The STEP sewer debacle around Higgins Lake has expanded the vocabularies of residents in Lyon and Gerrish townships. We are getting an education on how local democracy works, or doesn’t work, and how financially influential players go about controlling the process. Township officials should primarily be administrators, not political operatives.
“Gentrification”, according to one source, involves displacing long-time neighborhood residents by pressures from higher rents, mortgages, property taxes and special assessments. This process is a housing, economic and health issue that affects a community’s history and culture and reduces social capital.
Sewer proponents have a portfolio of agendas and special interests, including bumping up property values on the lakefront, building new developments, property additions and modifications, and influencing township government to enable zoning changes and liberalize building permits. Many of those same people are seasonal residents who have less daily stake in essential community resources, such as security, schools and transportation.
The STEP sewer would drive up living costs for residents of the Higgins Lake area and will drive out lower income residents. Speculators will capitalize on those property turnovers. Put another way, the process in play at Higgins Lake disenfranchises local voters by using the financial resources of the wealthier owners to capture the authority of township officials.
In the case of the STEP sewer proposal, an outdated 1954 law (PA 188) is being implemented in a feudalistic way that gives power to those with the most acreage rather than the most votes. It bypasses the democratic process, and the co-opted township boards have been using the instruments of township government against its own citizens. In this case, townships are paying lawyers and engineers to help suppress the rights of locals and have township staff working against democracy. They illegally added Lyon Township properties, church property and the township cemetery into the sewer acreage tally to defeat its own citizens’ voting rights.
The STEP sewer is an urbanization development tool. The polluted lake exaggerations are scripted to be disparaging to township residents who want full and honest involvement in the analysis of the lake water quality claims and which improvements represent the best balance between value, cost and sustainability.
Elections are coming, and it’s time to change township horses!
Phillip Robinson
Higgins Lake
