An Early Year Resolution, for September

[XLFD]

In tonight's city council packet, the city council is set to approve a sizable MEDC grant according to their agenda.  They include several relevant documents beginning on page 37, a two page memo from the community development director, a one page resolution for the occasion, and a dozen pages of the State-drafted agreement between the City and the Michigan Strategic Fund.  

To receive the grant the governing body of the City (the city council) must approve it through a resolution.  Therein was the problem-- here's my public comment tonight admonishing the city council and other officials not doing their due diligence in keeping Community Development Director Heather Tykoski (in bumblebee outfit below) properly under supervision:

XLFD:  "A recurring theme that never goes away in the City of Ludington's business is the theme of the rubber stamp approval.  It's fully on display tonight with the resolution set to accept a Community Development Block Grant that should warrant concerns about the prior process, which was extremely questionable in its own right when I approached the council earlier with my specific concerns.  Community Development Director Heather Tykoski has drafted a memo which was misleading just like the initial application.  First, she informs the city council that they have no alternative than to pass the resolution provided. 

Is choice but an illusion to the Ludington City Council?  No, it isn't, you have every power to vote against the resolution provided in the packet, and I almost guarantee that once you hear me out, that you won't vote for it tonight.  

Heather Tykoski has a long history of taking shortcuts and committing unethical and unlawful acts as a city official.  Two months ago she was lying to the media that the splash pad had a permit to discharge chlorine-laced raw wastewater into PM Lake. 

It wasn't in the application Heather drafted, the EGLE says no such permit exists, a FOIA to the City shows there was no effort on the City's part to get a permit.  The City may have damaged the fragile PM Lake ecosystem in those two months and it's all because nobody fights for any oversight on certain administrative officers who have solid records of duplicity.

Tonight this resolution comes before the council and you should notice a couple of additions that Nostradamus would be proud of on the resolution (p. 39). 

The city clerk has already signed the resolution.  How can she do that?  The votes are forecast to be seven to nothing for it.  Remarkable.  Councilor Winczewski is recorded as making the motion and Rozell seconds the motion.  It must be preordained.  

The most telling thing is that the resolution you are set to pass tonight, posted for over three days unchanged, was adopted already on February 10, 2020-- look at the date on the bottom. 

Heather Tykoski has pulled another shortcut and fast trick on the people and this council by putting a meaningless 7 month old resolution in front of you that you would have undoubtedly partially read and passed again tonight without a thought, because you people are too intellectually lazy to do your jobs.  Or worse, you put trust in the wrong people.  If you don't create and pass a new resolution that accepts the grant, you will have did nothing tonight other than repass February's resolution which goes nowhere in accepting the grant."  

Will my due diligence get me anything but scorn from a city council who would have almost certainly passed this resolution without a care had I not reminded them this is not a grant-acceptance resolution by any means?  Or will they gather their wagons around the woman responsible for poisoning the fishing waters of PM Lake, fabricating her own permit to do so, then bringing a stale resolution before council claiming there is no alternative than to pass it?

[Freedom Seeker]

You say it like it is, XLFD, bold and without tiptoeing through the tulips. It needed to be said, especially about the clueless councilors being led by a duplicitous (and/or also clueless) administration who blindly follow along "without any alternatives" to decisions dictated by the administration. I'd be surprised if your comment is even read or included in minutes in a straightforward recording.

[XLFD]

Mitch Foster read both of my comments last night, they have been good with putting them verbatim in the notes during the pandemic, possibly because I send a copy to the clerk.   Beyond that, nobody at city hall wants to do the adult act of recognizing corruption and fighting back on it so that the citizens of Ludington are no longer under its yoke.  The second comment clarified the problems of Jason Adam and his rental rehab grant and let them know that their inaction was just as bad as the acts they overlook:

"Allow me to modify a quote by Albert Einstein so that it's less global in nature:  "The City of Ludington will not be destroyed by officials who do evil, but by officials who watch over them without doing anything."  I bring up Jason Adam's rental rehabilitation again and I will briefly list the troubling aspects where city, state, and federal guidelines were actively ignored in securing about a quarter million dollars for him and his friend running a non-existent construction business.  

Mere months before he started his application for rental rehab funds, Adam had all of his four studio apartments rented out, as they had been for awhile until he learned more of rental rehabs and the easy money he qualified for if he kept some vacant.  Adam did not get approval for the application from the DDA Board noting his abstention and reason why.  He would have still needed special approval from HUD because his board was part of the approving authority.  Ludington's protocols even claim that such a conflict of interest is prohibited.

Adam then gets a construction estimate from his personal buddy Brian May and his unlicensed LLC and, surprise, the one page estimate puts him close to the maximum amount of money he can qualify for.  Adam seeks no other bids even though policy states he must have at least two bids from qualified licensed contractors.  He had none, just a list of expenses from a friend.  

This knowledge was at your fingertips before the last meeting, your willful disregard of the required protocols and ethical concerns illustrates the extent of the City's self-destructive behavior in corruptly assisting their fellow officials in fraud."

[Willy]

Fantastic work X. Your investigative powers are getting very good. She has been sneaky and underhanded almost from day one. I also think poppa Henderson and his cronies are up to their eyeballs in all of this. They can't give up the control and influence they perceived belonged to them. They also think they know what's best for all the silly taxpayers who keep voting these kind of conniving back stabbers into office. Did Heather think she could really get away with this. The answer is yes but only if X had not done some research into her corrupt paperwork. Well done X.