ESCANABA — Proposed changes to the way members are appointed to the Escanaba Downtown Development Authority fizzled this week, but those seeking to join the board will have a new application form to fill out.

The appointment of DDA members has been an issue for the DDA for some time.

Prior to 2022, appointments to the board were made by the city’s mayor with the consensus of council. That led to a lengthy dispute between For the Love of Cupcakes owner Kelli Van Ginhoven and the city, when Mayor Marc Tall refused to accept Van Ginhoven’s application to the board.

“The manner in which these seats are appointed is wrong and needs to be changed so that what happened to me does not happen to anyone else,” Van Ginhoven said at a council meeting in April of 2019.

Tall failed to secure reelection in 2021 and Van Ginhoven was appointed to the board by new Mayor Mark Ammel at the Dec. 16, 2021 city council meeting.

In early 2022, the process was changed to shift the appointment power to the city manager, who was determined to be the city’s chief executive officer and the rightful holder of the appointment power under state law.

At the last DDA meeting on Oct. 27, the DDA approved sending a series of changes that would shift the power of selecting DDA board members to the DDA itself. The changes included the drafting of a new application form, shifting the drop-off location of that form from the city clerk’s office to the DDA office, and creating an application and selection subcommittee of the DDA to review applications.

The subcommittee was to be composed of five members, the city manager, the DDA executive director, and three trustees of the DDA board. In the case of a tie vote on who to appoint, the executive director would vote a second time to break the tie. That decision would then be forwarded to the council for final approval.

“We the subcommittee recommend that control of application and selection for our board be under the jurisdiction of the DDA,” wrote Van Ginhoven, who sat on the subcommittee to rework the appointment process, in an email outlining the changes that was included in Thursday’s city council agenda packet.

Shifting the power to the DDA raised concerns from the council and the city’s attorney about the legality of taking the power from the city’s chief executive officer.

Among those concerns was what happens if the city manager disagrees with a subcommittee recommendation. Public Act 57 of 2018, which outlines how a number of bodies funded through tax incremental fundraising should operate, specifically states “(DDA) members shall be appointed by the chief executive officer of the municipality, subject to approval by the governing body of the municipality.” There is no legal ability stated in the law that would allow any board, other than the city council, to approve or reject the city manager’s choice.

There were also concerns that the subcommittee would only forward a single applicant that was vetted through the review process and not all of the applicants the DDA might have at any point in time. Sue Parker, DDA chair, said she was fine with sending all the applications on to the council.

“We are not trying to tell you who to put on our board. We are trying to give you a recommendation of a person who is applying that is qualified and meets the requirements to be on the DDA board. The final decision is yours,” said Parker, who sat on the committee to review the application process with Van Ginhoven and DDA Trustee Jared Ogren.

Both questions over the legality of the proposed selection process and concerns from some on the council that the move would hinder the council’s ability to make decisions, forced the discussion to shift gears to the newly drafted application itself.

“City council is stymied on the language and the procedure for everything else suggested, however, I believe the council might be willing to approve the new application,” said Mayor Mark Ammel.

Currently, applicants for all of the city’s boards fill out the same application, which is then returned to the city clerk before being sent to all of the council members. The new application streamlined the process for DDA applicants to a single page but changed the location where the forms would be returned.

Council Member Tyler DuBord noted the move to have a separate applications for separate boards was consistent with requirements for the city to achieve full Redevelopment Ready Communities certification status. The RRC program, which is managed by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, fine tunes many municipal processes with the end goal of showing potential developers that a certified city is easier to work with than other potential development sites.

“This is, in essence, moving forward with an application specific for the DDA,” said DuBord.

The only change the board made to the drafted form was to change directions at the top to say the form should be dropped off at the city clerk’s office and not the DDA building itself. As no changes were approved for the appointment process, the application will then be forwarded on to the entirety of the council for consideration.