Three Rivers Mayor Angel Johnston listens to comments from city staff during discussion of a special exception use permit for a new massage business in the city at Tuesday’s City Commission meeting.
City Attorney TJ Reed addresses the Three Rivers City Commission during their meeting Tuesday.
By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — Amid a call for what Three Rivers Mayor Angel Johnston called a “line-by-line review” of the city’s code and a call to revise or get rid of language in the city’s massage establishment ordinance, a special exception use permit for a new massage establishment was approved unanimously by Three Rivers city commissioners Tuesday.
With the approval following a public hearing on the matter, Eden Spa will be able to move forward with setting up shop at their future location at 740 S. U.S. 131, in the plaza that also holds Crystal Nails, Tokyo Steakhouse and Sushi, and Flagstar Bank, among others, in front of Meijer.
The business, according to the SEU permit, would offer massage services “focused on relaxation,” with owner Meijun Zhou, a licensed massage therapist in Michigan, the lone employee to start. City officials said the number of employees could expand to two or three over time.
However, the main focus of discussion during the public hearing, prompted by Johnston, was not necessarily on the permit itself – which a couple of commissioners did have issues with that were addressed and resolved during discussion – but rather on the city ordinance for massage establishments and, in general, the entirety of the city’s code.
At the start of the public hearing and prior to hearing any public or board comment on the permit, Johnston shared her thoughts on the portion of city code that discusses massage establishments, calling the section “disgusting.” This was in part due to its references to prostitution in the section’s list of definitions, which also categorized “homosexual and other deviate sexual relations” as an example of “prostitution,” among other items.
“That bothers me to my core. I don’t believe homosexuality is deviant and I hope that nobody in this room does either. It’s sickening that our city code spells that out,” Johnston said, noting this has been an issue she brought up as a resident over a decade ago.
During her comments, a point of order was made by At-Large Commissioner Torrey Brown and City Attorney TJ Reed that Johnston should open the discussion to public comment prior to giving her thoughts on the subject of the ordinance, with Brown reminding Johnston the public hearing was for the permit, not necessarily the ordinance itself.
After some back and forth between Johnston and Brown, with Johnston accusing Brown of not reading his agenda packet and saying she was only providing “context” by reading the ordinance, Reed suggested doing public comment first so as not to create “fear of reprisal” if the public’s opinions don’t match commissioners’ if they spoke first. Johnston then agreed to open the floor to public comment.
Only one person commented on the matter – which was allowed after the closure of public comment because they were not recognized when they had their hand up when public comment was open – and discussed what they called the “outdated” language of the ordinance Johnston brought up.
During board discussion, First District Commissioner Pat Dane said she was “confused” as to why commissioners were “going into all this language and changing the ordinance” when the permit was the issue being discussed. Reed then said the applicant for the permit, Zhou, applied under the current city ordinance and “followed the process the city laid out,” with the special exception use permit applied for being the “regulation and controls of what can and cannot be done in that facility.”
Reed then laid out what would happen if the ordinance is changed at a later time, saying if they modify the ordinance and it’s less restrictive, it would not impact Zhou. If it is more restrictive if the ordinance is changed, it could open the city up to claims.
“If you go through and theoretically change the ordinance to mimic or look like the state regulations do at a later date, it doesn’t harm the applicant at all, and in fact it makes it easier moving forward,” Reed said. “By approving this tonight, you can do that and still review and ask the Planning Commission to please take a look at this ordinance or ask the city to come back at a later date to revisit this.
“I think there are two separate issues, and I don’t speak for the mayor, but I think this struck a familiar chord with her that, hey, this needs to be changed, here’s a prime example of all the red tape and things out there that we might not like to have,” Reed concluded.
Later in discussion, Reed said the ordinance itself was written prior to the state taking over regulating and licensing massage establishments, adding he did not disagree that the language was “old” and that the ordinance could be changed or even discarded.
“So, none of this even applies anymore because the state now occupies the field and they set the standard,” Reed said. “Before, the city had their own independent obligation to do the inspections and setup. A lot of the language that’s being discussed, to be clear, is in the definition portion of what’s going on. To the point, it says ‘opposite sex therapists cannot treat somebody of the opposite sex without a doctor’s order.’ Those are the types of languages in there that really don’t make sense. The idea of fixing this, I don’t disagree, it’s one of those things to where we can rescind it and basically cite the state regulation on that to fix this one.”
Reed then suggested approving the permit and bringing conversation on the ordinance itself to a future meeting. Johnston agreed that Tuesday wasn’t the time to fix it, but it was “time to figure out when we’re going to fix it.”
Earlier in the discussion, Johnston had brought up her view that the city has other pieces of “disgusting code” she believed needed to be dealt with, and called on launching what she called a “line-by-line review” of the city code.
Johnston said she “met casually” with members of city staff prior to the meeting to go through some of the other parts of the code she called “hysterical.” She told City Manager Joe Bippus she “wants this taken care of,” citing her comments as a resident from more than a decade ago when she reportedly called for a review then, and asked Bippus for the record “what a good timeline is to expect us to be able to get these kind of things done.”
Bippus was unable to give an estimate of a timeline right away, even after Johnston pressed Bippus and said it was “unacceptable” he couldn’t give an estimate. Bippus, and later Reed, brought up processes and timelines that had to do with the Municode platform that hosts the city’s code, saying it could take about a year, which Johnston replied was not what she was asking about. Reed then mentioned there were public hearings that would need to be done after coordinating with Municode, and Johnston reiterated that she was asking about how long it would take for the city to review the code on their own, opining that she and City Clerk Leslie Wilson could go through it “in an afternoon.”
“There’s a lot of things that need to be adjusted, and if we’ve missed these things multiple times, I mean, we just did this a few years ago and we still said homosexuality was a deviant behavior, I think it’s time we take a real serious look,” Johnston said, and then accused Bippus and Reed of “dodging” her question.
Reed denied they were dodging the question, countering that he believed it was an “unreasonable request” to “put us on the spot at a meeting without notice” regarding timelines and her request. After Johnston reminded Reed she met with him earlier in the day, Reed replied with, “Not about revamping the entire code and asking for a timeline.” Bippus then replied, saying he “want[s] to be reasonable,” to which Johnston asked Bippus if he could have a response by the city commission’s next meeting. Bippus replied that he would “have a memo by next week.”
Fourth District Commissioner Carolyn McNary said doing such a review of the code would be “a big deal” and would “take more of the commission discussion.”
“I think it would take more of impact from our city, even to go into changing it, even to make that decision,” McNary said. “That request you made to Joe, I feel, is premature for something that is that intense. There’s a whole lot involved here, even when you’re talking about language, which, if I’m not wrong, is what’s bothered you in all of this.”
After a bit of back and forth with Johnston and McNary over the line in question from the massage code, Reed interjected and said the mayor alone cannot direct the City Manager or any employee to do something, as things need to be done by consent of the entire City Commission.
“If the board directs the City Manager to do that, then yes, the City Manager will act. One commissioner demanding that a city employee do something, and the board acts as a whole,” Reed said before being interrupted by Johnston, who proclaimed that she’d “love to put this question before the board to see who thinks we should maintain language that calls homosexuals deviants.”
Following approval of the permit by a 7-0 vote, Johnston called for a motion on just that, however Reed suggested the commission direct the City Manager by group consensus to look into what a timeline would look like for reviewing the code, doing so without a formal vote. That consensus was reached a short time later.
In other business…
- Commissioners approved an agreement with the Michigan Department of Transportation to cover a portion of reimbursement for acquisition of an easement for the Dr Haines Municipal Airport. The city will receive $257,682 in reimbursement of the $268,347 in expenditures already used for the project.
- Commissioners approved the schedule for a discussion meeting and a public hearing on the Fiscal Year 2027 budget for the city. The budget discussion was set for Tuesday, May 12 from 6-9 p.m., with the public hearing scheduled for the city’s Tuesday, June 2 meeting.
- Commissioners appointed Brooke Carpenter, Bret Mayer and Theresa Williams to the city’s Cemetery Board, with terms to expire March 1.
- Commissioners held a closed session to discuss an attorney opinion. No action was taken following the session.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
