The Uglification of Michigan Lake Towns

In 1873, as a result of the Homestead Act, my great-great-great grandfather, of French-Canadian descent, was awarded 160 acres of land in Leelanau County, Michigan for military service in the Civil War. Since then, Northern Michigan has been special to my family, and looking around at the landscape—its pine-studded bluffs overlooking the clearest blue lakes—it’s not difficult to see why.

America is known for its English-Protestant roots, for the pilgrims who settled the Eastern seaboard and the Anglos who descended from them. But America has a French-Catholic history, too, and Northern Michigan is a central location in that history. To this day, churches dedicated to Catholic saints and the Holy Family dot the land, reminding us of the loggers who worshiped in them and the Jesuits missionaries who served them, as far back as the seventeenth century.

Of course, families, towns, and landscapes change through the years, as they should. But change and growth should honor the histories and charms that make such places unique; otherwise cities start to feel corporate, soulless, and indistinct. Traverse City, it seems, is experiencing this first-hand. A recent piece in the Michigan Enjoyer lamented the utilitarian steel buildings and weed shops that are proliferating in the city, harming its sense of “rootedness” and subsuming it into the “global monoculture.” Will these types of changes come for the rest of Northern Michigan, too? And will residents have a say in what happens to their places?

Harbor Springs, O.W. Root pointed out, is “still a lake town” like Traverse City used to be. It’s still a place where principles like localism and tradition are important. But that could change. Unfortunately, some of the mechanisms that have weakened Traverse City’s “Up North” feel could be headed for Harbor Springs, and many residents feel they’ve been silenced from expressing concerns about them. Could the changes be part of a broader power-grab movement, on the part of central planning, over the small but beloved vacation towns that make America special?

New zoning changes in Harbor Springs that were approved on May 20 are related to the city’s pursuit of Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC) certification—a certification which, it is no coincidence to point out, Traverse City earned a few years ago in 2018. RRC, a quasi-governmental state program, encourages regions to develop more and to develop uniformly, tying grants and funding from Lansing to local governments’ willingness to comply with its “best practices.”

It’s the type of initiative that could perhaps be a godsend for struggling post-industrial cities in Michigan like Flint, Saginaw, and Inkster, where the decline of manufacturing activity has led to infrastructural disintegration and poverty. But it doesn’t make much sense in Harbor Springs, where the quaint, historic main street is an important tourist attraction and where per-capita income is much higher than the state average.

What’s more, these zoning changes will be the most significant code revisions in the city since 1976, and, fearful over what’s happening in Traverse City, many residents are questioning their logic. Unfortunately for those residents—and perhaps conveniently for Lansing—many of them also feel they are being stifled from voicing their concerns.

On May 6, two weeks before the final vote, Harbor Springs convened a special hearing, at some residents’ request, to discuss the zoning ordinances. But according to a July 10 letter to the editor in Harbor Light News, the mayor, Matthew Bugara, said that he would order city police to eject from that hearing any residents who would mention the RRC programming to which the zoning changes are connected.

Paraphrasing Bugara, Mike and Mauri Kilbourne wrote that while the mayor was allowing the hearing to occur, “he also said that if anyone ‘even mentions the RRC, he would have the City police there to escort that person or persons out of the meeting.’” The couple concluded, “With so much of the zoning ordinance intertwined with the RRC, it makes one wonder what was really going on.”

Next to the Kilbourne’s letter in the same July 10 edition, another letter, from the paper’s editor, Charles O’Neill, paralleled Bugara’s moratorium, banning future letters related to the new zoning changes. “This will be the end of Letters published by this newspaper on that issue, from either viewpoint,” he wrote, pointing out that he’d already devoted sufficient space to the topic.

O’Neill may have reasonable concerns about how his paper’s finite space is allocated. But at the same time, it’s not hyperbole to say that the city is silencing residents, both in meetings and the local press, from speaking on a topic that will affect their daily lives.

They’re also playing publicity games, some say. After being silenced at the May 6^th hearing from mentioning RRC and banned from addressing zoning changes in the local newspaper, residents’ only recourse has been to pursue a referendum on the November ballot to reverse the ordinance. But even that process has uncovered a certain shadiness that violates the spirit of “transparency” Harbor Springs claims is driving its pursuit of RRC certification.

The referendum will indeed be on the ballot in November, but only after a strange cat-and-mouse game transpired. After residents gained the requisite number of signatures on a petition to put the referendum on the ballot, the city clerk, Nick Whitaker, initially denied the petition on a technicality, following back-room conversations. “The City of Harbor Springs deemed a petition to put a referendum on the November ballot defective, despite having more than the necessary number of signatures needed,” wrote Karly Graham in the Petoskey New-Review. “A total of 349 valid signatures were collected for the referendum, but because the submitted petition was not delivered and addressed to the city council, the city denied the petition.”

But Graham further reports that the “cover letter of the petition, which was submitted by Mark Wagoner, was addressed to all members of city council, and the start of the letter reads, ‘Dear Members of the City of Harbor Springs City Council,’ according to agenda materials.” Thus, Graham’s account seems to contradict Whitaker’s claim that the petition was not addressed correctly. To make matters worse, residents may never understand what drove Whitaker’s conclusion about Wagoner’s letter, since the legal opinion that somehow enabled it was “considered during closed session,” Graham reports.

The referendum is now on the November ballot anyways, despite originally being denied, thanks to a special favor from the city council. But what was their purpose in pretending the petition was invalid, only to then put it on the ballot anyways? Was it to paint themselves as clement, merciful heroes, and its signatories as backwards ingrates?

“We live in a democracy, and as much as this pains me to put this on the ballot, I truly think it’s the right decision,” said council member Michael Berhmann, melodramatically, in what can only be considered a tone of ingratiating noblesse oblige if the reporting from Graham about Wagoner’s letter is correct.

My cousin, Jay Kenney, is involved in an effort called “We Love Harbor Springs,” a PAC that’s raised questions about the ordinance and transparency surrounding it. He thinks the situation is a PR stunt. “They wanted to look like the good guys and make it seem like we were idiots for not doing referendum right. Even though we did,” he texted me.

People like Jay, who question the wisdom of the zoning changes—and even the integrity of the council advancing it—will have to wait until November to see if neighbors in Harbor Springs share their hesitations. But in the meantime, these concerned citizens shouldn’t be blocked by fabricated technicalities from participating in the democratic process when policy changes threaten their neighborhoods. And they shouldn’t be made to feel stupid for not wanting Harbor Springs to turn into Traverse City.

Residents in the Cherry Capital lament what their home is becoming. Meanwhile, in Harbor Springs, where the iconic main street is crowned by the nineteenth-century Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church, neighbors gather to pray that “the global monoculture that flattens every place it conquers” can be stopped. Please God, don’t let it come for towns like Charlevoix, Leland, and Harbor Springs, where veterans settled peacefully after the Homestead Act, and where beauty and history, to some degree, still persist.

Image via Flickr