Tom O'Hare Wants Us All To Collaborate and Get Along

Many have expressed frustrations with the inability of our local governments to identify, prioritize, and implement the real infrastructure needed to accommodate a Meijer store. The needed infrastructure is municipal water and sewer that larger developments demand. Infrastructure is not streetscapes and definitely not pedestrian bridges. More than twenty years after Walmart and the leaders of Inverness Township still do not understand the needs of big box stores; acres of cheap land in the right location with public utilities.

This frustration has brought well-intentioned people to the op-ed page voicing opinions for or against Inverness, the City, 425 agreements, and Utility Service Agreements. Special interest groups have spent thousands on full-page ads pushing one option over another. One of the most confused op-ed pieces written by Tom O'Hare and published in the June 23, 2017 Cheboygan Tribune was the same tired rhetoric that has created the Cheboygan we have today. This pundit stated collaboration of government and quasi-government entities, mixed in with a Port of Cheboygan will drive economic development. He seems ignorant of the style of collaboration practiced by Inverness and the City of Cheboygan. The Urban Dictionary best defines it as, “An unnatural act practiced by non-consenting adults”. A 20-year 425 Agreement between the City and Inverness Township serving Walmart and the Huron Estates mobile home park expired in 2012.  Twenty years looking at an approaching 425 expiration date and the two parties required another almost ‘yearlong extension to reach a compromised agreement.

I do not recall Tom O'Hare ever attending a Cheboygan County meeting. He referred to our Board of Commissioners as a County Commission and the Cheboygan County Economic Development Corporation (EDC), a twice-failed body of appointees, as another “Commission”.  This expert encourages the County’s EDC to engage the Northern Lakes Economic Alliance (NLEA) to assess what has occurred in this County the past several decades, in contrast to other counties throughout Northern Michigan. He says, “recent developments with the Port Project provide a great opportunity for this County. The EDC should engage the Brownfield Authority of the County, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the Northeast Michigan Council of Governments to implement an aggressive outreach program to get companies to establish businesses in the County, knowing they can ship their product from the County’s new Port almost anywhere in the world.” Where was this pundit back in 2007?

From the Cheboygan City Review, Fall of 2007, here is the plan....”The issue of marketing and economic development has been addressed by activities of the City Manager and the Mayor participating on the Board of Directors of the Economic Development Corporation of the County of Cheboygan. “The EDC reviewed methods of economic development and ultimately recommended that Cheboygan County join the Northern Lakes Economic Alliance (NLEA) which formerly was a professional economic development group that acted on behalf of Emmet, Charlevoix and Antrim Counties. As stated, the Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners has approved membership in the NLEA by an annual appropriation and the City and the County will be the beneficiary of this professional economic development organization. The City of Cheboygan also provides funding toward the NLEA.” 

Almost 10 years ago, the City’s Strategic Plan was amended and goals were prioritized as follows: 1- the Redevelopment of Downtown Cheboygan (Redevelopment of Former F.W. Woolworth Building & Site); 2-Continue and Refine the Capital Improvement Planning Process and the Implementation of a Walkable Community and Sidewalk Repair/Replacement Plan; 3- Establish a Centralized Cultural Arts and Education Center; 4-Improve the Quality of Water Delivered to City Water Customers; 5-Create a City Park & Recreation System that Meets the Needs of the Community; 6-Remove Conditions of Junk and Blight from the City; 7-Develop Effective Marketing Plan to Promote the City of Cheboygan as Place to visit, as a Place to Raise a Family and as a Place to do Business; 8-Continue and Enhance Intergovernmental Communication; and 9-Refine Land Use Plan; and 10–Develop & Implement a Staffing Plan, which will Effectively Accomplish the Mission of the City of Cheboygan.

The 10 listed priorities in that decade old Strategic Plan consisted of feel good buzzwords. Tom O'Hare with a resume of 28 years in the corporate business arena advocates doing it all over again, collaboration with all these same entities. He wants to do the same thing done 10 years ago and expects a different result. That is Einstein’s theory of insanity.  

Steve Schnell-A Community Development Oxymoron

We all click through an endless stream of “end user agreements” or licensing agreements to download or use a favorite app or access some needed software or website. Some we must agree to whether we agree fully or not. An unstated and randomly enforced one victimizes us in Cheboygan County.

You agree that by residing in, building, or owning property in Cheboygan County you are agreeing to a legally binding contract with the Cheboygan County Community Development Department that we may amend by changing Ordinance #200 as often as several times a month.  If you do not agree to this “User Agreement”, do not move to, invest in Cheboygan County, or otherwise use any of our services. By residing in, building, or owning property in Cheboygan County you, identified as the end user or a taxpaying idiot, may be subject to faulty or incorrect interpretations by staff of a poorly written Planning and Zoning Ordinance amended 139 times to date. You also agree that your property may be rezoned, redefined, restricted, devalued, made obsolete, or otherwise changed regardless of the promised protections or uses allowed at the time of purchase or construction.  

The full Board of Cheboygan County Commissioners passed Amendments #138 and #139 this week. Amendment #138 redefined “dwelling” and “family”.  Dwelling moved farther from a literal definition and family became “A group of individuals, whether related or unrelated, who are occupying a dwelling.” It would seem that might also define a squatters’ house, a drug house or a whorehouse. We may have some new uses for dwellings now allowed by law in Cheboygan County. Cheboygan County has more than 25% of dwellings occupied by singles, often seniors.  The new definition of dwelling ignores that fact saying “a group of individuals, related or not”, to make it a home.

All of this nonsense further muddles the failed planning Ordinance #200 with ambiguities and contradictions drafted by our non-resident Community Development Director Steve Schnell. Mr Schnell has spent more than half his career in community planning, more than 10 years, commuting from Charlevoix County where there is no Community Development Department. That is ten years constantly changing the playing field here in Cheboygan while he refers investors and business entrepreneurs to seek information from the Northern Lakes Economic Alliance in Boyne City.

Mr Schnell failed in his attempt to outlaw short-term or vacation rentals. He ignored the needs of Cheboygan County. Some might see it as a practice that allows some to pay their taxes on lakeshore properties. Mr Schnell saw it as opportunists making “large sums” of money. His first clandestine attempts to stop the practice used a variety of differently worded enforcement letters sent to owners identified from websites like VRBO.com.

On October 5, 2016, Mr Schnell emailed Cheboygan County Legal Counsel. “Peter, We have recently begun to receive more and more complaints about neighbors renting their homes thru vrbo.com on a very transient basis. This is going to be a big effort to do enforcement on this. After reviewing the vrbo site it appears that we could have many (50+) properties which are not in compliance with the zoning ordinance due to their renting of their homes on a transient basis. The challenge I see for us is that we don’t define transient. ….Currently, when I get a complaint, I’m reviewing the property for any previous permission to rent on a transient basis and to see if they are renting by the night or by the week. Anything less than renting by the month I’m enforcing as a violation of the ordinance.. ( Insert previous Dwelling-Family definition)….. I’d like your opinion on how solid this is legally if challenged. So far I’ve enforced this on 3 parcels and 2 of them went smoothly and the third was very polite but surprised and not happy about it. I can see more resistance so I’d like to be sure of where we stand….”. The legal counsel reply was verbal and off record.

Mr Schnell stirred up a hornet’s nest and got a boardroom full of protestors who had offered vacations rentals, some for decades, with few or no problems. The problem was Mr Schnell.  

He told legal counsel in writing: “Peter, We have recently begun to receive more and more complaints…” 

Steve Schnell-Community Development Director Oxymoron 

A FOIA to Mr Schnell sought those “more and more” complaints. Within the “enforcement” records provided by Mr Schnell, there was no record of any complainant’s name or any formal documented written complaint. Can Cheboygan County afford this form of Community Development?