Planning Commission Hearing: Pre-Read for Sept 18, 2025

## In this issue In today’s newsletter…. Why your voice matters at the Sept 18 Planning Commission meeting, our proposed redraft to fix loopholes in Planned Developments, and a searchable database of all community comments from the recent open houses.

## The Next Planning Commission Meeting Over the last month, the planning commission has led five open houses and received community feedback on Planned Developments (PDs), Co-living Housing (6 unrelated occupants), Cluster Housing (often a developer’s choice), and ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units). These tools are often used by planners to facilitate more development. Your input to ensure these changes fit Harbor Springs is important

On Thursday, September 18th at 5:30, the entire panel of Planning Commissioners will hopefully be in attendance. Most of the sitting Planning Commission approved the rejected zoning. They are open to hearing your feedback.

Our advice is that you will have to work extra, extra hard to make sure your voice and your words are remembered - and that the Chairman will relay your concerns, your directives to his Commissioners. We hope the lists of items found below from each meeting will help jog your memories. Asking the planning commissioners to loop the answers back into the conversations, explanations, and decisions is the next step. Step by step. The Open Houses were a success in getting the community to attend. Working together does work.

**Meeting Details:** 5:30 Sept 18, City Hall Zoom Youtube

Review the City’s Public Participation plan to understand how the City addresses and is accountable to citizen feedback.

## Planned Development Several people remain concerned that the draft Planned Development language strips out objective criteria (height, acreage), weakening our ability to constrain opportunistic actors. Experienced lawyers noted to WLHS that the current draft contains loopholes helpful to developers, undermining key district controls, and enabling legal and economic pressure to convert areas to PDs against citizens’ intent. While some developers partner closely with the community, others simply chase speed and ROI with no economic reason to tailor projects to Harbor Springs character; clear, explicit, enforceable standards are what protect us from the latter. The outspoken citizens do not want to delegate to the Planning Commission the power to alter zoning in a district via a PD without those guardrails in place.

It is common for WLHS to spend money on consultants with deep experience on these topics. The bulk of our effort is to buttress external efforts to overdevelop Harbor Springs, preserving what the community can. The bulk of our expenditures is on this sort of consulting.

Given the conflicting opinions, we hired Lynee Wells, an experienced City Planner who works with cities throughout the state, to help formulate a redline draft that reinstitutes objective measures.

Carter Williams met with Rob Cumming, who is the only known proposed PD in the immediate future, to review the draft. Carter submitted the resulting redline to the Planning Commission for inclusion in the “Packet” for the Sept 18th meeting. The City Planner declined to include the WLHS draft. So we have it included here for your review. All suggestions welcome.

Draft Pd Wlhs 585KB ∙ PDF file

Download Proposed Planned Develop Draft lanquage Download

Rob was very forthcoming regarding his project during the Open Houses and our in-person discussion with his team. Our general sense is that everyone is open to development if transparent and tailored to Harbor Springs. The root of resistance to RRC was distrust of state intentions - is someone trying to make money off Harbor Springs at the expense of the community? In our direct conversation with him, Rob has been transparent about his project.

We have heard rumors from City subcommittee attendees and other whispers that there are PDs planned for Pete’s Run, and perhaps an annexation of 20 acres along Bester Road. They are rumors, but are repeated often. If there are ex parte conversations going on related to potential PDs, it would help a great deal if those people would simply come forward to the public forum to help shape the PD and other development discussion. You will likely find strong support, opposition, and great feedback that will ultimately help the project succeed for this community. Rob has shown leadership through his transparency at the Open House. People will still be frustrated and may have strong reasons to oppose these projects. Nonetheless, transparency is the path of least resistance.

## Open Houses and Planning Feedback We have collected many comments in the Open House sessions over the last week. To help people sort through these, we have assembled them into two tools. They are free for anyone to use. They represent an example of our efforts to increase transparency so people can make informed decisions.

To add an issue, you need to use Canny.io, the second tool. Google is static.

**GoogleSheets** - A bit like Excel, you can sort and filter. It is a bit clunky, but familiar. You can also download it if you wish (Link)

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Canny.io** - this is a tool for reporting bugs in software. A bit like bugs in the zoning. You can create new concerns and categorize them. You can easily sort, search and vote on various items. You would vote on an item that is a duplicate of your concern. You will need to login using your Google account or create an account to add an item or vote. (WLHS Canny Portal)

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