The scandal began with controversy over a Donald Trump sign on a shuttered 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.

As investigative reporter Patrick Sullivan writes in this week's Northern Express — sister publication of the The Ticker —politics have been far from usual lately in Kalkaska. And even as Kalkaska has become the latest battleground in the culture wars between the right and the left, the village is in real trouble financially. 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.

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.

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. At a village council meeting on June 26, a large group of Kalkaskans faced off with Sieting over his posts; days before the meeting, a public protest called the “No Hate in Kalkaska Demonstration" saw crowds of roughly a hundred people form on each side of the street, squaring off over the issue.

Misty Lynn Marshall, who attended both the protest and the village council meeting, says she hopes the controversy gets people to keep going to village meetings and keep a closer eye on their elected officials. People should pay closer attention to how the village is being run because it is on the verge of collapse, agrees attorney John Di Giacomo, who represents retired village clerk Virginia Thomas and other former village employees who have recently sued the village over suspended retirement benefits. Despite multiple opportunities to settle with Thomas, the village refused, pursuing the case — and continuing to lose —until all appeal options were exhausted. The judgment 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. 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 says. Di Giacomo says if those cases follow the same course as Thomas’ 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 says. “What they said in the past is, ‘Well, we’ll just bankrupt the village.’”

Read more about the fight raging over Kalkaska's soul — and future — in this week's Northern Express story, "(Un)Welcome to Kalkaska?" The Northern Express is available to read online, or pick up a copy at one of nearly 700 other spots in 14 counties across northern Michigan.