Tuscarora DDA Ignores Prime Directive-Engages Stupid

The Tuscarora Township DDA is proving that stupidity is an infinite resource. The law empowering DDAs states in part that a DDA corrects and prevents deterioration in business districts; encourages historic preservation; and promotes the economic growth of the district. DDAs capture and spend tax dollars that would otherwise go to schools, libraries, and county services. Unlike the Cheboygan DDA, the Tuscarora DDA encompasses a large area; both sides of old M-27 from one end of the township to the other and east on M-68 to the industrial park.  

Tuscarora’s Safe Routes to School, the asphalt sidewalk that parallels Straits Hwy from the schools to Indian River’s downtown is this DDA’s crowning achievement. I agree it is more practical than a pedestrian bridge with elevators although it also has a bridge. Best to ignore the dangerous cross-walk and pedestrian island sandwiched into a small area that has more than six commercial entrances with center turn lanes including Burt Lake State Park. This DDA project took more years than I can remember, 8 or 9, and cost $964,455.00.  No, that decimal is in the right place. A million dollars give or take is still a million dollars spent. Grants or captured taxes, the dollars all came from us. To put that amount in perspective, the repaving of more than two miles of S Straits highway last fall, pavement, shoulders, and some new guardrail cost $592,000.00 and took only a few months. 

Are the well meaning citizens who volunteer in these appointed DDA positions responsible? Or is it Tuscarora Supervisor Ridley; the steady presence and only elected official on the DDA Board who under DDA law is the CEO? Shouldn’t Supervisor Ridley be providing guidance to these lay-people who volunteer their time? Before the million dollar sidewalk was done, Supervisor Ridley and the DDA turned their attention to the Indian River “Streetscape” and another DDA idea; back-in-angle parking.

The whole issue of back-in-angle parking on S Straits Highway in Indian River can be summed up with one single word: stupid. Back in parking has been used successfully for years where there is a proven need to add parking spaces in a limited area.  The best use has been side streets where there is little through traffic, often with dedicated bike lanes, and vehicles typically parked all day or overnight.

It is a worst practice example where the majority of traffic is through traffic and there is a steady turn-over of parking spaces. The back-in parking in front of the Chamber office and new trailhead parking lot resulted in a loss of more than a dozen parking spaces. It also left that block with narrower travel lanes, inadequate ADA access, and a cross-walk that will eliminate more parking spaces in front of the Dairy Mart.  RV’s or vehicles pulling trailers can park somewhere else, maybe the next town down the road. As you read this, the Tuscarora DDA is fast-tracking an application to MDOT hoping to secure a TAP Grant to build out the length of Indian River’s main street with at least three more back-in parking pods. Supervisor Ridley has also apparently been shopping privately for more USDA loans/grants from that Federal body that is now the patron saint of lost municipal causes. 

Last year, as the Indian River Trailhead project was wrapping up with the pavilion and smaller off-street parking lot, the DDA thought it would be a great idea to spend about $90,000 out of your pocket so everyone could see how great back-in angle parking really is and showcase it with the newly completed Trail Head. That rush-rush decision instead became an ongoing embarrassment that delivered numerous faults including a northbound travel lane squeezed to less than 10 feet. Further work on the rest of the Streetscape plan now requires CCRC Board approval again as they are the “owners” of the road and must endorse the final design seeking a MDOT TAP Grant. 

At the February 18, 2016 CCRC Board Meeting, during public comment, I personally asked the CCRC Board not to fall into the trap again of partially funding more design work. As I sat down Tuscarora Supervisor/DDA CEO Mike Ridley, a scheduled speaker at the CCRC meeting stood and started his pitch. He implored the CCRC to donate half the proposed design cost of $141,950; another no bid contract employing the same engineering firm that created the existing mess.  The balance of the project, still in the design stage, currently has an estimated cost as high as $980,000. That does not include the $141,950 design costs. All of these projections may go over budget with Supervisor Ridley’s stated mantra: “plan for the worse and hope for the best”.

We certainly got the worst from the first round of DDA spending. After years of dithering and doing nothing, the Tuscarora DDA now may be getting politically pressured to hurry up and get this Streetscape project off the paper. Did I say off paper? A request to CCRC Manager Brent Shank for the plans, as designed or as built, for the one small section already done was answered promptly and frankly: “Attached is a copy of the plan that was included with the permit application. We have not received a copy of an ‘as built’ plan.  The centerline was moved to be 11 feet from the where the concrete curb meets the asphalt.” 

Although a TAP Grant application without any CCRC endorsement has been submitted to MDOT, there still have not been public hearings by the DDA or any effort to gain uncensored and unbiased input from business owners and those who frequent those businesses. As I wrote in the last installment, the Cheboygan County Road Commission Board is now our last line of defense against additional impractical designs. James Johnson, David Brown, Robert Chadwick, Clarence O’Connor, and Kenneth Paquet all serve as elected officials. The CCRC Board listened to Supervisor Ridley’s new plea for a 50% donation for another round of designing that will cost as much as $141,950. The CCRC Board took the position they’ll not be fooled again and declined the request. The CCRC Board then passed a motion to schedule a Public Hearing at 6:30PM on June 2, 2016 in to allow people to offer comments on the use of and need for back-in angle parking in Indian River. These five people know they answer to the people who elected them. We should all thank them for that. The final outcome may be determined by how many of us come out on June 2, 2016 to voice an opinion.

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Heritage Cove Farm-Cheboygan County P & Z Failed

More than a hundred year round and seasonal Cheboygan County residents participated in the recent Planning Commission hearings as Heritage Cove Farm sought a Special Use Permit.  The applicants desired to operate a residential therapeutic treatment facility for the mentally ill on 33 acres on Grandview Beach. Many vocally opposed the proposal and specifically the location. For many it was clearly their first exposure to Master Plans, Zoning Districts, and Michigan’s Planning and Enabling Act. It is not a democratic or majority rules process and some were not pleased with the outcome. 

Anyone who is interested in creating a better future for Cheboygan County should seize this opportunity do some Monday morning quarterbacking and work toward changes to better serve your future needs. We all walk a fine line between defending our private property rights while avoiding a negative impact on our neighbors’ rights.  A basic fault with the majority of current zoning laws is that they define “permissive” uses rather than prohibited uses. Any uses that were not foreseen by the authors of the law then require a Special Use Permit and sometimes rezoning. Many of the problems in the Heritage Cove application resulted from undefined or poorly defined terms and a land use that the authors of Ordinance #200 had never envisioned. Solar farms, data centers, and fulfillment centers are just three of an infinite number of fast growing commercial uses of property never foreseen or addressed by Ordinance #200. 

I’ve spoken with both proponents and opponents of the Heritage Cove Farm and am sympathetic to both. Some Heritage Cove opponents correctly stated that both the Tuscarora and Cheboygan County Master Plans identified the subject property as retaining the existing zoning.  P & Z staff stated that Master Plans are forward thinking documents envisioning future zoning districts; not specific uses. The Heritage Cove approval required no rezoning. Less than one year after the current County Master Plan was adopted, the Meijers’ store Special Use application required rezoning and that received rubber stamp approval. So much for 20 year plans. 

Grandview Beach residents discovered they were not protected within Cheboygan’s most restrictive single family residential zoning. Most of their properties are instead in the more permissive zoning of Lake & Stream. Cheboygan has numerous established lakeshore communities. They may deserve some form of status quo protection simply because they are some of our larger properly tax generators.

Many of lakeshore owners are already organized as associations to promote their special interests. There are options available to restrict uses that could negatively impact their neighborhoods and property values. Most of us are familiar with deed restrictions and covenants in planned or platted developments. An association that has an elected board could democratically define community boundaries and then enact and record protective deed restrictions on all the properties within those boundaries. These deed restrictions can protect against negative impacts and convey with the property if it is sold. The question then is whether the association members can all agree on what defines a negative impact? Is it only a use like Heritage Cove? Or is it a commercial use; bed & breakfasts, restaurants, marinas, weekly, weekend, or cottage rentals by the day, pole barns, or even tear-downs of historic cottages and consolidating lots to build a McMansion?  Indian Woods Trail and Woodside already have some covenants in place. Many other long established west Mullett lakeshore neighborhoods, with numerous non-conforming uses, may find themselves beyond the point where any deed restriction can effectively protect against negative impacts. 

A less desirable option involves property owners, their local township Board, and Cheboygan County Planning and Zoning and Commissioners. A few years ago Cheboygan County Planning & Zoning had amended Ordinance #200 allowing anyone to build a "private storage building", ie: pole barns, in residential neighborhoods as a primary use. No house, no residents, no kids in school. Just a big tin shed sitting next to your $150,000 house. This proved to b a bad move. After five stand alone pole barns were built on one street in Topinabee, numerous Topinabee residents proposed a more restrictive overlay. The overlay would restrict stand-alone pole barns as a primary use in existing single family residential neighborhoods in Topinabee.

Cheboygan County P & Z staff stated it was open to enacting an over-lay with the support and endorsement of the Mullett Township Board. About 40 residents and owners signed petitions asking for this action. Mullett Township Supervisor MaryAnne Gale felt it stepped on the rights of private property owners. The entire Mullett Board ignored 40 taxpayers and bowed to the Supervisor. A lesson learned? If you want it done right, do it yourself.

Tuscarora Township Board Battles To Control Our Minds

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Potter Stewart, reluctant to try to define pornography, famously said, “Perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” The subject of propaganda is much more easily defined: Propaganda is information, ideas or rumors deliberately spread widely to influence opinions. As reported by the Washington Post in September, government propaganda at the Federal level is unfettered with $760 million dollars spent to hire private advertising firms. No Congressional Committee oversees this flood of biased government information. State and local governments spend unknown amounts of taxpayer funds that must surely exceed billions of dollars annually promoting their agendas.

Regular followers of the op-ed pages probably read House Representative Lee Chatfield’s apology and careful explanation of why he voted for what he thought was the lesser evil in the recent road funding bills. Those articulate efforts at damage control are propaganda and are in stark contrast to Tuscarora Township Supervisor Mike Ridley’s bogus rant meant to garner sympathy. Ridley’s rant, almost two weeks after my letter was published in another paper, was critical of the use of this quote; “The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another.”

Hitler penned that in his early autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Mein Kampf was used as propaganda to gain sympathy for his evil ends and the control of an entire country. The quote is not hate filled. The man who wrote it was. It addresses how propagandists see the masses as pawns to be played.

Supervisor Ridley wrote that my use of that quote bordered on hate speech. The quote is one often used by organizations, Jewish and secular, that are dedicated to assuring that we never forget the loss of millions of innocent lives that occurred in the Holocaust. Supervisor Ridley’s diatribe using the invective words “hate-filled,” “motivated by an agenda for revenge,” and “disgusting” was his attempt at propaganda masquerading as emotional outrage to gain unwarranted sympathy and manipulate people.

He and the Tuscarora board have supposedly suffered terribly as victims of free speech from what he calls the opposition press. Is Supervisor Ridley that rarest of animals, a thin-skinned politician? To paraphrase Shakespeare; “methinks thou dost protest too much.”

I have never voted for or against any Tuscarora board member in any election. I am not in the controversial sewer district. I only moved to Indian River and Tuscarora Township in 2013. I did attend one annual Tuscarora board meeting prior to the move, and it was very clear the board did not have majority support at that meeting or at the following two annual meetings.

The Tuscarora board exhibits their adversarial our way or the highway behavior at every public meeting. Where is their rank and file majority support at the annual meetings? A few board cronies invariably stand and voice support or instead direct insults to the majority of attendees. The only right that cannot be ignored at the annual township meeting is the right to approve or vote down a raise for the board members. I voted with the majority at the last two annual meetings opposing any raise for these poor examples of representative government.

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Supervisor Ridley claims the Tuscarora board, who coined the term “our board,” has suffered Congressional inquiries, criminal complaints, civil suits, depositions and a recall election in 2014. None of that would occur in a small town with elected officials that truly represent their electorate. No one seeks the police, the courts, or a recall unless they have exhausted all other options. “Our board” is again ignoring ethics and laws to push the Eagles Nest Road special assessment district,SAD, through. Eagles Nest mirrors some of the injustices and inequities exercised in the sewer district. Five of 15 property owners on Eagles Nest Road voted for paving. “Our board,” then acting in dictatorial fashion, adds 119 parcels that are not on Eagles Nest Road to the SAD and saddles those property owners with 80 percent of the paving cost.

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I know government propaganda and waste when I see it. I will not be coerced into silence and allow Tuscarora politics as usual. Vote them in; let them appoint their cronies to do as they please. Keep your mouth shut, pay your taxes, and repeat in four years. That is truly “beyond the pale”.

Mullett Board Tells Another Fib to Delude MNRTF Board

Click on this link to see the latest on the never ending saga of Tom O'Hare's attempts to use grants to fund the TDA Streetscape.

City of Cheboygan DDA-Pipe Dreams vs Reality

What public body can acquire and dispose of property, create and implement development planning, promote economic growth, authorize and collect taxes, issue bonds, borrow money, and use Tax Increment Financing (TIF)? What public body can do all that while not being accountable to voters? The answer is a Downtown Development Authority (DDA). The DDA Act 197 of 1975 was another government intervention in the natural evolution of business and our communities. The stated objective was “to correct and prevent deterioration in business districts” and “to encourage historic preservation”. That objective has been manipulated and convoluted too often by well meaning DDA Boards all over the state that have ignored the stated objective of the act.

I remember when virtually every retail business excluding a few gas stations, motels, and corner stores were “downtown”. Although my childhood “Main Street” will always be Mitchell St in Petoskey, Cheboygan’s main street seemed grander perhaps because the less familiar Woolworths waited to tempt me to spend my 25¢ allowance. In my lifetime I’ve watched as brick and mortar retailers evolved into standalone stores, strip malls, indoor malls, and now commercial power centers. Most of our “downtowns” have not died, but have instead stayed the same while the rest of the world evolved. Downtowns are bastions of independent specialty retailers and gift shops, dining and nightlife venues while retaining many financial, professional, medical practitioner, and other office based professional businesses.  Cheboygan outdoes most small cities with a downtown that includes car dealers, a lumberyard, motel, convenience store with gas and even a car wash.

The City of Cheboygan DDA was established back in 1985 and is majority funded by Tax Increment Financing. The Cheboygan DDA/TIF District encompasses most of what we call the downtown from just north of Court St and about a block west of Main St and east across Cheboygan River and then north on both sides of the river to Lake Huron. In 1985 this “downtown” area was assessed or valued at $6,317,755. Over the last 30 years, as property values increased due to inflation or market influence, TIF allowed the DDA to collect the increased taxes that would otherwise go to the City of Cheboygan, Cheboygan County, Cheboygan Library, Senior Citizens and other real needs. From 1985 thru 2007, the DDA skimmed $2,478,329 in new tax dollars off the top. In 2007 the DDA forecast another $2,470,900 in captured tax dollars thru 2017. The big recession, unforeseen by the DDA, probably slowed that TIF revenue growth. Until I see different, I‘ll assume that about $250,000 is annually be diverted to DDA accounts. Think of it as robbing the poor to pay the rich. 

Unarguably there have been many small and incremental public improvements done by the DDA including park improvements, wayfinding signs, and enhancements that have created a more pleasant environment.  The 2009 Main Street reconstruction included new curb, gutters and sidewalk, storm sewer and water main system replacements and traffic signals. That was an MDOT project and included the City’s actions to replace and resize utilities as part of the project. A Transportation Enhancement grant was used to improve the downtown streetscape and barrier- free facilities. This project was not solely, or even majority funded by the DDA, and would have proceeded in some form with or without a DDA.

Arguably, some of the DDA “projects” are gift horses that should not have been accepted by the city. The pedestrian bridge will give headaches and cost city taxpayers for decades to come. That bridge to troubles was funded in large part by a $500,000 Vibrant Small Cities Grant apparently administered by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority. The MSHDA stated mission “provides financial and technical assistance through public and private partnerships to create and preserve safe and decent affordable housing”. Are our homeless staying in the heated elevators?

 

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation says a DDA is “is designed to be a catalyst in the development of a community’s downtown district.” The difference between theory and practice is the fact that DDA projects like Cheboygan’s pedestrian bridge are not catalysts to growth but are instead little used and impractical embellishments that will continue to waste your tax dollars for generations.

 

 

There have been many issues with the pavilion before and after construction. The former Woolworth store was allowed to deteriorate beyond saving; but how could it cost the MEDC Grant of $439,440 the plus a $107,360 local match to tear down one building?  Replacing downtown buildings with publicly owned entertainment venues is ill-conceived. It forever eliminated one or more storefronts, property tax revenues, and the jobs that retailers or offices would have created. How much did the pavilion cost before the known problems, liability, and costs were handed off to the City?? The total figure was reported as $1 million dollars.

The Cheboygan Downtown Blueprint 2004 and other input were documented by the DDA in 2007 naming dozens of pie-in-the-sky projects. These dream projects, including another bridge and pavilion, conservatively total more than $36 million dollars. Does the Cheboygan DDA just go on forever or will taxpayers get angry and stop this madness?