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The Real Work Begins — May 15, 2025
On May 15th, 2025, Harbor Springs begins the important work of crafting a new zoning code aligned with our town’s Master Plan. This process isn’t just about policies and regulations—it’s about listening to one another and making thoughtful decisions that reflect what matters most to us as a community.
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In a decisive move, in February 2025, the City Council chose to step away from the Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC) certification and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) program. This is not a step back—it’s a step forward on our own terms, grounded in local values and vision.
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If you spend 2,000 hours baking a cake and add salt instead of sugar in the last minute, you still ruined the cake. What matters is the quality of the decision, not the stopwatch. It is not a criticism of the effort, just the importance of the result.
That said, we are close to getting zoning finished.
There’s universal support for updating the format of the 2005 code. That alone would have put this to bed at hour 100.
The debate comes from attempts to do more. People are also uncomfortable that 2024 update was pushed through despite vocal concerns.
It makes sense that developers, architects, and prospective home owners would like the code to be a single universal zone, easy to build with. Those are all wonderful points if you want to change. Is it really the job of the Planning Commission to spend 1700 hours on the prospective needs of other people?
Don’t be surprised if the same voters who rejected the last zoning also reject pulling its rejected parts back in. A lot of the hours have been about pushing back on making the 2025 update a replay of 2024.
Property owners made a decision. Voters made a decision.
The changes to Planned Development create loopholes that could dramatically reshape Harbor Springs, empowering developers to drive change that residents never asked for.
Property owners have no interest in delegating PD authority, beyond the 2005 limits, to the Planning Commission. Property owners don't want to wake up one morning with a hotel starting next door, to be told - You should have attended every one of the last 36 planning commissions. They don't want the City Council to tell them it's your civic duty to let the City allow a hotel. Michigan Law favors property owners, not the City Council. Harbor Springs property owners who don't want the City to expand PD power. More than enough feel that way to block the zoning using state law to do it.
If you can’t argue the facts, the fallback is to discredit people. I guess we now have a Harbor Springs political operative as the gatekeeper auditing your right to vote, your right to participate in town conversations, or how you sign a letter. He seems to suggest that the referendum vote was illegitimate because voters were misled. If anyone understands how to mislead, it's a political operative. What he misses is that in this state and this country, referendums and state zoning law allows voters and property owners to stop Planning Commissions and City Councils.
But don't cross him because if he disagrees, he will monitor you. And maybe report you to the authorities.
Instead of dictating who can or can not speak, if someone believes a Planned Development is good for Harbor Springs, they should argue the merits:
How does it protect our shoreline?
How does it respect the vote last fall?
How does it serve neighbors who simply want to keep Harbor Springs pretty much as it is?
Is it defensible against powerful developers who couldn't care less about HS?
Discuss each issue on its merits, and let's move on.
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