Brandy was enough of a critical thinker that she would understand that the Strong Towns approach of bottom-up management and humbly listening runs opposite of her comfort zone.  So when Marohn uses the term 'resiliency' and 'sustainable' it seems to me that he is using them because they are so ingrained in the vernacular, not because he is pushing forward a progressive plan.

His lecture style likely was interpreted much differently by Brandy and Heather, than it was by me, because the way it was presented had enough meat on all sides of the dog bowl.  

[Willy]

Even if this group is on the up and up which I doubt, why do the fools running the city keep bringing in outside carpetbaggers. There are plenty of people in town who could get Ludington on the straight and narrow but they choose to ignore them. You, for example, could do wonders with your ideas.  It's almost like Ludington's elites are a bunch of kids looking for adults, other than their parents, to tell them how to live their lives. It's funny you should bring up the Climate change fiasco. I found some photos I took on Feb. 3, 2014. It clearly shows how fickle weather can be. Compared to the winter of 2014 this year is meek and mild.

Lake shore drive next to the skate park

Ice covered Lake

[XLFD]

It's sensible to distrust anybody from outside of our county coming in and telling us what we need to do, but this isn't the same thing that has happened before with LIAA crafting the area's master plans and with Progress AE's seven phase reset of Stearns' Park with the taxpayers footing the bill for the silliness.  

It appears that the COLDNews and the Chamber of Commerce were the sponsors of Marohn's visit, it seemed that Mitch Foster was pushing to make that happen.  In the Q&A period that evening, Marohn had actually toured the community and refrained from making suggestions on improvements, and if he had, you probably would have got a jaw drop from the sponsors.  

For in my understanding of Marohn's major ideas, the direction the City had taken over the last two decades went counter to making Ludington a 'strong' city.  For example, if Marohn reviewed the bowling alley block development, crunching all of the numbers and considered the investment over time, he would undoubtedly come to the conclusion it was a poor choice.   Similarly, I believe he would have had a common sense perspective on some of the City's other money pits at the James Street Plaza and the West End, not to mention the LASD's $100 million move to the suburbs.

[Du Wright]

It is ironic, XLFD, that your post does more for promoting the Strong Town message than the city has.  It wasn't made clear if the public was invited except for having to pay $20 to promote a chamber of commerce event.  I hope that the concept that to have a strong town, a city must engage its citizens from the bottom up and that those older neighborhoods do more for sustaining a city than a downtown with all its fancy funding may.  A city cannot ignore its number one responsibility, that being services and infrastructure and have a strong town, especially when they pump huge amounts of funding into unnecessary downtown projects to the detriment of the whole and infrastructure, and then at the last minute take out huge bond debt to cover neglected infrastructure and services.

[Freedom Seeker]

Well that would only make sense wouldn't it that a Chamber of Commerce event was for commerce/downtown business owners and not really for residents?  Were people invited for free to the evening presentation?  If so, it would have been nice to have a public announcement, or was there?  Especially when the city is discussing something as important as the strength of their town.  It's unfortunate there wasn't more advertising to the public.  Maybe that's the way they wanted it?

[Du Wright]

That's probably how they wanted it--to exclude the public, that's their greatest achievement.  They are failures at engaging the public and over the years have created extreme apathy in public involvement by ridicule, harrassment and dirty looks at citizens who may speak anything different than what the council have already decided behind closed doors.  What good is it to speak your thoughts about a done-deal?  Might as well waste your breath sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan as to speak to the city council.  They only request comments when they are required by law such as when applying for a state grant, and then the skew the results, and exclude negative comments to push their crazy expensive unecessary projects.  

[XLFD]

It's all part of the poor communications process that our leaders are known for.  I was able to glean from what I could find on the internet and at the last meeting that there was some sort of fee for the breakfast and inferences that the evening session had no charge.  

Some have told me that Mayor Miller should not have given his state of the city message at a $20 per chair breakfast, and I can only agree with that.  The SOTC address is actually one of the Ludington mayor's express duties that has long been ignored for two decades at least, as in the charter it says:   "The Mayor shall... present an annual State of the City message."

I'm very thankful, however, that I won't have to listen to it at one of the council's free public meetings-- even though I've gleaned from the transcript that it had more substance and flow than his usual pontifications.  that doesn't mean that the public should not be able to have the chance of listening to it without going to a semi-formal affair at a private business and plunking down a $20 bill.

[Freedom Seeker]

It seems that the new city manager is at least trying to engage citizens with his ward meetings, and the mayor now has office hours. The councilors have held "coffee with councilors." It seems there is progress being made, if any citizen wants to be heard.

[XLFD]

It's not that they haven't been engaging with the public over the last decade, they do.  But it has almost always been after they have set an unalterable course to follow and it rarely is to do anything other than fulfill the public hearing requirement they need for state aid.  You can talk, but it's already a fait accompli. 

The splash pad had at least six standing committee meetings devoted to the topic, but nobody outside the City and the city-organized splash pad committee (including the city's planning commission) really knew anything about it until it was effectively approved and placed in Copeyon Park at a September 2016 council meeting.  If the citizens were engaged humbly by their public servants for input and the will of the people was actually a factor in city decision making (along with much-needed common sense) the whimsical placemaking projects that waste money now and waste money to maintain later would have been reconsidered at the least.  

Marohn's theories gain some traction with me since many of the basics behind it involve old-fashioned economic prudence and two way engagements and communications with the often neglected bottom.

[XLFD]

At Monday's DDA meeting, City Manager Foster went over Marohn's four step process with the board as noted in the minutes: 

It's really too bad that Heather Tykoski's minutes do not reflect the overall sentiment of how they felt about the process, since the DDA has a terrible history of having their members be humble or engaging with the public before coming to some pretty wacky decisions.   

There are several facets of the 'Strong Towns' philosophy that are debatable, but I found it heavily validated much of my claims and actions over the last dozen years in regards to:

1) Growth should not be automatically called a positive thing

2) City committees/executives acting without public input do not see the small failures or the big picture

3) Best ideas are overlooked because a handful of out-of-touch executives make all decisions privately

4) Sometimes the best action by the city is to just allow things to progress organically and step out of the way

5) An elected city official is a liability if they are arrogant and deaf to citizen's concerns rather than humble

I am sure they intersect in many other ways too.  If they accept Marohn's main theories, they actually are rejecting the way the city was operating before 2019-- and in the process accepting the basic concepts I have introduced to the City over the years.  That is change you can believe in.