As Ludington leaders continue the process of creating special assessment districts encompassing the whole city to help pay for public safety and street lighting by raising over $600,000 for the next year and indefinitely after that, there is a tendency to look at that extra burden on the taxpayers as new, alternative taxation, and question the legality of doing so without a vote of the people allowing it. This very well could be the case; it won't surprise me that city leaders bolstered by…See More

The board packet for the Sept. 21 meeting of the Ludington School Board was not impressive in a couple ways.  Primarily among these was its size; it consisted of two pages, an agenda and a page showing public comment rules.  If this was the packet of documents to be viewed by the board in making decisions on three items of new business, our first…See More

Our nation and each of its component states have their own Constitution, rules that federal and state officials swear oaths to defend and affirm.  Officials of Home Rule Cities, like Ludington, are also required to take oaths to these, but they also swear allegiance to the (almost) immutable constitutions of their own municipality: the city charter. Charter provisions cannot be easily changed with a resolution or ordinance passed by a city council or commission; it requires a vote of the people…See More

The year 2026 is not only the 250th anniversary of the founding of our great country, primarily over disputes regarding taxation, but a year that may see the taxation of property owners in Ludington rise as a percentage in the double digits over the amount expected by inflation, an increase of about a million dollars above the amount with that expected rate of inflation over the last year. This would not be due to any decision made by the taxpayers; they will have no direct say in these…See More