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Elmwood township will soon be getting equipment to tape and broadcast its meetings, following the lead of volunteer (and, ahem, Leelanau Post publisher) Pei-shan Van Zoeren.
The efforts to record and make the meetings public were praised by the Record-Eagle in their weekly Cheers and Jeers section. The local paper also ran an informative story on the taping earlier in the week.
In Northwest Michigan, this attractive, approximately 7 inch bird with distinctive, red eyes, rusty sides, white belly, black back, head, beak, and a relatively long black tail with white outer feathers is found most often in second growth woodlands, forest edges, and shrubby uplands. Towhees are scarce in urban areas and extensive farmland.
The female Eastern Towhee is almost identical to the male except she is brown where he is black. Female Towhees may sing in the early spring.
Towhees spend much of their time on the ground foraging for food. Their food is comprised primarily of grass and forb seeds but also includes nuts, fruits, and terrestial invertebrates.
Towhees do ascend into a tree to perch and sing. They are easily identified by their very distinctive song which experts characterize by the words “drink your teeee”. I have heard them sing as late as August.
They also emit equally notable calls which experts describe as a slurred “towhee” and “chewink”.
Towhees usually raise two broods. They are for the most part ground nesters, which leaves their nests more susceptible to predators such as raccoon, fox, coyote and domestic cats. They are frequent cowbird hosts and usually accommodate the cowbird young. The female Towhee selects the nest site and broods the eggs. The male does most of the feeding. Occasionally the second nest is placed in a bush instead of on the ground.
In Leelanau County most Towhees would be migratory. Towhees have been known to winter over in NW Lower Michigan, however such occurrences are not the norm and seldom occur when snow cover is extensive and long lasting.
Towhees that migrate usually arrive in Leelanau and Grand Traverse in April and have left the area by the end of October.
~bob c.
Former judge of the Leelanau Probate Court Elizabeth Weaver is fighting a lonely battle for openness on the the Michigan Supreme Court.
Weaver is locked in a bitter dispute with her four fellow Republicans on the court over whether or not she will be allowed to say why she believes her fellow justices should have disqualified themselves in a recent case, according to this column by George Weeks in the Record-Eagle.
We tend to agree with dean of Michigan political columnists and Glen Arbor resident Weeks that "anyone advocating the bright light of public scrutiny is to be applauded."
A vision for Elmwood Township's rural AO-1 District was presented Tuesday night by the group Elmwood Citizens for Sensible Growth. The group was represented by Erik Saxon, who introduced a position paper entitled "Development density and development options for the Rural Low Density zoning district in Elmwood: The master plan, community agreement, and the formulation of public policy." You can read the paper here. (Full disclosure: the publisher and editor of the Leelanau Post are also members of ECSG.)
The paper advocates a set of development options for the township's extensive Agricultural Openspace District, which is coming under heavy pressure from local, downstate, and national development interests. The plan aims to minimize large-lot metes and bounds splits which lead to sprawl, instead advocating generous density incentives to encourage developers to cluster housing and preserve open space and agricultural lands. In addition, the paper endorses the Alternative Standard Land Divisions option in the current draft of the zoning ordinance which allows a farmer or other landowner to split off properties of any size for their children or to raise cash.
~ Steve
The following 4 dates are scheduled for the program "Elmwood Township Public Hearing on 2007 Budget" on TCTV2:
Friday 12/22/2006 9:00 PM
Saturday 12/30/2006 4:00 PM
Monday 1/8/2007 6:00 PM
Tuesday 1/16/2007 9:00 PM
By a 5-to-1 vote, the Elmwood Township Board of Trustees decided on Thursday that Supervisor Deri Smith will be paid as much as the township's clerk and treasurer, thus bringing to a close a long-running controversy in Elmwood politics.
According to this Record-Eagle story, Smith's pay was raised to $35,750, finally bringing her compensation in line with those of Clerk Connie Preston and Treasurer Debbie Street. Shortly after Smith's election as Supervisor in 2004, the outgoing board voted to cut the incoming supervisor's salary from $33,384 to $28,000. That board's membership included then-Supervisor Noel Flohe and Trustees John Stanek and John Gallagher, as well as Preston, Street, and current trustees Terry Lautner and Jim O'Rourke. Street was the only member of the board to vote against Smith on Thursday.
Flohe and Stanek were later active in an unsuccessful attempt to recall Smith, and both were recently convicted of defaming Smith in an anonymous mailing. Flohe was the only member of the public to speak Thursday night against restoring Smith's salary.
Judge Philip Rodgers of the 13th District Court has overruled the objections of defendants Don Barrows, Noel Flohe, and John Stanek to a jury's ruling that they must apologize to Elmwood Township Supervisor Deri Smith.
A Leelanau County jury ruled on that the defendants had defamed Smith and, in addition to levying damages, required them to issue a written apology to Smith. All three defendants have defied the deadline specified for the apologies. In a recent action, they asked Judge Rodgers to vacate that part of the jury's decision that required them to apologize.
Rodgers's decision is eloquent, not only of Smith's right to the apology ordered by the jury, but also of his deep respect for the law and for the jury system:
"Plaintiff is entitled to judgment reflecting the considered decision of the jury. Indeed, so long as the right to trial by jury exists our juries act as the conscience of our communities. This particular jury listened to a defamation case arising out of a political dispute and ordered the Defendants to apologize and pay damages. Plaintiff has made enforcement of the apology a moot issue -- but the finding and its inclusion in the judgment are fair and accurate. The common sense of a jury should never be overwhelmed by law. If such is the case, then the law should change."
Could there be a clearer contrast, between Rodgers's reverence for the law on the one hand, and the cynicism and arrogance of Barrows, Flohe, and Stanek on the other?
~ Steve
TCTV2 will be broadcasting the 29 November Elmwood Township Board of Trustees special meeting.
The meeting will be broadcast Friday 12/22/2006 at 8:00 PM and 12/30/2006 at 5:00 PM, on TCTV, Channel 2.
If you would like to see the Elmwood Township Board of Trustees in action, here's your chance.
During Michigan's lumbering era in the 1800's, ships were one of the major modes of transporting lumber to market, and many communities along Lake Michigan's shore would contain at least one dock for boats to access the towns. Leelanau County's communities fell in this category as well, Suttons Bay, Northport (which had a railroad ferry to Manistique from 1903 to 1906), Good Harbor, Port Oneida, and Glen Haven, among others. One of these boats that plied Lake Michigan, and which could have possibly visited all or some of these Leelanau County ports of call, was the schooner Rouse Simmons. Built in 1868, she sailed longer than most other schooners when more modern ships were replacing masted boats for commerce.
Although the Simmons brought lumber and other products to market during the regular sailing season, she was best known for bringing her last cargo of the season to the people of Chicago: Christmas trees. And because of this, she was nicknamed the Christmas Tree Ship. Other boats hauled Christmas trees as well, but the Simmons stood out as the Christmas Tree Ship, perhaps because of her skipper, Captain Herman Schuenemann.
Herman and his brother August made their careers sailing the Great Lakes, and it was August who started the tradition of bringing Christmas trees to Chicago in 1876, with Herman following in 1887. Both skippers continued this tradition together until tragedy struck in November 1898 when August Schuenemann and his boat, the S. Thal, were lost in a November storm on Lake Michigan northeast of Chicago while hauling a cargo of Christmas Trees. August's death was a great blow to Herman, but he continued to carry on the tradition of bringing Christmas cheer to his fellow Chicagoans.
Herman sailed a number of different ships, but it was only beginning in 1910 that the Rouse Simmons earned The Christmas Tree Ship nickname, the good captain purchasing part ownership in the boat. One of the other part owners was Mannes J. Bonner of St. James, Beaver Island (a Leelanau County protectorate, 1865-1869). The Simmons, decked out with Christmas tree lights and loaded both on deck and cargo hold with Christmas trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, made its annual port of call at Chicago's Clark Street Bridge in 1910 and 1911 to bring Christmas cheer to anyone who could afford a tree or not. 1912 should have been no different, but...
The 1912 shipping season was over for the Simmons, and Captains Schuenemann and Charles Nelson, Nelson's wife, and 14 others made their way on the Christmas Tree Ship for the port of Thompson, Michigan in the U.P. for their annual Christmas tree cargo. Once the boat was loaded and ready to sail, the weather began to turn threatening. Captian Schuenemann had to choose between waiting out the storm, or to take a chance. He chose the latter because he wanted people to have their annual Christmas trees, and possibly because of Chicago's trade demand.
As conditions on Lake Michigan went from bad to worse, ships were taking shelter, but one incoming boat off Point Aux Barques saw the Simmons heading out full sail into the November fury on November 22, 1912. The next day, she was spotted, flying distress signals, by the Kewaunne (Wisconsin) U.S. Life Saving Station. Then snow made visibility zero. A telephone call to the Two Rivers Station sent a power-boat out to look for the Christmas ship, but was never sighted. The Revenue Cutter Tuscarora was sent out, but to no avail. The Christmas Tree Ship was lost with all hands.
During the course of the next fifteen years, two corked bottles were found washed up on the Lake Michigan shore, supposedly one each written by Captians Schuenemann and Nelson. Whether or not these notes are authentic is debatable, but, a wallet washed up on shore contained a receipt with Herman Shuenemann's signature on it in 1924.
As recently as the 1950's, fisherman in the vicinity of where the Simmons went down would occasionally bring up Christmas trees in their fishing nets. The location of the wreck was only approximately known until October 1971 when a scuba diver discovered and identified the boat as the Simmons. Underwater cameras have even spotted Christmas Trees still in its cargo hold.
Despite the loss of Captian Schuenemann, his family continued to bring Christmas trees to Chicago households and churches until the mid-1930's. Mrs. Barbara Schuenemann passed away in 1933, and daughters Elsie, Hazel, and Pearl in 1950, 1969, and 1991 respectively. But even today, the tradition the Schuenemanns started so long ago was revived in 2000 with Cheboygan's U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw, and its successor, USCGC Mackinaw II, arriving in Chicago decked out with Christmas tree lights and loaded with Christmas trees for both needy and well-to-do families.
~ Thomas Baird
In a vote that ends a nearly three and a half year state of governmental paralysis, The Elmwood board voted on Thursday December 7, to adopt a major up-date to its zoning ordinance. Amendments to the township's Rural Resort zoning district language were adopted by a vote of 6-1.
A township-wide vote in July 2003 sent shock waves through the then existing Township Board and Planning Commission, as nearly 70% of those voting refused the long awaited zoning ordinance. Even though the then serving board scrambled at first to "educate" township voters, then held extensive public workshops to attempt to come up with standards that would work, the board was never able to come to grips with the basic public demand that new zoning maintain rural character in the township's rambling farm and forest areas. The township poured money into months of planning through the offices of its long time consultant, Gourdie-Fraser, that spanned the tenure of at least two planning commission chairs—but by the time the 2004 election cycle arrived the township had failed to move forward. It could be argued that the zoning ordinance fiasco was a major factor in ending the board tenures of Noel Flohe, John Stanek, and John Gallagher, each staunch supporters and advocates of the failed ordinance.
At the end of 2004 a new Supervisor and two new Trustees joined the board. Although not constituting a majority of votes on the board, the new members had campaigned as land use policy reformers. Along with a nearly complete overhaul of the planning commission in 2005, the engagement of new township attorneys just before the 2004 election, and later the addition of a new planning consultant, the stage seemed to be set for the development of desperately needed up-dates to the township's zoning ordinance.
Those up-dates would be primed by this amendment to the Resort Commercial zoning district, an amendment that was begun under pressure from the application for the Glacier Bay destination resort. It had become only too apparent as the process of evaluating that project went forward that the existing RC-1 ordinance was simply too dysfunctional to allow for a meaningful review of the development. Amendments to the ordinance were immediately undertaken and in the end received approval from the township planning commission, Leelanau County planning staff, and the Leelanau County Planning Commission.
The final obstacle to remedying the township's reliance on contradictory, unclear, unenforceable, and legally dangerous zoning language covering the Rural Resort District turned out to be the majority hold-overs from the Flohe Board. The first time the amendments were presented for adoption on October 9, no votes by hold-overs guaranteed the initiative would fail.
That situation led to a request by the township attorney for a meeting to take place where the board would re-consider the amendments. Concerned with the township's continuing exposure to what he termed a "horrendous" level of legal liability, he asked that the Thursday night special meeting be arranged so that the board could hear further from both the legal side, and from the township's planning consultant. There was still considerable resistance from the board members that had voted against adopting the measures in October, even though planner Val Lasdins and attorney Young went to great lengths to explain how planning and zoning worked in Michigan. The officials seemed unable or unwilling to grasp basic concepts relating to master planning and statutorily mandated policy formulation procedures. There was a consistent desire on the part of these officials to question required methods and to seek avenues that would allow them to act arbitrarily and to allow legislation that would benefit particular applicants, personal social theories, or allow land uses that would not otherwise be legitimately considered.
In the end, the board seemed to responded to attorney Young's description of the possible levels to which a worse case scenario legal action stemming from deficiencies in the current standards might grow. Young described a possible award of damages that would empty the township's general fund, and cause a tax on township citizens to be levied to collect more.
Finally, Treasurer Deborah Street, Trustee Jim O'Rourke, and Trustee Jeff Howell changed their October 9 votes without comment (Clerk Connie Preston was absent at the meeting of October 9) and joined the "ayes" of Supervisor Derith Smith, and Trustee Paul Walter. Trustee Terry Lautner voted "nay".
Elmwood residents are finally beginning to see the actions on the part of their local government that will slowly pull their township out of the legal limbo to which their flawed and out-dated zoning standards have sentenced them. Discrepancies, shortcomings, and ambiguities—not to mention disconnects with our great master plan—have caused the basis for arduous and expensive litigation over the past five or six years. Perhaps as our complete and new from the ground up zoning ordinance takes its final form residents have reason to expect that reasonable, enforceable zoning standards that reflect community desires are on the way, and the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal settlements and legal advice will come to an end.
We only need hope that the majority on the board can see and understand those standards for what they are—the rules and codes that accurately reflect the desires of the community.
~ Courtesy of Elmwood Citizens for Sensible Growth
In what was seen as a crucial test of the new planning process in Elmwood, the Elmwood Township Board of Trustees voted Thursday night to pass an amendment to its zoning ordinance, 6-1. Trustee Terry Lautner was the lone vote opposing the passage of an amendment defining clear standards for the Resort Commercial (RC-1) District. The so-called Milliken property on M-72 which was recently proposed as the site of a massive water park project (since withdrawn) is zoned RC-1.
The amendment was rejected by the Board in an earlier vote, but reconsidered after the Planning Commission declined to revise its earlier recommendation according to the Board's wishes. Township Attorney Jim Young's energetic insistence that the township's Master Plan could not be arbitrarily ignored seemed to be the crucial argument in turning the Board around Thursday night.
~ Steve Van Zoeren
Update 12/9/06: The Record-Eagle story on the vote is here
The amendment is the first substantial piece of zoning legislation to emerge from newly constituted Elmwood Planning Commission and is seen by many as providing a crucial window onto the reception that can be expected for the new Zoning Ordinance which the Planning Commission is slated to deliver in early 2007.
A Garfield township man has pleaded guilty to making telephone threats to the Record-Eagle's publisher and editors. Alfred VanDyke Jr., 46, used pay phones to telephone a death threat to Record-Eagle publisher Ann Reed and to harass editors Bill Thomas and Mike Tyree. VanDyke was upset about the paper's aggressive reporting on questionable fundraising practices of State Senator Jason Allen, as well as editorials on President George Bush. He described the calls as "a silly prank," according to this Record-Eagle article. We say: Traverse City is lucky to have the courageous and capable people we do at the helm of our area's biggest paper. Let's hope they survive the changes associated with its transfer of ownership.
The Elmwood Township Board of Trustees will meet Thursday, December 7 at 5:30pm at the township hall to reconsider a proposed amendment to the township Zoning Ordinance governing RC-1 (Resort Commercial) properties like the one where a massive water park was recently proposed.
The amendment, crafted by Planning Commission with the assistance of township attorney Jim Young and planning consultant Val Lazdins of LSL Planning, aims to set clear new standards for a district whose current regulations Young says are a "recipe for a lawsuit".
The amendment was rejected once before by the Board but is being reconsidered at Young's urging. The amendment has earned the support of groups like Elmwood Citizens for Sensible Growth and other advocates for smart growth; it is being opposed by trustees who favor unregulated development in the township.
A good summary of the issues at stake and a list of links can be found here.
Leelanau County residents are tied with those of Benzie for the honor of having the longest life expectancies in the state, a study has shown.
According to this article from the Monroe News, Leelanau and Benzie residents can expect to live 80.2 years, while Wayne County residents can expect only 73.4 years.
We always knew living in Leelanau County is good for you.