December 10, 2024

Dear Editor,

The Planning Commission has done the right thing by Harbor Springs voters and reinstated our original zoning code.  And the City Council approved their recommendation on Monday night.  At last, just in time for Christmas, peace has come to our small town again.  There are still strong levels of feeling on both sides. Our town needs time to heal and come back together again.  It will happen.

It’s briefly worth recapping for everyone though…after all this enormous hard work by the commission…how we got here…and how we can all move forward.

Once the contents of Ordinance 439, which threatened to change the future of Harbor Springs forever, with no way back, due to legal elements called “by right” built into it….it set off a storm of debate and ultimately protest by many full-time resident voters of Harbor Springs. I repeat… full-time resident voters.

Part of the motivation for this Ordinance was called demographics…in other words…all of us in this town were too old!!!  That wasn’t much of a selling point.

There were charges of conflicts of interest.  But the greatest Conflict of Interest was… after all the work that was put into this….that this Ordinance was in Conflict…with the Interests….of a majority of Harbor Springs Voters.  Of important note is the fact that the Planning Commission reduced the time for public input and consent from what was supposed to be October of 2024 to December 2024.  Why?

That was the beginning of chain of events that led to something unique in the history of our town and the State of Michigan.  There were six official acts of protest against the ordinance that took place over the last year.

The first was 1200 signatures on ChangeOrg that wanted the approval to be paused.

Second was a Protest Petition from over 20% of the landowners in Harbor Springs that were against it. It was overridden by the City Council.

Next and third…was a petition by enough full-time voting residents of the City to legally force a referendum on the Ordinance.  This too was almost rejected by the former City Council …but cooler heads on Council prevailed and it was put on the November ballot.

Next…this Pro Developer Ordinance (and it is hard to describe it in any other way)… was overwhelmingly defeated by a majority of voters in November …killing it once and for all.  This was the first time in the history of the State of Michigan that voters had ever repealed a zoning ordinance by referendum. (See Petoskey News Dec. 7th edition).

On top of that…fifth and sixth….the two biggest proponents of Ordinance 439 running for Mayor and City Council….were defeated by voters who then elected Tom Graham and Wendy Reeves.

It’s a shame that it all came down to this ….but here we are.

We all know there are things in the old zoning ordinance that need updating…lots of them…but Ordinance 439 just went too far and envisioned a future vision of the City that a majority of the voters firmly reject.

Working with commission members over the next few months, perhaps we can come up with an updated Ordinance that improves on the old one …one that gains the widest possible acceptance.  One that leads us to a vision for the future that is more consistent with our traditional values as an historic City.

An updated ordinance that expresses the will of the majority of voters…that can pass the City Council in the Spring…. by a unanimous 5-0 vote.  Let us all Imagine that day!

UNANIMOUS!!!

That word sounds awfully good right now, doesn’t it?  It can be done.

Robert Hall

Glenn Drive