Ludington City Council Meeting, October 13, 2025: Sides and Angles

[XLFD]

The large size of the agenda packet for the October 13, 2025 meeting of the Ludington City Council was due primarily to the first reading of an ordinance seeking some cosmetic updates, corrections, and clarifications of 2024's scary Uniform Development Ordinance (UDO) requiring the 230 p. document to be displayed for context.  The rest of the agenda was mostly routine and non-controversial.  

This reporter would comment on the hottest item of the night, the ceding of Rotary Park and the closure of the 100 block of North Lewis Street for the upcoming "No Kings Day" protests on October 18th.  Unlike the first three commenters of the night who spoke in favor of the rage-fest, I would comment on the wisdom of abandoning the park from its open-for-all nature for what is admittedly a politically motivated protest.  

XLFD:  (10:15 in)  "Happy Columbus Day.  I would urge this council to reject the agenda item of the No Kings Day protest scheduled to take place at Rotary Park and require the shutdown of a public street.  While the right to protest is deeply ingrained in American law and tradition, the right of our citizens to enjoy city parks and use public thoroughfares is deeply inscribed in our city code.  The purpose of park regulations according to our code is "to regulate the use of parks... in order that all residents and their guests may enjoy and make use of such parks... and to protect the rights of those owning property adjacent to such parks."  

Research the No Kings movement, you will find extremely partisan rhetoric that often urges violence and non-compliance with our duly elected president [a man who brought peace to the Middle East, and elsewhere] along with those who want to make America great again.  Are you willing to send a message to the citizens of this city that you will give such an incendiary group exclusive use of a city park, shut down a public street, and allow them to unreasonably interfere with or detract from the general public use and enjoyment of the park, which is the main criterion used for approving an activity permit?

Providing them the whole park as a venue for their vitriol and venom would serve as a very public endorsement of their often-violent messages. Let them protest as they have been, in the public right of way, but don't give up our public park to this or similar partisan causes, left or right, as it is necessarily excluding about half of the public." [END comment]

No sooner had I sat down at 12:10 into the meeting, when local No Kings protest organizer, Amy Reeber, effectively ran over senior advocate Gene Kyle in order to defend the event.  While she was proclaiming the event as peaceful, she was caught on camera leering over at me with an expression which made me glad that looks can't kill.  When I caught this, I politely reminded her through pointing at the mayor that comments needed to be directed to the chair.  

Funny, Mayor Mark "Marx" Barnett who was quick to call out and gavel Jeff Henry at the last meeting for diverting his glance to Third Ward Councilor (who sits right next to Barnett) during a comment said nothing about Ms. Reeber's menacing side stare down towards me.  She assured us that there would be no venom or vitriol from her side and that the demonstration would not be violent.

She may be better at predicting the future than I, but one only has to look at the often-tasteless signs displaying calls to violence urging "8647" and inapplicably calling Trump a nazi/fascist Hitler second coming as if to dehumanize him in order to energize deranged folks to 86 47.  These violent machinations towards Trump and sometimes his MAGA supporters continued unabated by our local fanatic fringe, even after the cold-blooded killing of Charlie Kirk by someone who heeded the violence found in the messaging. 

Nevertheless, my ultimate point was that the park is for all and should not be involved with gatherings of either side of the political spectrum, lest we find it impossible to deny shutting down a park for any political gathering, whether it be put on by the KKK, the Communist Party, the Proud Boys, or any political candidate.  

The city council, absent Councilor Mike Shaw, would vote unanimously to approve the political protest's takeover of a city park.  This is a marked shift in policy from 2016, when they wouldn't even consider a political rally in a small portion of a park in late September, citing several of the reasons I gave in this 2025 comment as their justification.  Giving away free hot dogs and sodas and encouraging debate among two local council candidates, is apparently more forbidden than waving signs calling for eliminating President Hitler-- the same guy who received standing ovations from the Israeli Knesset for bringing peace to the Middle East this last week.

The city effectively amplified the worst of this political messaging by allowing one of our city parks to be coopted for that political purpose when their policy allowed them to say no.   

When Gene Kyle finally was able to speak, he gave a short presentation citing statistics that the city was aging and that they needed to make future plans accordingly.  Ray Karboske, Jeff Henry, and Daniel Jensen, finished the early comments, presenting a common message saying that cooperation and talk amongst parties is important as well as getting out the correct facts.  Reconciliation is possible, but history must be reviewed, and accountability will only come when all sides communicate effectively. 

That messaging was geared towards the ongoing controversy involving public marinas and Pere Marquette Lake pollution, which the city council continued their strategic plan to deal with both: to ignore the issues.   This isn't the way to instill confidence in the public over whether several laws and ethical considerations were bypassed in order to get a second public marina in Ludington and to cover-up the extent of contamination of the city's biggest body of water.

Before the business of the meeting started, Dawn Lund of Utility Financial Solutions, a firm that is paid tens of thousands to determine what the city should charge in order to keep their water and sewer utilities "above water", gave out some big numbers, before she took off to Scottville to give even bigger numbers.  She is recommending the water rates to go up by 4% for each of the years in 2027-2030; sewer rates to be moved up to 15% in 2026 and 2027, 5% through the years to 2030.   It wasn't said, but the adjustments, likely well above what the rates of inflation will be, was due to the excessive inflation rates in 2022 making the prior recommendations that were accepted insufficient.  The rates will be set at a later date, likely taking up these recommendations.

The council would pass a resolution rescinding eight traffic control orders involving on-street parking around the middle/high school which have become obsolete or contradictory due to the recent constructions in that area and parking reconfigurations.  In other business, they would introduce the ordinances having UDO changes and expanding verge parking (the verge being the area in the street right-of-way between the sidewalk and street) to better cooperate with UDO language. 

The council would unanimously approve of a couple of stylistic bike racks in Rotary Park, but Councilor John Kreinbrink would vote against a change order for the Dock A project at Harbor View Marina, spending about $5000 extra to extend one area to accommodate larger boats.  Kreinbrink would also ask why the numbers being charged to Ms. Reeber's demonstration at Rotary Park didn't add up.  

I had wondered that too when I looked at it, figured that it was because the city waived the costs because of their increasing support of progressive causes.  Amy Reeber who made out the application and was so eager to speak earlier, did not use her comment to explain why there were four inaccurate math problems in her application.  Another indication that our city administrators have gone deep left-- the usually greedy bean counters forgiving expense write-offs because they believe in the cause. 

At the end of the meeting, Judith Dila would thank the council for approving the No Kings protest, Gene Kyle would stress awareness of senior issues, and Jeff Henry told the council that they could set an example for other communities by addressing the issues noted before.  Daniel Jensen had some questions that he hoped Ms. Lund could answer if she had remained; unfortunately, the public isn't allowed to answer questions when their utility rates are threatened to be raised, and he had some questions that could only be answered by her regarding methodology and software.

But before Mr. Jensen, I spoke of the elephant in the hall: the controversy surrounding the AndyS Building.  I had expected some update in City Manager Kaitlyn Aldrich's comments already made, but she was unwilling to give one-- until after my comment. 

XLFD: (1:23:30 in)  "There appears to be no updates on the AndyS impasse given to the public or the council over the last three weeks.  At the last meeting, PrevariKaitlyn told us that a deal had been floated to the Riemer team, suggesting they install a protected bike lane on the east side of Rath Avenue as a quid pro quo in order to get the city to accept the placement of their columns; I saw the council sit silently by as if this had been a deal in the making for some time.  

Councilor Terzano pointed out at the meeting before that the building footprint itself has been extended into the right-of-way by a couple feet in some parts, and this is incontrovertible when one goes to the site and measures.  What recompense will the public be given for this blatant encroachment that must have been done willfully?

But getting back to the protected bike lane, I have travelled well over 100,000 miles on my bicycle over the course of my life and can tell you that you should not ever have a bicycle lane on only one side of the street, this makes it extra hazardous, especially when you're a city invested in tourism and have people visiting who only ride bikes when they come to our city.  If we were to consider installing two protected bike lanes just on South Rath, we would lose streetside parking on both sides to accommodate them unless we widen the streets significantly.  

I encourage the city to conduct their wheeling and dealing transparently, so that we can get AndyS up and running and properly penalize them for their apparently deliberate land grab. [END comment]

What was PrevariKaitlin's update?  None other than to tell us that the Riemer team had filed and served a lawsuit against the city earlier that day and indicated that since there was a lawsuit involved that they would not be speaking about the issue until some resolution is achieved.  It struck me afterwards that she gave an update on city issues and left the very important fact that the city was sued for some serious stuff out of that update. 

Why was she hiding this from the council and the public until prompted by a concerned citizen who identified that both parties had made some serious mistakes and inferring that the dispute will only work out bad for us citizens.  The MCP has summarized the lawsuit here, we have recently reviewed the lawsuit in court records, you will not want to miss our recap, which will give you access to the suit and some legal analysis.