The Enterprise staff, reflecting on the past 52 issues, has come up with the top 10 stories of 2023.
Another year out from the life-changing COVID, county government and the evolving role of a county finance director are near the top of our stories, for a second-straight year.
1.) Finance Department woes — Leelanau County’s efforts to establish a finance department have been fraught with difficulties since the beginning, and those troubles have continued through 2023. After unusually little discussion, the previous county board of commissioners voted 4-3 in May 2021 to strip control of county finances from the clerk’s office and assign the duties to a new finance department, which was formed in January 2022.
This department passed through three sets of hands in its first year – Jennifer Zywicki, Darcy Weaver, and Jared Prince – before coming under the leadership of former Suttons Bay treasurer Catherine Hartesvelt in December 2022. Hartesvelt was only supposed to serve as interim finance director until a permanent department head was hired, but so far, she’s served as department head longer than anyone else.
The county seemed to have found a qualified candidate in Sean Cowan, a Certified Public Accountant and former bank president, who started on June 5. However, by Oct. 20, Cowan had enough and resigned from the position, citing insufficient “resources, authority, staff (and) executive support.” Leadership of the department has again fallen on Hartesvelt as interim director at year’s end, and a new county finance committee is working on a longterm plan to prevent it from happening a third time.
2.) Growing Pains — Leelanau County is the top tart cherry producer in the country, but it hasn’t been successful at growing for housing/recreational opportunities. In 2023 planners and residents in Leelanau and Centerville Township say “no” to proposals to revitalize the long-closed TimberShores Resort as well as Leelanau Pines Campground, purchased from an out-of-state company. Leland planners denied a permit to construct a commercial/residential structure at 211 Main Street in Leland.
And in Elmwood Township plans for a “full service wellness resort” near Timberlee were withdrawn.
People came out of the woodwork to oppose these proposed developments.
A group of people in Leelanau Township are fundraising to purchase the former TimberShores property, rather than have it redeveloped as proposed.
Common to most of these zoning issues is a “character” clause, requiring planners to determine whether the development keeps in character with its surroundings.
However, this has been hard to quantify.
In addition to the Leelanau Pines project, Centerville planners have also received a proposal for a 75-unit glamping site in the agricultural district.
However, they’ve also requested the Centerville Township Board issue a moratorium on such proposals, pending a review of the zoning ordinance.
3.) County workplace culture — To identify and fix the problems that have led many county employees to resign — including but not limited to former county finance director Sean Cowan – the county board of commissioners voted 6-1 on Nov. 9 to have the Michigan Leadership Institute (MLI) conduct an “employee climate/culture survey” for $6,500. The surveys are being conducted by MLI regional president and former Glen Lake Schools superintendent John Scholten, who plans to present an “action plan” based on his findings.
This survey has led to infighting as District 7 commissioner Melinda Lautner clashes with the county’s personnel committee of District 5 commissioner KamaRoss,District commissioner James O’Rourke, and District 6 commissioner Gwenne Allgaier. Lautner said she feels that correspondence between Ross and county employees is performing the survey – though Scholten denies this – and requested all this correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Lautner’s efforts to see this correspondence have been fruitless so far as Ross said the information was given to her in confidence. The county prosecutor said Lautner needs to pay $5,000 for his office to fulfill her request, saying that about 1,250 emails need to be reviewed and redacted when needed. Whether Lautner will appeal this decision remains to be seen, but the results of this survey will be presented at a public meeting on Jan. 3, 2024.
4.) Housing initiatives and the push for affordable housing in general throughout the county— Ever-higher prices for coveted homes and land in Leelanau did not slow the county real estate market in 2023. In fact, total volume generated by home sales in 2023 likely had its second-highest finish ever and may end up rivaling the record year of 2021 when 492 homes sold for $282.5 million. Final statistics for 2023 have not been released by Aspire, the multi-county listing agency that includes Realtors in Leelanau County.
Through November, some 353 housing units exchanged hands for a total of $261.4 million, surpassing both marks for all of 2022, according to Aspire. The median price for homes sold through the first 11 months of 2023 was $575,000, up 8.7% from the previous year and a remarkable 53.3% higher than in 2020. While the number of multiple offers for one property has slowed, sales agents working in the county say appropriately priced homes are not lingering. In November, homes stayed on the market an average of 56 days, easily the fewest within the five-county area.
Meanwhile, housing proponents have begun to gain ground on the peninsula.
New Waves United Church of Christ and Habitat for Humanity Grand Traverse area are working on a 14-unit housing development off Bugai Road. Ground was broke this year.
In addition, eight two-bedroom homes built by the nonprofi t HomeStretch, were filled with families the past week at Vineyard Views, off M-204 in Suttons Bay Township. Two of four homes built by Habitat in Maple City are now occupied with applicants sought for the remaining homes.
In addition, Peninsula Housing, a non-profit organized by Larry Mawby, has gained ground rehabilitating a couple of existing homes, which are being made available through a land trust.
5.) Point Broadband — Back in early 2022, the county board of commissioners committed $5 million – including $3.2 million of its $4.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds – to the Opelika, Alabama-based internet service provider Point Broadband to provide high speed internet to “unserved” and “underserved” homes in the county. The contract stipulated an endof- the-year completion in 2023.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held in Elmwood Township on May 4, 2023. After seven months, the network is only about a third of the way to completion, and still far away from its initial goal of reaching the Grand Traverse Lighthouse by the end of the year. The project’s completion has been pushed back to June 2024. Chris Scherrer, the county’s consultant on the Point Broadband project, said the delay was partially a result of the internet service provider failing to reach an agreement with the Grand Traverse Band.
Nonetheless, the broadband network was activated in the county near Centerville Township in late August. Construction crews plan to continue work on the project through winter, particularly aerial work, splicing, and installations.
6.) Landry — The story of Christen Landry came to a conclusion in November when she was sentenced to a year in jail for a drunk driving accident that claimed the life of Evie Kellogg and her dog on a cold night in December 2022. It was standing room only at the Leelanau County Courthouse in early November, as Landry, and Kellogg family made victim impact statements during sentencing of the emotional case that has gripped the community for nearly a year.
Landry pleaded no contest to operating while intoxicated causing serious injury which resulted in death.
The plea agreement, supported by the victims father, carries a 5-year maximum sentence if convicted.
According to the criminal complaint, Landry’s blood alcohol content at the time of the crash was .084.
Landry is also the defendant in a civil suit brought by Sharon Black, personal representative of the Estate of Evelyn Kellogg.
The lawsuit seeks a judgment of more than $25,000 to compensate Kellogg’s estate and others for damages, together with costs, interest, attorney fees and “any further relief as determined by the court.”
7.) NLTUA— The Northport Leelanau Township Utility Authority (NLTUA) has faced ongoing woes of managing a costly municipal sewer system especially in 2023, having to enforce its biggest sewer rate hike in years. NLTUA, the group that operates the municipal sewer system within the village and Leelanau Township, announced in January that operations and maintenance sewer rate fees were to increase to $256 per quarter for system users in the Village of Northport, up $80 from the rate in 2022 of $176 per quarter. NLTUA had to request scheduled payments be deferred back to the village in July. The motion that was approved authorized up to $350,000 of funds available to the NLTUA as a loan with an interest rate of 2% to be paid in full by 2028 for the critical sewer main project with a repayment schedule to be determined. Earlier this month, the Northport Village Council unanimously approved the NLTUA’s annual rate increase as well as an additional loan request of $190,000 for capital improvements. The village approved the rate increase after the NLTUA conducted a comprehensive utility rate study that highlighted three options as to how to move forward in an already “cash critical” state, going with “scenario one” of three options, which proposed the 8% annual increase over the next four years.
8.) Fishing decree — It wasn’t without a fight, but Indian tribes, the state of Michigan and the federal government have signed onto a consent decree spelling out quotas and rules for Tribal commercial and recreational fishing in much of the Michigan waters of the Great Lakes including those off Leelanau County. Attorneys representing the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians played a lead role in navigating a three-year process leading to the outcome, which maintained existing quotas for lake trout catches while allowing Tribal commercial fishers to rely heavily on gill nets. A consortium of sport fishing groups calling itself the Michigan Coalition to Protect Resources opposed the settlement and has filed suit to prevent its implementation. Among other claims, the group is arguing that gill nets, which are being banned increasingly around the world, indiscriminately kill all fish caught in their nylon webbing.
9.) Fruit grower woes — The face of agriculture — and its impact — continued to evolve in 2023, a year that brought on more pain for owners of tart cherry orchards. Many growers continue to pull tart cherry trees, sometimes replanting in sweets, sometimes moving to high-production apples, and sometimes leaving orchards in a cover crop while fruit markets evolve. Leelanau grows more cherries, tart and sweet, than any other county in the nation. Many of the best fruit-growing sites in the county already have been converted to grapes, whose market is limited by the number of wineries that can be profitably sustained. The question being asked is with land prices at all-time highs, will Leelanau start growing more subdivisions?
10.) Sanitary Sewer — It was a long time coming, but Leelanau County joined the ranks of communities statewide in adopting a point-of-sale inspection.
In 1990, neighboring Benzie County implemented an ordinance that requires septic system inspections whenever a home is bought, sold, or transferred. On numerous occasions in the years since, Leelanau commissioners have considered aligning county policies with the existing septic inspection in Benzie County, due in part to the fact that the two counties share a health department. Repeatedly, though, those motions have failed to generate enough support.
In 2022, the script flipped and the new ordinance became effective Jan. 27, 2023.
According to a report given to the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Board, as of Aug. 1, 2023, 171 inspections were completed and of those 14.26% were determined to be “unsatisfactory.”
Up there, but falling just short of the Top 10 is the saga of the docks at North Manitou Island, where shifting sands denied the Manitou Island Transit (MIT) ferry from transporting passengers until late August when a barge cleared a path after an emergency bid was pushed through the federal bureaucracy. The Lakeshore has set aside up to $31 million to study and, if needed, rebuild docking stations at the islands.
The ferry was prevented from accessing either island in 2020 when the same shoaling problem occurred on the north island and high water levels put the South Manitou dock underwater. MIT prevailed in federal court and was compensated its actual losses of $225,000, and seems likely to prevail under the same set of circumstances for loss of business in 2023.
