(Un)Welcome to Kalkaska?

A fight is raging for the soul of Kalkaska. But meanwhile, decisions quietly made by village officials might have endangered the town’s future.

By Patrick Sullivan | July 1, 2017

The scandal began with controversy over a Donald Trump sign on a shuddered hotel on Kalkaska’s Cedar Street. That was followed by outrage over hateful Facebook posts by the village president (and owner of the hotel), Jeff Sieting. Things crescendoed when demonstrators took to each side of the street — one group calling for Sieting to resign, the other defending his right to free speech.

Politics have been far from usual lately in Kalkaska.

Meanwhile, as Kalkaska has become the latest battleground in the culture wars between the right and the left, the village is in real trouble. Lawsuits filed in response to Sieting and the council’s decision to cancel health benefits for some village government retirees threaten to bankrupt the small town and potentially force some residents from their homes. 

IT STARTED WITH A SIGN
The flare-up began when residents complained about a sign on a building Sieting owns, the Hotel Sieting, at the southern edge of town. The sign read “FOR NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM PLEASE VOTE 4 TRUMP.” Residents noted that the sign violated a village ordinance that requires campaign signs to be removed within 10 days of an election.

The complaints prompted Sieting to replace “VOTE 4” with “PRAY 4.” Later, in interviews with local television news stations, Sieting maintained that the sign did not violate the ordinance and was protected speech.

Sieting did not respond to a Northern Express request for an interview, and a half-dozen Facebook commenters who came to Sieting’s defense on Facebook also ignored requests for comment. Village manager Scott Yost also did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

The Trump sign was just the beginning, however. What galvanized scores of people to protest in Kalkaska — and call for Sieting’s resignation — were a string of Sieting’s old Facebook posts that came to light following the controversy over the Trump sign.

In one post, Sieting had copied and pasted text that called for the murder of all Muslims; in another, he had encouraged liberals to get a “pet Muslim.” “That way we can thin out you bleeding heart wanna be liberals,” he wrote.

Many of the most inflammatory posts have been deleted, but Sieting’s tone is captured in this post published in January: “President Elect Trump has shown more character in 1 speech than Bush, Obama, & Hitlary [sic] has in their entire political careers. Any of you brain dead morons that cannot see this are beyond resuscitation. He does not have to do half of the things he is doing but has. You asshole demonrats [sic] have overlooked a gang rape of America while you all sat around telling the right ‘Tough shit’ Well here you are you hypocrites. Suck it up snowflakes & sit back & watch how a real American handles the Presidency of the United States of America.”

A VILLAGE DIVIDED
At a village council meeting on June 26, a large group of Kalkaskans faced off with Sieting over his posts.

One person after another stood up to address the council and express frustration that the village president would share violent, racist, and homophobic views on an open forum. They said he damaged the town’s reputation and has scared visitors away.

Sieting sat back and calmly listened to critics.

Near the end of the public comment, three people spoke in defense of Sieting. Among them was Sieting’s brother, who said that Sieting’s Facebook comments were personal thoughts and had nothing to do with the operation of the village. A woman who said she is half Jewish and has known Sieting for years said that she’d never heard him make a racist comment. But nine others criticized Sieting and, to greater and lesser degrees, called him an embarrassment to the village and his beliefs abhorrent.

Cindy Anderson said that although she is not a village resident, she owns property in the county and has for years invited friends to the area — some of whom are not white, Christian, or straight; those friends, she said, would no longer feel welcome in Kalkaska.

“You owe your constituents an apology,” she told Sieting.

Another woman asked Sieting if, after listening to the meeting attendees’ remarks, he had anything to say and whether he could offer any “calming words” to the village.

Sieting, who otherwise said little more than “Thank you for your comment” to each person who spoke, said he would respond “against my better judgement.”

He said, “How many people in the room know me personally? Raise your hands. How many know me just through the recent media blast? … Have I ever committed an act of aggression toward anyone in this room?”

A woman said that he had — through his Facebook comments; he told her to stop talking because he had asked a rhetorical question.

“I think that you will find that the answer is no,” he continued.

Sieting refused to apologize or retract any of the comments he had aired on Facebook. The woman who had asked Sieting for any calming words, replied “That’s not an answer,” and after some more tense debate, the meeting continued.

A PROTEST AND A COUNTER-PROTEST
Kalkaska is no stranger to strained interactions these days. The Friday before the village meeting, Phoebe Hopps had organized a protest on Cedar Street in response to Sieting’s Facebook posts.

Called the “No Hate in Kalkaska Demonstration,” the protest saw crowds of roughly a hundred people form on each side of the street. Those under the “No Hate” banner assembled around the village’s National Trout Memorial fountain on the east side of the street; a crowd of counter-protestors, who gathered in support of open carry rights — the right to openly carry a firearm in public — lined up to support Sieting in front of his hotel. Many of them were armed.

Hopps said the event was mostly peaceful despite interruptions from hostile counter-protestors who she said were there to intimidate the “No Hate” group. She said some of the protestors on her side, part of a progressive group called “Redneck Revolt,” also were armed.

“It was pretty peaceful. We did have a lot of the open-carry people come over,” Hopps said. “I’m not sure what they were doing. It was really about them coming out and screaming things across the street.”

Hopps said the dynamics of the protest showed what a divided place Kalkaska is today.

“It just seemed like a lot of hate on the other side, and that’s exactly what we were protesting,” Hopps said. “We had a really great turnout, and everything was awesome and peaceful on our side.”

Randy Bishop, host of a right-wing radio show that broadcasts from Mackinaw City, helped organize the “open carry” group.

He insists that it was not a counter-protest and occurred at the same time as the anti-hate rally by coincidence.

“We hadn’t had a get-together yet this year, and we simple chose that date, location, and time,” Bishop said. “I didn’t even know the other protest was even going on that night. To be totally honest with you, I would say that it was God’s providence.”

He said his group chose Kalkaska as the site of its get-together to support Sieting because Sieting supports the Second Amendment and President Trump.

Bishop said he also supports Sieting’s positions posted on Facebook. Asked about Sieting’s post about killing all Muslims, Bishop said he suppresses that because he believes Islam is not a religion, but rather, a “power structure created to take over.”

“Do your homework and learn your history,” he said.

“A LOT OF PEOPLE DON’T HAVE A LOT”
Some people who are frustrated with Sieting’s leadership and who question his judgment say the conflict has a silver lining: It’s likely to prompt more people to get involved in village politics.

Hopps said that might be useful, as the accusations of racism might actually be benefiting Sieting because they’re distracting residents from other serious economic problems the village faces.

“It seems like [the village is] in a lot of trouble. We always have to be aware of distractions, and this is definitely one,” she said. “There’s already a group formed about getting active in politics, and I think this may have awakened people. I think that this is actually going to be a really good catalyst.”

Danielle Stein-Seabolt, head of the Kalkaska County Democrats, doesn’t see a silver lining. She said Sieting has only hurt Kalkaska by turning away people who might shop or eat there.

“You want everyone to be your customer. You’re not trying to pick and choose what party someone is who’s walking into your store,” Stein-Seabolt said. “We’re a tourism town, and we need those dollars.”

Stein-Seabolt, who’s got a master’s degree in public administration from Northern Michigan University, lives outside of the village, but she and her husband own property Kalkaska. 

“I would say it’s embarrassing how the village has handled this whole problem,” she said.

Stein-Seabolt noted that when people have complained to the village about Sieting, they’ve been referred to Sieting himself, a move that could be viewed as intimidation. (In one case, Sieting posted what he apparently thought was the phone number of one of his detractors on Facebook; the telephone number, however, was incorrect.)

“To send them to someone who already seems angry, it seems like they’re setting somebody up for a real issue,” she said. “It’s disheartening to think that somebody is basically threatening violence online to people instead of actually getting to the issues of the community.”

Rather than political division, Kalkaska needs better jobs and more businesses; it needs better Internet access, Stein-Seabolt said.

“You look around, and a lot of people in our area don’t have a lot,” she said.

DISASTER LOOMING
Misty Lynn Marshall, who attended both the protest and the village council meeting, said she hopes the controversy gets people to keep going to village meetings and keep a closer eye on their elected officials.

“This has brought me into following [village politics] more than I used to,” Marshall said. “This will cause people to pay more attention.”

People should pay closer attention to how the village is being run because it is on the verge of collapse, said attorney John Di Giacomo, who represents a retired village clerk and other former village employees who have recently sued the village over suspended retirement benefits.

DiGiacomo sent a letter to the village on behalf of Virginia Thomas after her health benefits were cut off by trustees several years ago.

Thomas, a former clerk and village president, retired in 2010; in 1996, she and other employees negotiated to receive lifetime health benefits to be paid by the village.

Whether or not that was a prudent move by the village at the time, a jury, the Michigan Court of Appeals, and the state Supreme Court have found that Thomas was owed the benefits.

Despite the initial finding by a jury in Kalkaska, however, the village continued to pursue a losing case.

The village appealed the jury verdict, and the Court of Appeals rejected each one of the village’s arguments, which meant the village was then on the hook for the plaintiff’s court costs. Rather than relenting after the release of that decision in March 2016, the village hired retired Michigan Supreme Court Justice Clifford Taylor, presumably seeking an inside track to a favorable opinion. The gambit failed. In September, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The Northern Express filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the village to discover the cost of hiring Taylor; it was not immediately fulfilled.

Di Giacomo said that throughout the lawsuit, he offered the village numerous opportunities to settle for an amount that would have been far less painful than what the jury finally ruled.

“They declined to even entertain the offer,” he said. “They said you would have to go to trail and get a judgement against us. … They had plenty of money to pay our client, but they wouldn’t do it.”

The judgement Di Giacomo won for Thomas was over five times the settlement offer, he said.

That forced the village to raise property taxes by 3.8549 mills, a tax increase that officials offset by slashing the budget elsewhere. At a June 12 meeting, the village reduced the millage rates for general, major street, and local street budgets.

Meanwhile, there are three retirement-related cases still pending with identical sets of facts, and the village continues to stonewall Di Giacomo’s clients, the attorney said.

Di Giacomo said if those cases follow the same course as Thomas’s case, property taxes in the village could increase so much that some residents will no longer be able to afford their homes.

“They have played this sort of game of brinksmanship where the end result will be bankruptcy,” he said. “What they said in the past is, ‘Well, we’ll just bankrupt the village.’”

Yost, the village manager, and Sieting said after the June 26 meeting that they would not comment about the pending lawsuits.

TOO MUCH SPENT ON POLICE
Former village trustee Harold Eickholt defended Sieting, saying he believes that, at least, the controversial village president isn’t out to enrich himself through his position.

“I’ve known Jeff Sieting for a long time,” Eickholt said. “I backed him simply out of frustration that the previous two mayors were feathering their own nests.”

Eickholt said he agrees with Sieting’s politics, and he’s got no problem with Sieting’s Facebook posts. He said the Facebook posts that have attracted all of the attention were posted at the height of the election in November when emotions were running high.

But he questioned whether Sieting is smart to risk offending so many people.

“You know, if you’re in business, you don’t alienate half your customers with a sign,” Eickholt said. 

Eickholt said he also understands why the village stopped paying for health care for some retirees. He said the benefits should not have been approved in the first place.

“They should have never got those health care benefits,” Eickholt said. “The town has been on a downhill climb since 1986 when the oil industry packed up and left.”

Of the prior officials he said: “They sold the village taxpayers out. I was on the council for four years, and I never voted for a budget because they were unrealistic budgets.”

Eickholt parts ways with Sieting on how he believes the village should move forward to solve its financial woes, however. When Sieting was elected in 2010, the village employed one officer. Today, they’ve got a village department of five.

“My advice to him at the time was not to rebuild the police department,” Eickholt said. “The village taxpayers are already paying the [county] sheriff’s department for policing.”

Sieting said the village police department has been looked at and deemed necessary, according to the June 12 meeting minutes.

“IT’S AN EYESORE”
Art Smith, a Flint DJ who goes by the name Artimis and who grew up in Kalkaska, read an article about the Trump sign and thought it was interesting. Then he found Sieting’s Facebook page, and he became outraged.

He also turned to Facebook to vent about Sieting.

“I think that the bigger issue here is that we have a political leader, and that what he calls free speech is to spread hate and call for mass genocide,” Artimis said. “I think that that type of disgusting talk is why people think that northern Michigan is racist and homophobic and Islamophobic.”

Artimis predicts the scandal will cause people to avoid Kalkaska, especially minorities.

The Sieting Hotel is as rundown now as it ever was, he said. With or without a Trump sign, the building presents a bad image for visitors who drive into Kalkaska on US-131.

Sieting and his wife bought the hotel in 2010, and the Downtown Kalkaska website still announces that the Hotel Sieting is scheduled to reopen in 2013. From the exterior, there is little evidence of any reconstruction having taken place.

Artimis said when people see Sieting’s hotel and the homemade Trump sign, they must want to keep driving.

“Right when you get into downtown Kalkaska, that’s the first thing you see. It’s an eyesore,” he said. “You look up the definition of an eyesore, and there’s a picture of that building.”