Leelanau County’s business leaders and housing developers were all present for a Jan. 8 workshop at the county government center.
But an air of uncertainty hung over the room, with several meeting attendees voicing concern about how the 2024 elections will affect affordable housing development both locally and nationally.
The day before the housing workshop, Leelanau County’s Board of Commissioners nearly dissolved the county’s Housing Action Committee (HAC), which gathers data and resources on the issue. The motion failed by a 3-4 vote, but it may be up for consideration again later this month, and the HAC’s Jan. 13 organizational meeting was canceled.
Some commissioner comments suggest they want to remove the HAC and replace it with a more effective board or committee, but others were more ambivalent or outright hostile.
And the speed in which the new board moved to “eliminate” the committee — voting on the item a week ahead of schedule, and before considering any input from the county’s planning commission and HAC members — was alarming to some.
“It’s time for the county get out of it,” Commissioner Will Bunek said at the Jan. 7 meeting. “It’s not supposed to cost us anything, but it’s definitely costing time for the planning commission – they usually have at least one person, and often two people, there for those meetings. If there’s no production coming out of it, I think it’s time to sit back until they really can use the county.”
“I would make a motion that we would not look into that committee anymore … and let that go back to the township, where the real power is for housing, for zoning, and everything else,” Bunek continued.
When Lois Bahle, HAC chairwoman, watched the meeting online, she said she felt her hard work was being undone. In addition to being HAC chair, Bahle ran against Bunek last year, getting narrowly defeated by just six votes. And when Bunek was recalled from office for setting a voter-approved millage to zero in mid-2022, Bahle served the remainder of his term.
Bahle was recently appointed to the county planning commission, and she wants the county to continue supporting affordable housing initiatives. But she agrees that it may be time to “reconstruct” HAC into something new and different.
“When we started (in 2017), we had a big room full of excited people about housing. Then, that dwindled down to the real core of people who were focused on making some progress,” Bahle said.
The HAC was scheduled to meet every two months last year, but three consecutive meetings in May, July, and September were canceled due to lack of business or because the committee could not achieve a quorum.
Bahle attributed the declining attendance to the usual scheduling difficulties, as well as some redundancies. She said that committee members and nonprofit organizations that report to the HAC are also on other housing boards and committees, which discuss the same business.
“I think it’s a good, important connection to the county commission,” Bahle said. “(But) it doesn’t take long for people to say, ‘Why am I doing this? I’m already meeting over here and talking about the same thing.’” Bahle said she was anxious that the new county board was moving too quickly, however. She said the county’s planning commission appointed the HAC in 2017 and they have not been consulted. And in fact, the planning commission hasn’t even had its organizational meeting with Bahle and two other new members yet. This meeting is scheduled for Jan. 28.
The HAC developed a Housing Readiness Communities checklist, which is used by townships, villages, and housing nonprofits, and conducted target market analyses and a seasonal workforce study.
Bahle was among those who attended Leelanau County Housing Collaborative Committee’s workshop, which argued that affordable housing would lead to stronger communities and greater profits for small businesses.
Another workshop attendee, Bob Jacobson, shared his opinion on the housing crisis. As president of Leelanau Cellars, Jacobson agreed that his employees’ long commutes affect his ability to stay open later.
“These groups that are working together on this are really working against 100 years of anti-development. These are really good ideas, but these are really heavy stones to lift up the hill, let alone turning them into workable laws. It does start with these sorts of conversations, but man, we are behind the eight ball in Leelanau County,” Jacobson said.
“Whether I say they were bad decisions or they were just the decisions that they made with the information they had at the time, they led us to this place. So, everything that they’re talking about doing is going to involve breaking what’s being done today and starting over,” Jacobson continued. “I do think the county is at a tipping point, for all the above reasons. … We’ve got to be iconoclastic and break the existing system, which ain’t so easy to do.”
