A brutal murder, politicizing a family’s pain, scuffing the thin blue line

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Leelanau County sheriff Mike Borkovich flanked Donald Trump at a campaign appearance in Grand Rapids on April 2, where Trump used bombastic, anti-immigrant rhetoric following the murder of Ruby Garcia by an undocumented immigrant in late March. The victim’s family accused Trump of politicizing their pain. He said that he had spoken with the Garcia family, which he did not. At the Leelanau Board of Commissioners meeting on April 9, some constituents are expected to voice their displeasure with Borkovich traveling, in uniform, to stand with Trump.

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April Fools Day: Leelanau to solve housing/workforce crisis by housing workers at Sugar Loaf encampment

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Leelanau County businesses have found an innovative solution to the region’s vexing affordable housing and workforce recruitment crisis. County government, chambers of commerce, and local businesses will team up to build a vast tent encampment at the vacant and abandoned Sugar Loaf property, which was once a cherished ski resort and Leelanau’s biggest year-round employer before gangsters, con-men and real estate tycoons closed it for good nearly 25 years ago. “We had the same housing and workforce crisis in the metropolis of Traverse City,” said Rikardo Liko, former Traverse City chancellor and Leelanau’s current interim county administrator. “But the tent encampment in the pines in the Grand Traverse Commons solved all that. We found that hardworking people who can’t afford to pay $3,000 per month for rent in northern Michigan, and can’t afford a $1 million home on the water, could instead live in tents in the woods and keep our tourism and service economics afloat.”

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Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail hits roadblock on northeast expansion

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A simmering feud between Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and TART Trails, and residents of Little Traverse Lake who oppose the northeast expansion of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail is once again heating up. The popular, multi-use bicycle trail, which stretches 22 miles from Empire through the National Lakeshore to Bohemian Road, is set to expand by 4.25 miles northeast to Good Harbor Trail. Tree clearing and construction are slated to begin this fall, and the extension will open in late 2025 or 2026. But early this month the Little Traverse Lake Association released an environmental impact study the group had commissioned from Borealis Consulting, which found that Segment 9 of the Heritage Trail would require the removal of nearly 7,300 trees and trespass through sensitive wilderness, wetlands and dunes. Of the nearly 7,300 trees identified in the Borealis study, 82% are saplings or small trees with diameters of 10 inches or less. The Park has directed trail designers with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to “meander around the largest trees.” The Lake Association unsuccessfully sued the federal government in 2015 over the adequacy of the National Park’s 2009 environmental assessment.

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Twin Flames, a Suttons Bay cult, an inferno of controversy

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Perhaps no Spring 2020 COVID-19 transplants to Leelanau County were as mysterious, and now as controversial, as Jeff and Shaleia Ayan, the Suttons Bay residents and relationship coach gurus behind Twin Flames Universe, which a December 2020 Vanity Fair article called “a sort of therapeutic-spiritual reality show.” Last week the streaming service Netflix launched a scathing, three-part documentary series titled “Escaping Twin Flames,” which casts the Ayans’ online community as a cult whose leaders prey upon members and charge them thousands of dollars while pressing them into toxic relationships and manipulating their emotional and mental health struggles. Twin Flames has also attracted negative national press from Vice and Time magazine.

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Nicaraguan priest meets Pope in Rome after taking refuge in Empire

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Priest José Luis Díaz Cruz and Sergio Jose Cárdenas Flores, political asylees from Nicaragua, have been living in the rectory at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Empire since March after they escaped the autocratic Ortega regime, which has cracked down on dissent and persecuted the Roman Catholic Church. Originally from the city of Matagalpa, Díaz and Cárdenas were among dozens imprisoned for six months in the capital of Managua after living under house arrest in their church last August. In February, they were among 222 political prisoners flown to the United States after being forced to relinquish their Nicaraguan citizenship. “We’re offering them a safe place to be,” said Rev. Ken Stachnik at St. Philip Neri. “This is important because it’s in the gospel. We are watching out for those who are lost and have no place to go.” The push to bring the Nicaraguans to northern Michigan came from Reverend Wayne Dziekan with the Diocese of Gaylord and who co-directs the Justice and Peace Advocacy Center, an organization which helps asylees and migrant workers in northern Michigan. Matagalpa and Gaylord are sister diocese.

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Does Leelanau Conservancy’s Palmer Woods mountain biking represent development or environmental stewardship?

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An important question hovers over the Leelanau Conservancy’s push to build a 10-car parking lot east of Wheeler Road, which mountain bikers will use starting next year to access the expanding Palmer Woods trail network. Neighbors opposed the initiative, but the Cleveland Township Board sided with the Conservancy and greenlit the project on Nov. 14. Do mountain bike trails and infrastructure in preserved natural areas reflect development (most mountain bikers drive fossil fuel-burning cars to access trails)? Or does the sport increase environmental awareness? In other words, does mountain biking compromise or help the environment?

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Centerville Planning Commission should exercise care when considering proposed Amoritas / Under Canvas resort

The Centerville Township Planning Commission will meet on Dec. 4, in the upper level of their Township Hall at 6:30 pm. Although that meeting is not yet the public hearing on the issue, on the agenda is the Amoritas Vineyards/Under Canvas Proposal for a commercial resort featuring 75 fixed platforms for tents, each of which will have its own plumbing with toilet and shower (water heated by individual propane tanks), and wood-burning stove. These and related infrastructure including a new drive with an estimated 100-car parking lot and several other buildings, if approved, would be on the Amoritas Vineyard’s property located on Amore Road.

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Leelanau farming families historical series

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During 2023, Suttons Bay resident Rebecca Gearing Carlson has researched and written a series of narrative historical pieces about Leelanau County farming families, which we have published in the Glen Arbor Sun. Read those stories here.

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Joys and perils of open water

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Six days in July, three emergencies on lakes near the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, two cases of people not wearing life vests, and one death. These stories yield cautionary tales about enjoying but respecting these waters which are beautiful but can prove perilous, too. Read about the young men rescued in Lake Michigan floating in inner tubes one mile off Platte Point, a death on South Bar Lake in Empire, and a family that survived a boat fire on Big Glen Lake.

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Fighting Climate Change, one solar array at a time

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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel met with local business owners and nonprofit leaders at the solar array on the corner of M-72 and Bugai Rd in southeastern Leelanau County on Friday, July 7. Nessel said that renewable energy generators such as this solar array are an important tool to combat man-made climate change, which has affected Michigan in recent years in the form of rainstorms and flooding, heat waves, toxic algal blooms, rapidly fluctuating Lake Michigan water levels and beach erosion, and more ticks and tick-borne diseases. Warmer and shorter winters have also put northern Michigan’s cherished cherry crop at risk, and smoke from Canadian wildfires has polluted the air across the Midwest this spring and summer. “Climate change is real,” said Nessel. “And if you didn’t believe it before, you ought to start believing it now.” Under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and a Democratic-led state legislature, Michigan’s climate plan to wean utilities and industry off fossil fuels and coal- and gas-fired power plants is among the most ambitious nationwide.

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