Belding the Cat: Of Mice and Meg Mullendore

[XLFD]

There is an old, short Aesop's Fable titled Belling the Cat, here is how it goes, with the moral to the story attached:

                                 Belling the Cat

LONG ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. Some said this, and some said that; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case. “You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighborhood.” 

 
This proposal met with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said: “That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?” The mice looked at one another and nobody spoke. Then the old mouse said:

“IT IS EASY TO PROPOSE IMPOSSIBLE REMEDIES.”

                             Bleeding Belding

Just before the American Civil War, you may remember from history that a series of violent political confrontations between pro and anti-slavery forces erupted in the Kansas Territory, this period was named "Bleeding Kansas".  Belding, Michigan a small community about half the size of Ludington and located near Grand Rapids, is experiencing political confrontations of a magnitude that could lead to using that adjective for its troubles.  The Ludington Torch has visited Belding before when we looked at the persecution of a citizen who sought information from the City of Belding and was denied that right.

The troubles seem to stem from the new City Manager Meg Mullendore, who came under fire from a variety of sources at the last meeting of the Belding City Council, just a week before she would have her first anniversary at the helm of Belding.  A City Manager is often hired because they possess the ability to be a convenient fall-guy for elected city councilors who may want to adopt unpopular or controversial policies.  For this reason, one should not always blame the City Manager unless they operate at odds with the people that hired them:  the city council. 

If a city council unanimously condones a city manager's actions when the public speaks, the citizens wrath should fall more on the councilors whose employer is obviously just doing their bidding.  In Belding this last week, many people expressed displeasure with what Mullendore was doing, and her past 'criminal' history.   Ironically, when Belding FOIA warrior Kim Orlich was taken to the U.P. by Belding officials for a civil warrant, city officials publicly expressed displeasure with her actions and her past.

The public comment period lasted 41 minutes, punctuated by Councilman Mike Scheid asking at the end if Mullendore would be interested in resigning in light of the statements made.  She was not willing to give it. 

The first problem of hers that was discussed was brought forth concerning her public comments about a local mall's status.  She claimed it was going to close this July at meetings, the owner of that mall stated this was improper of her and that he should have been contacted first, about whether that actually was the case.  It seems likely that the mall will remain open but with different access.

A Belding attorney then made the case that Mullendore regularly handled FOIA issues poorly, stressing that a lot of resources were wasted in the city's actions against Kim Orlich, of which Mullendore commanded.  She expressed her own frustration with getting her own FOIA request completed after waiting four months. 

Although I was not at the meeting, Ms. Mullendore is a public disgrace at replying to FOIA requests.  I submitted three separate FOIA requests in November of last year, including one for their FOIA policy, which I later found at their website.  She replied with one form, over a week late than statute prefacing it with:  "Attached, please find the City’s response. We apologize for the delay as your requests went into our junk mail account due to our span filter." 

I believe she meant "spam", but when you look at one of my simple requests, you may wonder why Belding adopts a spam filter which makes something clearly labeled a FOIA Request, and references that law throughout, sent to a 'junk mail account'. The reply.pdf continued the assault on the people's right to get information by charging me for 12 minutes of a police officer's time and 45 minutes of a secretary's time, as well as a non-incremental charge for paper copies, of which I never asked for in the first place.  The FOIA does not allow for such charges.

Another resident came forth:  "“I am here to express my sheer disappointment with the lack of leadership, the lack of professional conduct, and the unethical behavior of our city manager...This is creating a hostile relationships between business owners and city government.  She’s financially unstable … we as taxpayers, citizens and constituents, want her removed, in no uncertain terms. She’s done nothing positive in this community. She’s destroyed it single-handedly, she’s cost people life-long friendships and she’s torn many homes apart and turned many families upside down.”

And then citizen and business owner Dan Blunt, was for want of a better word, blunt.  Using FOIA, he acquired documents from an investigation performed by the Michigan State Police involving Mullendore and Cassopolis Police Chief Frank Williams.  According to the documents, she was investigated for obstruction of justice, in which a file containing documents of a criminal investigation in regards to an infant death had gone missing after last having been seen in her village office.  They were eventually found under her desk, and she wound up resigning her position at Cassopolis coincidentally. 

Blunt reminded the council of their initial interviews with Mullendore where she dodged questions regarding her past in this regard, and bluntly asked for her resignation.

A total of nine individuals addressed the council and Mullendore during the public comment period. Individuals such as Dennis Cooper continued with their plea that Mullendore resign from her position, or be forced to resign by council vote.  “I urge you to make a motion to call for her resignation tonight,” Cooper said. “That’s what we ask you to do, for the sake of our town, for the good of our people.”  See more of the comments here.

Following public comment, Councilman Scheid accused Mullendore of lying to him.

“You lied to me in your interview when I asked you down in Cassopolis,” Scheid said. “You said there was a gag order on it. There was not.”

Mullendore said Scheid was incorrect, and she did not say she had a gag order in regards to Cassopolis, but that she had a confidentiality clause associated with her departure as city manager of Buchanan, before her time in Cassopolis.

“You asked about Buchanan and I told you there was a confidentiality clause and that I was not allowed to discuss it,” she said.

“As far as I’m concerned, (Mullendore) should be gone,” Scheid responded.

After a tense meeting that followed, Mayor Ron Gunderson closed the meeting by stating that council will evaluate the issue regarding Mullendore during her one-year evaluation on April 15.  It should be noted that she received a 3.3% raise after her six month evaluation.  Shouts from the crowd while the motion to adjourn was made demanded a motion to be made that night regarding the fate of the city manager.  Only Councilor Scheid voted against the motion to adjourn, noting that they did still owe the public more action on the matter. 

After Tuesday evening’s meeting Mullendore told the Belding Daily News that she will not resign and believes she has done no wrong.

“My job performance has not created a situation where I feel I have to resign,” she said. “In a professional capacity, regardless of the innuendos and insinuations that were made, with my merits and willingness to continue, I will not step down.”  The next council session will meet on April 1, at 7:00 PM at the Pere Marquette Depot.

    “IT IS EASY TO PROPOSE IMPOSSIBLE REMEDIES.”

The moral to the Belling the Cat story may seem applicable here since it is impossible for citizens to directly affect a City Manager by calling for their resignation to remedy the terrible job they are doing in their public position.  If the City Manager can effectively appease at least 3 or 4 councilors their job is effectively secure from whatever public unrest develops. 

This is why the City Manager form of government is highly undemocratic.  City manager systems try to get the politics out of city operations for efficiency sake, but when corruption and bad policy is what becomes efficiently ran, the system fails, and is abhorrent to the American way of representative government.  We do not appoint operational managers for our elected governors and presidents, we should not do so for the place where direct democracy should take root, our hometowns. 

Meg Mullendore should resign, but will never resign unless her backing from the Belding City Council dissolves.  Councilor Scheid obviously is upset over the fact that she lied to him, and that his constituents are unhappy with her.  The other four voting members, less obviously, have not yet been convinced that her dismissal will staunch the bleeding and want to give her even more time to make their city a bigger laughingstock. 

In Belding, the citizens have shown that they are not mice, in fact at this meeting they have proved themselves lions.  Councilor Scheid is the bold young mouse proposing the belling, but the rest of the council, at least for now, are just mice.  Show that you are men and not mice:  Bell the cat on April Fool's Day.

[Willy]

Looks like Ludington is not the only town having City Manager problems. You've got to feel a little sympathy for the good Managers who must answer to many bosses. In this case the Council is the blame for hiring the Manager. They did not do a thorough check into her background so this is their fault. Maybe that's why Cities hire professional managers because many ordinary people who are voted in really don't know how Government works so they need help to avoid screwing things up and like you say they also have a scapegoat when things go wrong.

I have to disagree with the old mouse. Things will always be impossible unless they are challenged. How can anyone determine what is possible.

[AQUAMAN]

Well said Willy. The other things to keep in mind are how many violations of law a person may commit and never get caught or charged with, and look fine to the public, when many with inside information know all too well that's not the case. I refer to some that have also violated citizens bill of rights, their constitutional rights, character assassinations, FOIA exemptions and overpricing of fees, and repeated perjury on many occasions right in the courthouse. If these type of deeds are not charged on the person in question, then they appear to be innocent of all such acts, and can assume their appointed duties freely, without any suspicion of any wrongdoing. Any and all council members that also know this, and agree that these acts are necessary and in the line of duty to the city, then they are also guilty by association and complicity. It's been a long 10 years or so to get that bell on that particular cat, and not looking any better into the future.

[Willy]

Very good points Aquaman

[XLFD]

The mouse council I believe is analogous to a city council, many of which will ignore the questionable actions of the City Manager until their indifference comes under scrutiny by enough citizens to reach a critical point.  Until then, they can claim that belling the City Manager is an impossible tax.  But quite often, they are allied with the cat and will act like the elder mouse, until they are forced to gnaw a hole in the wall for the cat to leave the house.

[Willy]

Now I understand about the old mouse.

[XLFD]

If I was on the City Council of Belding and saw her first response to one of Kimberly Orlich's FOIA Request, I would have had a dressing down of her at the next meeting.  This response has been passed to me and is below.

In the first paragraph, she executively changes the established FOIA policy of Belding.  She doesn't have that power, the city council does.  She continues that reworking on the second paragraph, outlawing E-mail FOIAs, requiring a specific form and a signature, and saying your rights to information will be invalidated if you do not follow her arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful protocols.  

She then denies the viewing of the police chief's check in total, because it had some exempt information on it.  The proper thing to do would be to copy the check and blacken the exempt information (if there really was any).