The Calm of Pere Marquette and the Tempest Facing Ludington

[XLFD]

At Peace in PMCT

As the board of Pere Marquette Charter Township (PMCT) adjourned after their second meeting of 2024, it was apparent to a fair observer that they have experienced a rebirth of spirit and outlook.  At this same time in 2023, these meetings were rife with conflict and drama.  Citizens then had a lot of well-founded criticism of the township's transparency and integrity, township staff (often tearfully) related horror stories where the monsters were only strongly hinted at, township trustees were at odds amongst themselves over billing errors and resignations of reliable cogs.  

This Tuesday, in front of a modest crowd of seven, the difference was stark.  The township had three actions scheduled that usually aren't popular.  Raising water rates, raising sewer rates (both by 3.1%, applying the consumer price index), and shooting $15K over to the Chamber Alliance of Mason County for services of questionable value.  Citizens had full access to the trustee packets due to changes in township transparency made since, and only the county commissioner (Les Johnson) giving an update spoke during public comment.  

But the public was not just a passive participant in this meeting.  During the meaningful deliberations between trustees, citizens would occasionally ask questions or make an observation.  An amazing thing happened when this occurred.  The meeting chairman, Supervisor Kelly Smith (or other trustee) would engage the resident, respectfully answering the question or considering the observation as if it came from another trustee.  

This was especially helpful because a last-minute addition to the agenda was to consider a stipulated consent judgment regarding the Outcalt property, a potential breakthrough in the township's acquisition of the cluttered acreage just off the PM Highway.  Supervisor Smith and Trustee Ron Soberalski, along with some lawyers, negotiated a new agreement with Steve Outcalt with some solid objectives and deadlines that both parties thought were in their best interests.  The rest of the trustees agreed at this meeting to go with it and so the judgment will become legal once finalized by administrators.

Conversations with trustees after the meeting would confirm that the difficulties they were having with mitigating the Outcalt property acquisition over the last two years have been largely because of the loss of focus of the township due to its issues with the prior supervisor, and that supervisor's perceived lack of integrity among Outcalt and his allies.  Smith would humbly downplay assigning blame and projected hope that the deal would go smoothly now that there is more specificity on what will happen if it doesn't.  Soberalski, having been part of the prior negotiations, made clear that the change of supervisors made a lot of difference in finessing the judgement and working in good faith with Mr. Outcalt.  

That metamorphosis of meeting, attitude, and personnel would not have happened in PM Charter Township had it not been for a small group of civic-minded individuals taking the initiative among themselves and going through the difficult act of recalling the previous supervisor and his enabling wife in the treasurer's position.  One may downplay the reason behind the recall, but two township officials who won resoundingly in getting their positions in 2020, were replaced midterm by two untainted novices with a mandate from the people of PMCT amounting to receiving over 80% of the votes over both Jerry and Karie Bleau (albeit one resigned before the vote could take place).  

Their successors, Smith and Treasurer Sarah Iteen, have hit the ground running and the future looks very bright for PMCT, a 100% turnaround from last year around this time.

At Loggerheads in Ludington

Like the issues plaguing PMCT last January, the issues currently in Ludington did not arise on their own organically.  I laid out some of those issues at the last council meeting and I honestly believe there is more going on at Ludington City Hall that makes the reference to cults not that outlandish.

A skewed notion of teamwork is very important to the city council.  Whenever a councilor position comes up, one is always asked about being able to work as a team, as if that is something important for a city councilor.  Teamwork is dangerous for a republic (representative democracy) if your 'team' is considered to be the rest of the council, and not the people in your district.  And this is what our council means when it uses the term, one only has to look back at how the rest of the council and the prior mayor treated Councilor Angela Serna when she showed she was on the people's team.

The January 22, 2024 meeting of the council had me acknowledge my own attempt to remove cancerous leadership from the City of Ludington (COL) by recalling a mayor for an ethical lapse and laying out several bases for recalling councilors in the even wards of Ludington.  Even if I am able to recruit help and get ward residents motivated to take out recalls against their errant officials, we still need to find a qualified candidate ready and willing to stake a claim for the people and businesses of the city being slowly sucked dry of spirit and money by city hall.  

Two items were approved for the city police at this meeting:  electronic citations and a K9 unit.  Both items have definite positives, and both have definite negatives (costs, liabilities, etc.) borne by the public.  Team City Hall only spoke of the positives on both and passed both emphatically.  What would a conscientious councilor do differently?  Analyze the cost/benefits of both to justify the costs, and demand that the Public Safety Committee along with the LPD come up with safeguards so that the K-9 unit tool will be used properly and with regard to the rights of citizens.

The rest of the meeting was teamwork, and everything else was approved, but for the first reading of an ordinance that the Ludington Torch found to be going against the interests of not only the city, but a large variety of businesses.  After the following was read during the first comment, Councilor Jack Bulger would agree that the points were valid enough to significantly tweak the ordinance. 

 

XLFD:  "An ordinance to prohibit unapproved signs comes up for first reading tonight-- I brought in my own unapproved signs to Mark the occasion (I had a sign at my seat that asked "Mayor Barnett, why are we paying for your deer cull?" and others I never revealed) -- which simply adds a section to the city code that says:  "No person shall install, place or otherwise maintain any sign or placard within a road right-of-way in the city unless such sign is either a government issued sign or approved by the city manager."  

This ordinance would totally disrupt the whole chapter dealing very specifically with signs in our zoning code, making banners and sandwich signs in the downtown illegal and nullifying a lot of zone specific rules dealing with signs which were just updated a couple of years ago.  

This is bad law and a bizarre government overreach when one considers that most downtown business buildings are built right on the edge of the right-of-way, one could even say they are built across that edge.  Consider, on South James, it is 33 ft, between the center of the street and most storefronts, this reflects the statutory width of streets at 66 feet.  Yet, since these building were put on their current footprint, Ludington has set its street right of ways up to 70 ft wide, or two feet into most businesses on James Street.  This would make any sign on their storefront illegal under this ordinance.  

But even if we send the rights-of-way back to 66 feet for them and similar streets, we still lose a lot of iconic signs across the city:  the Sand Bar, the Grand, Bud's, Fourth Ward Market, the Alley Bar, and at least ten other businesses have signs in the right-of-way that will have to come down unless they get some sort of amnesty from the city manager, who is being given an awful lot of discretionary power and no guidance is found in the ordinance.  

Consider, if a city manager favors one council candidate over another, he could allow his favored choice to stick their campaign signs right on the roadside, while making the other have their signs more than 20 ft away from the street.  If a city manager gives approval for a business to keep their nonconforming sign, what's stopping the city manager from revoking it in the future if the business owner falls out of favor.  This welcomes strife and lawsuits when the city manager appears to unevenly apply his approval, rather than use the reasonable metrics found in our zoning code.

Look at your zoning code on signs and reject this ordinance as a bad idea for your constituents. [END Comment]

This example shows why the City Hall Team is not working in the public's interest, and rarely thinking about that aspect, but rather crafting policy that blindly focuses a likely theory and wish of the city's code enforcer that is an abject failure when it's applied to the real world.  They fail to see the harms and consequences, because they believe their team is not negatively affected by their new use of power!

I'm able to use an exclamation mark there, because city leaders would prove the point further on the next day when they held a Cemetery, Park, and Recreation Committee (CPRC) meeting.  Standing behind my sign telling the officials that "Burial grounds are not hunting grounds", I went over two sections of the city code that prohibits discharge of firearms in parks and in cemeteries except by police officers in the course of their duties.  I also pointed out a state statute that prohibited shooting in cemeteries and the 'hunting of game.  

However much city hall wants to tell you that culling deer is not hunting, state law corrects them:  "Hunt" and "hunting" mean to pursue, capture, shoot, kill, chase, follow, harass, harm, rob, or trap a wild animal, or to attempt to engage in such an activity.  MCL 324.43505.  Our state legislators have defined deer culling as deer hunting and it is only a matter of time before this becomes enforced by their wayward DNR who permit these massacres to be conducted very unsafely by federal agents.  

Because our city leaders have a team mindset and have developed into deer death cull-tists, they didn't defend their team breaking these laws, two of which they made themselves.  Through the course of the meeting, they did plan to have the city condone the selling of alcoholic beverages by concessionaires at Stearns beach by the end of February.  Why not, LPD can get more use out of those e-citations and K-9 units.  

It was after the meeting, however, that I gained more mindset about city leaders.  Unlike the hope, faith, and dedication I have noticed over the last few meetings of the PMCT Board in talking with them after meetings, I was approached by Councilor Winczewski and admonished for saying she and her peers raised taxes and tried to subsidize the Foster School property using fraud.  

After going over multiple ways of showing her that tax rates were raised by their truth in taxation hearings last summer and hearing her smiling condescendingly and saying variations of "No, that's our (the city's) money." for several minutes.  I then, as politely as I possibly could after my frustrated attempts at educating her about taxation, reminded her that the county had shot down their second attempt at calling a playground a commercial property, and was told by City Manager Foster who came over at that point that the county made an error and were unduly influenced by the (common sense) opinion of Nick Krieger, who represents half of the city at the county level.  

Foster then went deeper into a gray area and said that the deer cull was never planned to be held in the cemetery.  After I reminded him that the Work Initiation Form had included the acreage of Lakeview Cemetery, he insisted that the graveyard was included only because city records included it in the same lot as Cartier Park.  The WI form allows for such specifications, such as 'cemetery excepted for wildlife management' in the special consideration field and one can reflect that agreed upon change by lowering the acreage used for the cull.  

This is a pattern.  City leadership has not informed councilors about where the cull is to take place, when it is scheduled to be held, or at what time.  A Monday email from Councilor Wally Cain explicitly said that fact and said that at some point those facts would be divulged, but the problem is:  these facts should have been known when the council made a simple motion back in October approving this deer cull farce to go on without a plan at all and is well deserving of criticism for its total lack of planning and safety mitigation since.  The ones doing this cull have already said that the City should not reveal these facts in their talking points:

What we have is our mayor receiving a private service benefit fully paid by other taxpayers, doing so without notifying the public.  We have a city manager and city councilors not able to figure out what problems their actions are causing, who can't even admit to hiking taxes or outright fraud when the evidence is against them. 

PMCT had similar problems last year, they conducted a democratic process to combat it, the clouds opened up, and they were able to work for both teams again.  The City of Ludington is burrowing deeper into the muck and taking us all down with it.  The task is daunting, but we can fix this.

[Willy]

Beautiful sunset picture. Unusual angle of Buttersville.
I'm glad to hear that PM Township has gotten their act together. They know how to do things correctly. I'm confused on the sign ordinance. Does the ordinance include setbacks for signs attached to buildings? If so even awnings with messages would not be allowed. I remember when the code compliance inspector removed all of your election signs. These people just don't change. Regarding teamwork and the Council, they definitely mistreated Angela. Surprisinglly they also came down on Brandi when she opened discussions on her website for citizens to input their concerns. The Council and her daddy put a quick end to that outbreak of democracy. She tried to get the public's opinions and ideas but the anti citizens clan on the Council and their cronies pushed her buttons and silenced her on the internet and at Council meetings. Sad.
Job well done X.

[XLFD]

The ordinance was very simple, it even lacked the usual 'whereas' clauses which usually tells us the purpose behind it.  I would guess that's because there was nothing sensible behind it:  "No person shall install, place or otherwise maintain any sign or placard within a road right-of-way in the city unless such sign is either a government issued sign or approved by the city manager."  

Using the established definitions of signs and other terms, words on an awning overhanging the ROW would be in violation, the simple red door hanging in front of the "Red Door Gallery" on James Street would be in violation, and even those dispensing bins of our local paper with "Daily News" written on the side of them in front of Brenda's, Old Hamlin, and the post office and in the ROW would be in violation.  

Our city is so dumb at times that they haven't even figured out that their own signs would be affected unless the city manager approved them and enraged all those businesses who get their signs refused by him/her.  Here's one below, the plow sign in front of the DPW Building is 5 feet inside the ROW.  Does anything get better if the sign is moved back?  Nope, just more people driving by without knowing they just drove by the DPW, and that's what the anti-business city wants to do to those who set up shop in Ludington.  Have more people drive by their business without knowing that they are there.  

To show how out of touch with citizens that city hall is, when one looks at the genesis of this ordinance, it was heralded at the last B&L Committee last year as being drafted by the city attorney, then it came in front of that committee, with two attorneys sitting on it (Councilors John Terzano and Jack Bulger) and received full approval without reservation.  Maybe not too surprising, because none of these or the other people at the committee meeting had ever actually ran a brick-and-mortar business.

[XLFD]

Thanks for the approval of the picture, it's not mine, but when I was looking for a 'lead-in' picture (a pic that will be the default picture when posted on other social media) this showed up and I figured it was perfect.  The heavens opening up to blue skies (not Bleau skies) south of Ludington in PMCT (my apologies to those PM residents who live north of Ludington), while unsettled skies and storm clouds head towards the city.