It Takes Effort to Do Nothing. Whats next?

Dear Friends of We Love Harbor Springs,

Harbor Springs looks much the same as it did two years ago. That took effort: a zoning code the voters chose, legal support for a referendum, an independent planner working for residents, a downtown that stays two stories. This issue shows what your support has already accomplished, what we’re working on now, and the questions facing this community before the November election.

People sometimes ask what We Love Harbor Springs actually is. The short answer: a 501(c)(4), one of the oldest, most ordinary tools in American civic life. Not a PAC, not a political machine. Just neighbors organized to speak up for their town. Karin Offield’s talk from our August gathering, below, tells that story in full.

A contribution to WLHS is an investment in the Harbor Springs you already value. This issue explains exactly what that investment has bought and what it protects.

Brief

If you attended or missed our August 18 event, we appreciate your continued support and readership of the We Love Harbor Springs newsletter. Our summer gathering was held at Tim Brown’s wonderful Colonial Inn - at the 1894 Bar and was our largest get-together to date!

Our work comes down to three things:

1. Preserve and protect Harbor Springs. We don’t change what works unless the community truly asks for it. WLHS puts real effort into protecting what’s best while adapting to the world around us. We like a two-story downtown with no streetlights or parking meters. We all see Harbor Springs as home, whether we are here year-round or not often enough. Tell your City Council members of your support for two-story, 30-foot downtown buildings. A second public Planning Commissioners meeting is scheduled for September 3, 2026 at 5:30 PM on this topic, parking and more.

2. Keep the community informed. Pressure on Harbor Springs comes from many directions: zoning, utilities, and preemption efforts in Lansing. WLHS engages lawyers, planners, and utility experts so all of us can understand these issues with the best available information. On Tuesday, November 3, there is an election, and everyone will be talking about it and We Love Harbor Springs will bring that news to you.

3. Help pool resources when the town needs them. Fifty years ago, when Harbor Springs needed a new fire engine, the community leveraged its broad resources to figure it out without increasing the city’s complexity. WLHS uses the network around us to help find resources so the community can make the best decisions about what it values most.

What is We Love Harbor Springs?

by Karin Offield

What follows is Karin’s full talk from our August 18 gathering.

We are a 501 (c)(4) non-profit. It’s one of the oldest, most ordinary categories of non-profits in American civic life. It’s not radical. It’s not new. It’s the tax code’s name for people organizing to make their community better.

So why does that matter for Harbor Springs? Because it’s genuinely different from the other kind of nonprofit most of you know best: organizations like Little Traverse Conservancy. LTC is a 501(c)(3), the “charitable” category. Their purpose is to do the work directly: buy land, protect it, educate the public about it. Because that work is charitable, your donation to LTC is tax-deductible. And because it’s tax-deductible, the law keeps a lid on how much of their energy can go toward advocacy and lobbying, even on issues they care about deeply.

WLHS made a different choice. As a (c)(4), WLHS exists specifically to advocate: to speak up on zoning, on planning, on the decisions shaping this city’s future. That’s not a side project for us. It’s the whole job. The tradeoff is that a gift to WLHS isn’t tax-deductible the way a gift to LTC is.

We give that up on purpose, because it’s what buys us the freedom to say, out loud, in public: we think this is the wrong direction, and here’s why.

That’s the whole story of who we are and all of our work to-date flows from that one choice. Over the past two years, We Love Harbor Springs (WLHS) has shown what community engagement can accomplish.

If that freedom is worth something to you, you can invest in it. Every contribution funds the planners, lawyers, and communication tools that give this community its voice. Ways to contribute are at the end of this newsletter.

Donate

What Your Support Has Already Done

Here’s a quick reminder of what we’ve achieved together and why we need your support to keep going.

1. Finding a Voice: In early 2024, we helped broaden public awareness of major zoning changes that were moving forward with too little notice.

2. Putting the Question to Voters: Volunteers helped gather the signatures needed to place Zoning Ordinance #439 on the November 2024 ballot.

3. A Community Decision: On November 5, 2024, voters repealed the new zoning code. That momentum carried us into and throughout the 2025 rewrite process.

4. Changing the City’s Course: Community research, letters, and advocacy preceded the City Council’s February 2025 decision to withdraw from the Redevelopment Ready Communities (RRC) program.

5. An Independent Planning Perspective: We retained planner Lynée Wells of Aligned Planning in Grand Rapids to help residents understand zoning issues and advocate for development that protects Harbor Springs’ character. Lynée helped Harbor Springs Staff write the 2022 Master Plan - one of the reasons we chose her to work for us.

In addition, Harbor Springs had a recent win on Thursday night, August 20th. Planning Commission Chairman Bob Buckner, on behalf of the Commission, reaffirmed the commitment to protecting our town’s scale, views, and small-town character, with a vote for two-story and 30-foot-tall downtown buildings, and the Planning Commission secured a 60-day extension of the moratorium on large three-story buildings by the City Council. The right people at the right time.

What Your Support Is Doing Now

6. Opening the Door Wider - Two weeks ago, WLHS submitted a white paper asking the City to widen who can serve on three committees: Parks, Tree, and Fundraising.

Here’s the issue: all three committees were created in just the last few years, and under the current City Code, only registered city voters can serve on them. That leaves out property owners, including many second-home owners with deep, multigenerational ties to Harbor Springs, who care just as much about this town’s future but can’t currently put that care to work on these boards.

We’re asking the City Manager and City Council to reconsider those eligibility rules. Not to sideline year-round residents, whose role stays essential, but to open the door to more of the people who are genuinely invested here.

That's really what this is about: where everyone with a stake in Harbor Springs has a way to contribute. This is social welfare advocacy at its most basic: making civic life more inclusive.

7. Making Local Government Easier to Understand - 131 newsletters, our website, meeting archives, and issue tracking — that’s how we turn public records into information residents can act on. We welcome constructive relationships with City leaders and staff, residents, civic organizations, and the Harbor Light.

As our zoning work nears resolution, we’re eager to bring that same informed, community-first perspective to the next issues our town will face. We encourage respectful, informed, productive dialogue — even among people who disagree. This is our 501(c)(4) mission at work.

Now it’s Your Turn - What Comes Next, Before the November Election

Who decides what is best for Harbor Springs? Not one of us, and all of us. Anyone here may see something askew, and may be right. Seeing it earns the chance to raise it, not a mandate to change it. When many people agree, things change. When a concern never gets out of the gate, silence is also an answer: an affirmation that what we have works. The only way to tell the difference is in the open. That is our role. We don’t decide, and we don’t endorse. We work to make the town’s choices visible, because a community that sees its choices clearly can be trusted to make them well.

The next chapter of We Love Harbor Springs is shaped by everyone who cares about this town. These three questions are intentionally open, and we’re asking our community, especially the candidates for Mayor and City Council, to help answer them:

8. What do we value most, and what do we need to protect next? One Attendee’s Answer: "We need to protect the waterfront & surrounding area. Protect the water & green space"

9. Where can we work together to make Harbor Springs even better? One Attendee’s Answer: "We need to keep open communication between all groups. In the past we kept the old protocols which I believe created this divide. Open communication and transparency is key to working together"

10. What legacies do we want to leave the next generations? An Attendee’s Answer (lightly edited for clarity): "Keep Harbor Springs the way it has been, for years to come. The charm here is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere. It does not come and go. We need city leaders who will preserve it. I would love my kids to have the same opportunities and the same times I did. Preserving the charm is only possible if we protect it."

    Send us your answers: Weloveharborsprings@gmail.com or comment below in Substack - it’s fun to do and everyone will read your ideas!

Donations

To continue this work, we ask you to invest in it. We Love Harbor Springs is entirely volunteer-run, and contributions are not tax-deductible. That is the deliberate trade that buys this community an independent voice.

Here is what your contributions actually buy. We hire city planners to advise on the zoning process and lawyers to help with ballot initiatives. We invest in technology that delivers real-time information on city business. Harbor Springs is a small town, but it is a community with deep resources, which means we can enlist the best possible talent to help with difficult decisions. In the years ahead, that may include utility consultants, disaster management expertise, infrastructure engineers, and other key talent to preserve Harbor Springs. The purpose never changes: better information, so citizens can make the decisions that preserve what is best and adapt to the world around us.

If you value this town as it is, this is how you help preserve it.

Ways to contribute:

Check (preferred)

We Love Harbor Springs PO Box 2 Harbor Springs, MI 49740

Online

Donate

ACH

Contact Lily at Waterford Bank at (419) 720-3579.

Thank You

Whether you contribute financially, stay informed, or show up when it matters at City meetings, your involvement gives this community a strong and informed voice in the future of Harbor Springs.

Please feel free to reach out to any of us with questions. weloveharborsprings@gmail.com