Dog Park Fencing

[XLFD]

On October 8, 2007 the Ludington City Council enacted Ordinance 170-07 establishing a Dog Beach adjacent to the Loomis Street Boat Launch.  Roughly, 1.5 years later, Planning Commissioner Joe Moloney brought forth to that same City Council the idea for a dog park and invited public opinion on the topic.  That idea was limited to City subcommittees and in December 2009, the "private" Dog Park Committee headed by Planning Commissioner Joe Moloney received permission from 7 other Ludington public servants to use an acre of publicly owned Cartier Park as another dog park.  The inherent problems associated with that transaction was explored in some detail in Hot Dogs, a Sloppy Joe, and One Sweet Pickle.

 

Further problems with the construction of that dog park were discussed here Today I Witnessed a Rape, and most of those were discussed contentiously in that thread.  My dissention with the methodology behind the entire City's loss of this acre of public parkland was interpretted by many a dog lover as animosity against dogs or the concept of a dog park. 

 

But it wasn't, it was about the ethics behind Mr. Moloney and the City Council's collusion to convert an area of a City park to a different use without a vote by the people of the City, as required by City Ordinance.  Can one expect other parts of this covert land grab to be as legit?  Such as the purchase of the dog park fencing?

 

From the articles put out at the time, the amount needed to put in fencing for the dog park would amount to about $15,000.  This would require the City to go through the competitive bidding process as per Section 2-4 of the Ludington City Code involving sealed bids, contracts, etc.  As we have seen with the advent of the John Shay era, these laws meant to keep costs low are avoided by the City Manager whenever possible.  He is not in violation of his oath of office for violating the laws he is under duty to uphold, simply because of the fact that he refuses to take the oath of office.

 

But is the City the purchaser of the fence if the private Dog Park Committee is in charge of getting the dog park underway?  Good question, let's look at the records to see if this defense would hold.  On June 24, 2010 the Community Foundation, the local non-profit receiving donations for the dog park submitted a check for $10,000 to the City  Letter and receipt/check.  In four days the City drafted a check to Fisher Fence for $10,000  check request 6-28-10.  This was not payment in full. 

 

The Community Foundation tendered another $10,000 check to the City dated 11-11-2010 with the note "final payment on fences"  Check and note 11-11-10 and receipt 11-15-10.  The City then drafted a check for $4000 to Fisher Fence dated 11-17-10.  Nine days later, at around the same time the dog park was finished Fisher Fence sent a statement to the Dog Park Committee (attn: Joe Moloney) for the last necessary payment that they needed, $1350  11-26-10 Statement.  According to the records supplied to me from the City, this last amount was never paid for by the City  according to this FOIA reply 2012 3-19 Fence and Signs.pdf.  No checks were requested, and no check stubs paid for this last amount.  From a previous request, however, it shows that the extra amount was paid by the City to this "contractor"  1099 Form FF 2010. 

 

So the City received two $10,000 checks as donations from the Community Foundation.  The City then spent $15,350 for the fencing of the dog park using Fisher Fence as a contractor.  But contrary to City policy, they failed to establish a contract with that company, or do competitive, sealed bids with other qualified fence companies for a project costing over $10,000.  And where did the remaining $4650 go?  For Ludington DPW labor that denuded the dog park area?  Aren't these people on salary?

 

Even though they used a non-profit organization to try and skirt the ethical issues of the Cartier Park land grab, it does not dismiss the City of Ludington from breaking the laws in their own City Code regarding bids, contracts and the conduct of public officials.  I'd like to call these people dogs, but I like dogs too much to do so.

[Sweater Cows!]

I used to think you were a dog hater, I was pretty mad when you started getting into things about the dog park. But now I understand that it has to do with the lack of proper procedure in setting up the dog park. Yes, dogs are better than those people, actually to me dogs are better than all people.

[XLFD]

The thing is , if Joe Moloney and his friends wanted a dog park outside of a city park, they could have went through the processes they did and only have to deal with Joe's Planning Commission to solve the zoning issues that may have came up. 

As it were, the only proper way, and within our long standing City Ordinance's policy, was to require a public vote on the change of use of the parks, and this could have been done in the municipal elections November of 2009 with little extra expense.  Actually, both sides of the issue would have likely spent a lot more than what it would have cost to put it on the ballot in getting their side's information out.