Call to Action: Please Help

Remove the RRC

Feb 11, 2025

Call to Action

Please send this message to us by clicking on the blue button below, before Thursday noon, so we can make a deadline for letters being ‘included in the Friday am February 14 City Council packet’ for the City Council meeting scheduled for Monday, February 17th.

Dear City Council Members,

As a property owner, voter, or Harbor Springs resorter, I would recommend that the Harbor Springs City Council vote to disengage with the MEDC Redevelopment Ready Communities (RRC) program. It has become a roadblock rather than a road map in the City’s planning process and has divided neighbor from neighbor.

Harbor Springs can benefit from the economic growth in the surrounding “certified” RRC communities like Petoskey, Charlevoix, Boyne City, Cadillac, Manistee, and Traverse City by supporting their development plans. We are a resort community of 1.3 square miles that is geographically limited. I don’t believe the development requirements of the RRC are a good fit. My preference is to disengage with the RRC entirely.

Sincerely, __________________, Address _________________________________.

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We Are Hopeful

How can WLHS and the general public proceed? We are hopeful our voices will be heard.

The reasons for this message are based on the reviews of City documents obtained in 2024, during FOIA research. There are concerns about the management and formulation of the Redevelopment Ready Community’s (RRC) Best Practice documents, the transparency of resolutions, and contractual agreements with the MEDC Redevelopment Ready Community and City participation.

We ask the City Council to review the RRC’s fitness for Harbor Springs in the ‘new business item’ section at the next City Council meeting or a ‘Special Meeting’ called to review Best Practice application, community representation on the RRC city Committee, and Grant stipulations.

The community has raised many reasons for the Harbor Springs City Council to NOT become involved in meeting the requirements for becoming a Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC), including the following:

Harbor Springs can do the same things without certification from the RRC.
It is possible to obtain State Grants without being part of RRC.
The requirements for RRC do not apply to grant requests from other sources.

If you’d like to learn more and view a power point presentation, long or short version with minutes and notes explaining the RRC’s trajectory in Harbor Springs from 2019 to 2024, please contact us at weloveharborsprings@gmail.com with that request.

What is a Redevelopment Ready Community (RRC) Certified City ?

Directly from the City of Harbor Springs website.

The Redevelopment Ready Communities (RRC)Program is a state-wide certification program that supports communities to become development ready and competitive in today’s economy. It encourages communities to adopt innovative redevelopment strategies and efficient processes which build confidence among businesses and developers. Through the RRC program, local municipalities receive assistance in establishing a solid foundation for development to occur in their communities – making them more attractive for investments that create places where people want to live, work and play.

Through the RRC best practices, communities build deliberate, fair and consistent development processes from the inside out. RRC provides the frame work and benchmarks for communities to strategically and tactically ask “What can we do differently?” By shifting the way municipalities approach development, they’re reinventing the way they do business – making them more attractive for investments that create places where talent wants to live, work and visit.”

RRC Best Practices Link: https://pulseroadmap.org/wp-content/uploads/rrc-best-practices.pdf

Editorial

Letter from a full time resident, who prefers some anonymity…

“Harbor Springs, as a RRC City, will have to meet the requirements of maintaining an updated list of at least three (3) priority development ready sites each year that are actively marketed to outside developers, with a vision that includes desired development outcomes.”
We need everyone who reads this to protect and keep the beauty, great family traditions and values we have this in our remarkable and REAL small town and to take this seriously! Hired commercial firms have no place in Harbor Springs and they will destroy the very place we cherish. Let’s all come together to keep it real! Real town, real people and real values, and help us protect it for future generations to love!
From a true blue local.

Discussion about this post

We Love Harbor Springs

Feb 12

Response to Al Dika Comment

2.12.25

The value of editorials as presented in the 02/11/2025 WLHS Substack blast is diminished by the author's choice to remain anonymous. Having read many of the anonymous presentations by WLHS, it is my opinion that the letters are written by paid professional consultants representing only the patrons that pay their consulting fees. Show me I'm wrong (hurt me sometimes, Eric Burdon), sign the many anonymous WLHS presentations. Who are you? Where do you live? Wht propertiy do you own in or near Harbor Springs. I don't believe that you are true members of the Harbor Springs community. Regards, Alan Dika, al.wpind@gmail.com

First off, thank you, Al, for reading our WLHS newsletters and taking the time to reach out with your comments. It’s what we hope for when we send them out.

The Harbor Springs community reaches far beyond the 1.3 square mile borders. There are many people who are city professional staffers, or own businesses, work in town, eat at the restaurants, and shop or work in the stores that don’t live inside the city limits. They would no doubt disagree with you that they are not “true members of the Harbor Springs community.”

You and I have talked before about our motivation. We have both given our time and energy to this town for years. I myself have attended almost every meeting of the City Council, Planning Commission, DDA, RRC and others for over a year because I care deeply about the future of the town, not because I didn’t have other things I could have been doing. And I assure you it’s not because I am financially profiting. Nor is anyone else at WLHS profiting and as we are far from paid professional consultants, although it’s nice to be called professional, there are no consulting fees to be found. It’s all home grown work shared by many.

Our motivation right now is to bring to light the expectations and repercussions of being part of a bureaucratic program (RRC) that is not a good fit for Harbor Springs. We love this town. So do the many people who are involved, including yourself. I think we are better served by bringing people together who actually want to talk, and resolve authentic problems.

We use unsigned editorials, as do most publications, for a few reasons. Sometimes, we prefer the message over the messenger, we’re sharing a collective rather than an individual opinion. In a time where tone and tenor of a message is so important, it’s also a way we can lower the heat, so to speak, in our writing and topics. And sometimes, people for their own reasons, just like to remain anonymous.

I haven’t thought of that Animals lyric in a long time! Songwriter Roger Atkins said that the lyrics he wrote contained the line, "Sure I'll do wrong, hurt you some time...," but that Burdon recorded the wrong words: "Show me I'm wrong, hurt me sometime...". Atkins said that Burdon's words "never made any sense to me. Everyone who's recorded it sings the wrong chorus, and sometimes even the wrong lyrics in the verses, too."

Honestly, Al, I don’t have the time or energy or will to work to prove people wrong. I think we’re singing the wrong lyrics. I’m more willing to work to prove we can all be right and, as The Animals contemporaries wrote, “We can work it out.”

Thank you,

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