Tonight at the Ludington City Council meeting they will discuss whether to amend the Workplace Safety Policy, an actual ordinance passed on February 28, 2011 which gave City Manager John Shay the ability to ban anyone from Ludington pubic facilities without any sort of reasonable due process.  The WSP allowed the issuance of a 'letter of trespass' by the City Manager, service to the banned individual by the police, and the only potential of removing the indefinite banishment through a quasi-judicial process adjudicated by any of our contracted city attorneys.

The City Manager invoked this on myself the day after it was passed, after receiving a complaint from Community Development Director Heather Venzke-Tykoski about my Ludington Torch articles.  She also complained about a fictitious third party sighting of me around her property, that supposedly happened earlier that day.  I really had no idea about any of this until after many months of FOIA requests.

The City was sued primarily on the injuries I suffered from this policy, which included a loss of employment I suffered within a week of being negatively portrayed in a City press release, a loss of the right to attend open meetings or inspect FOIA requests, and even the right of suffrage-- I couldn't vote in two elections because I was unable to go to my polling pace without the threat of arrest.  That is voter intimidation of a kind that many thought had been eradicated a half century ago.

The lawsuit over the WSP was settled, with me receiving $15,000 from the City of Ludington, and the only other action was to have the City review the policy (actually an ordinance) to correct its shortcomings.  The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) notified the public of some of the revisions this last Saturday:

The new ordinance allows for some due process for an individual perceived as a threat, injury or intimidation, but still leaves a lot of room for the City Manager to run a kangaroo court for someone who may be exercising their First Amendment rights in protected free speech to be seen as 'intimidating'.  Having an opinion different than the City Manager or the complainer about public policy or official actions can still be acted upon by the City with this revision. 

The proper avenue for correcting the WSP would simply be to repeal the needless ordinance.  Any real threat can be dealt with by already existing rules and laws, we do not have to give the City Manager, the Chief Operations Officer of the City, new powers to intimidate citizens utilizing their Constitutionally protected rights, and disallowing them to enter public facilities that their taxes paid for and unsound decisions like passing ordinances like this are made at.

Speaking of tax money and paying, the minor revisions to the WSP to be discussed tonight cost us taxpayers at least $1500.  These two entries below in the two October 2013 financial reports of the City of Ludington shows them paying our risk management attorneys that amount to re-write the policy.  It would have cost nothing to repeal this bad law, and it won't cost us anything in the future to pay off lawsuits when the City Manager invokes the still-unconstitutional amended Workplace Safety Policy.

Oct 14, 2013 Minutes p. 24

Oct. 28, 2013 LCC Minutes p. 12

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Looks more like $8030 spent on this frivolous WSP to me thus far, boy, are they, (city attorneys), ever milking this and other XLFD issues to the hilt. The City Treasury is literally being robbed over nothing imho. All because Shay needs security, legal briefing and opinions constantly, and babysitting in essence. His paranoia is reaching that of Venzke/Tykoski yet, where does it end? Vanity and condescension are reining high over there, so that transparency is squashed and the public doesn't get wise to the corruption into the future that is highly likely after this scenario.

Without counting all the hours that Shay, Barnett, our City Attorney law firm, Venzky-Tykoski, and other city officials have put into this, the tabulation for Shay's Folly-- the Workplace Safety Policy-- is much steeper than what you say, Aquaman.  I was awarded $15,000 in the settlement, the risk management attorneys spent at least $17,000 on rewriting the policy and defending the Federal case.  Shay was either being deposed or helping to depose me for eight hours, which costs us another $500+ in wages.  That's over $32,500 for shay-ming the City of Ludington by vindictively pursuing a media watchdog.

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