By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Gone
President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) should heed Saugatuck, which formed a board that never met.
The city 15 years ago appointed a Saugatuck Harbor Natural Area Management Board charged with overseeing the then newly-acquired 173 acres north from Oval Beach to the Kalamazoo River mouth.
What a gig. Pad your résumé on a board that, blessedly, never met while giving claim to environmental stewardship.
“While a management board was initially created around 2010,” city manager Ryan Cummins told council Feb. 19, “it ceased to exist around the same time.”
Talk about efficient. While the tri-communities’ Kalamazoo Lake Harbor Authority persisted, no one even wasted time on the Harbor Natural Area board.
Reason Cummins brings it up now is money. In 2012, with donor funds left from acquiring the parcel, the Land Conservancy of West Michigan created an endowment with the Holland/Zeeland Area Community Foundation to support conservation on it.
That $450,000 principle has matured into $821,821.35, with $225,338 worth of interest now available. But to access it, the SHNA’s original management plan must be updated and presented to the foundation every five years. That’s not happened once.
Where there’s a will there’s a go-around. Cummins asked council Monday to pass an updated plan that ends the need for a separate management board and other 2010 rules that may now be cumbersome. Think of the federal programs DOGE could dodge discovering they just paid lip service to an ideal too.
“Liberal institutions,” said philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained” — i.e., we all want to save nature, the harbor and our skins, but institutions we impose to achieve them get in the way.
If Saugatuck hasn’t needed the SHNA windfall till now, why not just let it keep accruing? Then again, with $235,238 now available, why not update the plan, get the money, run?
The City’s new parks and public works committee and Land Conservancy are in on the ask and will assume the old board’s non-duties. “Collaboration” can be key for those who decide where the money goes.
One of the fun things about the city acquiring the former south Denison-McClendon land om 2009 “for the public” was that as soon as the deal was done, “Stay off the Dunes” signs rose to protect the dunes from the public.
Uses for the largesse could include fighting invasive species like Japanese barberry, black locust, phragmites and humans wandering off designated trails and onto the private Deam property.
The $235K might also be used to add signage and monitor for deer overpopulation. Never mind native Bambis got here first. Why not save more and let nature take its course?
So the board died at birth. Should DOGE want to uproot the Harbor Authority now, Musk should know:
1) It isn’t a federal program; and
2) With lake levels once more dropping, the KLHA could become relevant again.
Some may recall the authority was formed on the heels of record-low water levels that threatened harbor navigation — and to placate now-late Tower Marine owner R.J. Peterson, not necessarily in that order.
Dick Waskin, the KLHA’s current vice-chair, told council Monday its members want to update their plans to take action should the harbor, “our economic lifeblood” once more be threatened.
Seek federal grants towards that end? Here’s were DOGE comes in. Trump and Musk can deny or dispense favors either way in the name of “efficiency,” paying back donors/non-donors at the same time, Think Dems, in their shoes,wouuldn’t do the same
“Get rid of it all!” played to libertarians Nov. 5 and still does. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” cried a newscaster in the film “Network.” So what’s “it”?
