2013 Ludington Budget: Beyond Expensive Water Closets and Water Tanks

[XLFD]

Monday night, 11-26-2012, I attended the Ludington City Council for the first time in a month to address a couple of topics, the covert end-around the City Manager had engineered to avoid state-reforms of public employee health care benefits, and the annual harbinger of wasteful spending: John Shay's budget.

Granted, the City Manager has help in keeping the reform-quashing secret and in making the budget, but he effectively claims ownership by telling the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) what he wants to, and not what he should.  Perhaps because the citizens might not like to hear about the City administrative staff getting raises for the second time, and the City Council voting unanimously to avoid reform measures that have benefit-happy local governments like Ludington in mind. 

I refused to wear my Ludington Fire Dept shirt, because I have still not received a public apology from anyone in the City of Ludington addressing the previous tirade by LFD's Bob Hannah at the City Council in early October.  I do not wish to be associated with any organization who can tolerate such classlessness, although I can wear my title even more proudly as X-LFD.  But here is what was said, in the video, my words thereafter, and a brief counter-defense to the two people who commented about my words.  Warning:  partial crescent moon alert when I get up.  Belt malfunction.

"My name is Tom Rotta, I live at 137 E Dowland Street. I apologize for missing last meeting, as I have a lot more than 5 or 10 minutes can even begin to address at the public comment section of these meetings. Let me start off by once again exposing how out of touch the architects of policy at Ludington City Hall are with the people that are their employers, and how every citizen of Ludington should be disgusted at the excess they take for granted. This is no better exemplified by the resolution you councilors are to consider tonight that City manager Shay has tried to slip by everyone regarding the opting out of state-employee health care reform passed by state legislators back in September of 2011.
Last December, the City voted to have the City Manager and other administrative staff members pay 10% of their health insurance premiums in 2012, and other non-union hourly employees to pay 7%. By this state law, they should have been paying at least 20% at the beginning of coverage in 2012, and by this law they should be paying this amount in 2013. 20% of premiums, not 10%, 7% or 9%. Tonight, the City Manager will talk of the budget, of spending money wisely and trying to keep the City solvent so that they will not lose services or employees. That will all be hogwash. One of the first votes will be to opt out of this basic reform that was instituted to make public employees more in line with their private counterparts and save the taxpayers money. Basic fairness.
The City Attorney stable of Ludington, 7 members strong, missed advising City Hall about the ramifications of this law last year, making Ludington violative of this law for a full year, even though the concession of raising the premiums up nominally seemed to give a nod that they had heard of the law, but didn't want to follow it fully. Ludington City Hall continues to feel that it can operate above state law, whether it is passing unconstitutional policy, or ignoring clear wording of state statutes.
If you are a private worker, it is likely that you are paying over 25% of your premiums if you are lucky enough to get health insurance, and not working a couple of part-time jobs with no benefits. If you work for this City, you are paying a maximum of 10% on your premiums. If you work in a nice private job, you can probably expect your fringe benefits to amount around to about 30% of your wages. The 2013 proposed wages of the City Manager and his asst. is $136,700 and their fringe benefits are $74,400, that's over 54% of salary, the City Clerk's, DPW employees, Economic Development Director, and City Treasurer's similarly have fringes up to over 56% of wages. That's incredibly high, and needs to be reduced to be consistent with fairness with the people that are your bosses. The citizens of Ludington.
So I encourage all of you City Councilors before me to take a walk around town more than just a couple of times near election time, to get some feedback from the common folks of Ludington. Tell them you considered voting to unfairly let other City employees-- not you honorable councilors mind you-- to opt out of State law meant to even out the playing field for public employees and their benefits and fringes.
Look them in the eye and say you wanted to allow City employees to have low premiums, and that you wanted to give them a package of fringe benefits at levels they were accustomed to. Say that you felt that those City employees could have really used those extra fringes, those lower premiums. But then tell them that you then remembered that your duty was to the people first, and you decided that having City employees pay 20% of their premiums was the least you could do to start the process of making things fair, once again. Because that citizen you looked in the eye almost assuredly had less fringes and higher premiums.
So when you look at this resolution and see it say that the City Council is answerable directly to the City's voters, how can you rationalize that this resolution and severable other recent actions by the council have been cloaked in secrecy and never vetted by the voters? The City's voters wants their public employees paid fairly, not overpaid unfairly.{ They want their City Council to consider actions in an open public meeting with the issues properly broadcast to them well before there is a vote. The City voters want the City of Ludington to follow reforms of our state, not snub their nose at them. Thank you.}"

I included the last couple sentences even though I never got to voice them.  The Mayor pro-tem did admirably well in quashing my ability to finish my speech, just like the mayor.  I still don't know why I keep being singled out for the 'one-minute warning', the 'fifteen second warning' and the cut-off.  The last meeting I was at many other people spoke over four minutes without a warning, spoke over five minutes without being cut off.  I guess it's Ok, after all, none of them have three active lawsuits against the City or have been previously prohibited from coming to the "open" meetings at Ludington City Hall for 14 months for using a legal link to the assessor's site.

The City passed this resolution unanimously, after John Shay said the City was not violating the law because they were already under the 'hard caps' provided by the law last year.  I find that nigh impossible since the fringe benefits of the City Officials were so high, but I will check it out and of course I'll have to do a FOIA because he won't likely show anyone proof of his assertion that is likely wrong.  I think he figured last year's actions taken before Jan. 1, 2012 dropped those hard caps before the ball dropped for 2012.  But we will see.  Either way, legal or not, it remains unfair to avoid the reforms this year.

John Shay went over the budget briefly, then I had a chance to speak on that:

"I have had the opportunity to look over the 2013 City Budget over the weekend and I have plenty of questions and comments, and only 5 minutes tops to do so. I will start off with the one positive aspect I noted: it does budget more money for sidewalks than has been recently earmarked for that tasks. Anybody who walks the streets of Ludington, all too often have to "walk on the streets" due to the absence of sidewalks or proper right of way management by the City. This is unsafe.

Unfortunately, the City has offset this increase by a severe decrease in local road resurfacing, nearly $200,000 less than it budgeted in 2012. The City can ill afford neglecting its infrastructure which is what they have done in the Shay years-- except for the downtown area, where they are planning on putting in $800,000 of public money to fix up the residences and businesses of private landowners. Public money should be used for public projects, whether it be state, county, or city tax funds. Not private interests.

Now I will focus on some of the negative aspects of the budget, stuff that makes me wonder about the competency of the people that make these budgets each year for the City. If they are competent, then I worry more about where all the extra wasted money goes. For example: the City will renovate the men's room at the North concession stand at Stearn's Park for the price of

$34,000. That's right, it's not a misprint, it's referred to twice in the budget: $34,000 for fixing one men's room at Stearn's Park.  The notes say it is in terrible condition. Even if every single thing inside that restroom is fixed, painted, and/or replaced, I can't see the cost being one-tenth of $34,000. Are they going to use solid gold commodes and urinals? 25 K Gold signs, maybe?

There are several houses you can buy within the city limits for under $34,000, but that's what the City has budgeted for fixing up one men's restroom. Someone can make a year's salary by doing a week's worth of work.

One more example of the flagrant disregard the City Manager has for the citizen's money is found in the proposed painting of the water tank out on Brye Road which is the City's responsibility. This public body okayed the spending of $50,000 to paint this tank back in 2001 with Jim Miller as the City manager. With the inflation rate during that time period kicking in, that $50,000 would equal $65,000 today. But is $65,000 what the City manager agreeing to?

No, he is once again unilaterally talking with Utility Services Maintenance, the company that painted the City's two water towers for $1.2 million in 2010-- or were supposed to. They finally painted the Danaher tower this fall, during weather that was too cold for the paint to properly cure, as per the paint's specifications.

But now he is saying that he is amending the prior contract, which was a no-bid contract for an outrageously high figure that this council agreed to, so that the City is painting the Brye tank and is paying only $48,000--- for 5 years. That's $238,000 in total, well over three times what we should be expecting to pay, $65,000. This was as bad as the $1.2 million the City paid for what should have been a $360,000 job. Even more ridiculous, these steel water towers and tanks need only be painted every 20-30 years, not the 10 years John Shay's company insists on, and so all of these projects should not have been tackled until at least 2020, which would have saved the taxpayers about $1.5 million right now which was totally wasted on these repaintings.

Let me also repeat that three lifeguards patrolling the beach performing rescue operations is cheaper than having one and a half beach rangers performing enforcement operations during the summer. It's better for tourism, it's better for protecting our beach from being eroded by frequent, unnecessary ORV use by the rangers, and it stresses rescue not recovery.

{Please review and amend this budget at a later date than today, by the charter you have until the second meeting in December to vote on it. As of now, it is littered with a lot more wasteful spending than I will be able to go through in this speech. I will further critique this budget over the next few weeks on my website, The Ludington Torch, whether it is passed tonight or not.

This type of spending is never warranted.}

Again I was warned and cut off, and my last plea was never heard, not that it would have been heeded.  The budget was taken up and passed, with only Councilor Johnson commending the budget team for their expensive work, er, extensive work on the budget.  There is a lot of work done by the budget team, it's too bad their work is all conducted in private and kept from review by the public. 

 

As you may have guessed $34K men's room repairs and unneeded $238K water tank painting wasn't the only unwise use of the people's money, some more will be developed over the next few weeks.  These expenses seem perfectly reasonable to the 7 city councilors, but what do you think? 

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

23k bathroom... Isn't that kind of like the $200.00 hammers in the federal budget...   you have to acquire a (slush fund) somewhere don't you???

It probably has to do with over priced union labor doing the work maybe?

[Marty Redman]

A 23k bathroom reno is cheap Guids compared to the 34k one envisioned here.  I noticed the councilors remained mum on that subject, even though I did my own research and see that Wanda Marrison, one of the CCs, house has a SEV of $34,000 as of 2011 and Castonias is mid 30s also.  I wonder if they think 34k is reasonable to redo there bathrooms. 

Those guys up there look like fools, esp. John Shay.  Continue holding there feet to the fire, X-LFD.

[XLFD]

When you spend an awful lot on men's rooms, I think we're talking more in line of 'flush' funds. 

By the way, here is the associated reference in the budget, referred to in my presentation:

and

[XLFD]

This also shows $3000 for painting the gazebo and $14,000 for replacing restroom fixtures at two small restrooms, which also sounds like quite a deal for the person doing the painting/installation.  Consider quality toilets and sinks at $100 a pop (and several heavy-use rated models about half of that), you have material costs under $2000, so the rest of the money goes to removal of the old and installation of the new.  This can't be done by one of our salaried DPW, Park, or water plant employees?  Puh-leeze.  I'll volunteer to do it for only $10,000!