Master Plan Progress Slows As Committee Debates Growth
By Leslie Rott

Worried about a sewer system that is reaching its capacity and community concerns that commercial development on Mackinac Island should be curtailed, the Master Plan Committee has been mired for a year in discussions about how to update its six-year-old master plan. When it met Wednesday, July 12, confusion and a lack of consensus dominated the meeting.

"I guess what I'm searching for is some kind of program," said Mary McCourt Dufina, summing up the frustration. "I don't see where we're going here.

"I agree we have to address development, but there are other things we have to address, as well."

"If we don't react to what the community said, we're not doing our job," said Lorna Straus. Development, the committee decided, must fit within the existing infrastructure of the city. The city's wastewater treatment facility is operating at 85 percent of its capacity, and there is little sentiment that this capacity should be expanded. Much of the remaining capacity is already allotted to platted subdivisions and empty lots, and what little is left is being rationed, in part to prevent a major high-density development from taking it all.

Mackinac Island now thinks of its sewage capacity in terms of Residential Equivalency Units (REUs), one of them equal to the sewage needs of a typical family home. Capacity will allow about 285 more homes on Mackinac Island, but those REUs already earmarked for platted subdivisions leave fewer than 100 for new businesses and homes. They are rationed at the rate of 15 REUs a year.

"We're at capacity right now," observed Chairman Mike Hart. "We have no room for development now."

But Barb Fisher said the city cannot afford to give away the remaining capacity without a fight.

"If we give out all these residency equivalency units, it's like taking our hands off the wheel and letting the plant go out of control," said Barb Fisher.

Based on surveys and input from the community in two master plan public hearings held last summer, the majority of people voiced strong opposition to investing large sums of money to expand water and sewer facilities on the Island.

Mr. Hart lamented that the community doesn't appear to want expansion of the treatment facility, and such expansion would probably be restricted, anyway, because the state park has said it probably won't provide the land needed for it.

"We have been through this and through this and through this and we arrive back at this monthly," he said. "We could say we want another 500 houses built, but we have no way to see it done."

The committee decided that goals and visions for Mackinac Island should be placed close to the beginning of the new master plan, rather than buried somewhere in the middle, as they are in the old document.

The Island has come to a crossroads, said Dan Wightman. The choice is to turn right or left, to develop the Island or "try and keep it as close to the place we all know and love."

Mr. Hart told the Town Crier after the meeting that he hopes to have the Master Plan finished for presentation to the community by fall.

"If we can't do it by fall, we have failed this community," he said.

The committee discussed having another public hearing about the master plan, but were

advised not to by Connie Dimond of JJ&R consulting, who has been hired by the city to facilitate the updating process.

The next Master Plan Committee meeting will be Thursday, July 27, at 4 p.m. in City Council chambers on the second floor of Community Hall. The committee is prepared to vote on the arrangement of information in the master plan at that meeting.