CLICK HERE TO HEAR COMMENTS FROM CITY MANAGER PATRICK JORDAN
The Escanaba City Council voted unanimously Thursday night to deny a request from a lakeshore property owner to acquire about three-one-hundredths of an acre of city-owned property.
The council voted 5-0 after several people spoke against the proposal during public comment.
Those citizens objected on their belief that the city’s charter prohibits the sale of city-owned land without a referendum approved by three-fifths of the city’s residents.
Escanaba City Manager Patrick Jordan says the city was going to give the land to the state DNR, which could then have sold it to this Lakeshore Drive landowner at its discretion. He says the property owners are having a hard time maintaining access to their land because of rising Lake Michigan water levels.
“The boundaries of her property kind of shocked me when I saw the survey,” Jordan told RRN News. “It looks like a paralalagram shape. She just wanted to just buy a small triangular piece of our lot next door to square off her’s. They need access to the back of their property to reinforce it against the high lake levels. That’s kind of what started the whole thing, and it’s kind of morphed into several different arguments over the course of time.”
Jordan says he doesn’t believe that it is against the city’s charter.
“We were just going to ‘quick-claim’ 3/100ths of an acre back to the state, who was the original owner of the property,” Jordan said. “Then the state could do whatever they wanted with it, including selling it to this particular landowner. That was kind of the plan.”
Jordan says there could be a land swap in the future rather than the proposed sale.
Also Thursday night, the city council set January 16th, February 19th, and March 20th as dates for public hearings on the next city budget.
