Fact Check: Rotta, City FOIA Issues Continue

[XLFD]

The Ludington Daily News reports on Tuesday 3-13-2012, and Rotta, who was never contacted by the quality reporter known as Kevin Branisczeski once again, did not report the full story and broadcast some inaccuracies.  Those are footnoted in red, and commented on at the end:

 

A city resident is again challenging a Freedom of Information Act decision by Ludington City Manager John Shay, who is the city’s FOIA coordinator, and the Ludington City Council again upheld Shay’s decision Monday night.

Tom Rotta is the resident who challenged the decision — as he has for many FOIA decisions during the past year — and the council’s vote supported Shay’s contention that he did provide Rotta with all the records he requested.

At issue, according to Shay, is that the third, fourth and fifth invoices Rotta requested all referred to the same original 2010 invoice for $19,105.52 from Tye’s Inc. to the city for a lettered sign. 1

In a March 1 email to the council’s members, Rotta stated he was appealing to them because Shay failed to produce one of his requested records or certify that it does not exist.

Rotta statements

He did not attend Monday’s council meeting 2 and no one spoke in favor of his challenge during the meeting’s public comment period, but Rotta did provide an email to council members, other city staff and the Ludington Daily News Sunday.

In that email he states that current Councilor Nick Tykoski — who took office in January 2012 — was a member of the Ludington Downtown Development Authority in 2008, as was Ludington Community Development Director Heather Venzke. Rotta said the city council decided to amend its tax increment financing plan that year to provide the DDA with tax revenues for downtown improvement projects. 3

He stated the plan included spending $150,000 for signage during the next few years and stated Tykoski’s company was awarded a $15,001 signage project without a bid or contract in 2009. 4

Tykoski and Venzke are now married and Tykoski abstained from Monday’s vote on Rotta’s challenge.

Before the vote

Councilor Gary Castonia said he believes Shay went above and beyond his duty to provide Rotta with the information he sought and said he believes Rotta’s challenges are wasteful because the most recent caused at least seven 21-page documents about the challenge to be created when no one challenging the decision even showed up to voice their concerns. 5

City Attorney Richard Wilson said he believes the city did not have to provide Rotta with any of the documents he requested because the dates he asked for did not match the invoice dates, but were instead dated by when council took action to approve them. 6

In court

There is currently at least one civil case on the Circuit Court docket that involves Rotta suing the city for what he contends is a FOIA violation involving documents between the city and Tykoski, Tye’s Signs and Tye’s Inc. during a three-and-a-half-year period between Jan. 1, 2008 and Sept. 6, 2011.

51st Circuit Court Judge Richard Cooper, according to the court, has offered 7 to disqualify himself from that case if the parties do not reach a settlement agreement and the case is tried in court.

If that happens, a new judge would be selected.

___________________________________________________

1:  The records he says are the same are these I requested

3) Invoice for $9552.76 for "Downtown Signs" dated 6-14-2010 and given ref. #: 8009

4) Invoice for $9552.76 for "Downtown Signs" dated 6-16-2010 and given ref. # 8009

5) Invoice for $9552.76 for "Downtown Kiosk Signs" dated 8-09-2010 and given ref. #: 74

Gotten from this financial record of the DDA:

 

I would have thought there might be a voided invoice 8009, a non-void 8009, and an invoice 74, (a check is denoted as CK) but what we got was this voided check and check and a vague statement (not an invoice).  No invoice, check or statement 8009 or 74 was included.  Shouldn't this at least be explained?  This is what I was requesting in my appeal-- certify that the invoice's do not exist or have been lost or destroyed.  Was that difficult to do?

 

2- Perhaps the threat of arrest on entrance into the City Hall by the appellant was a factor?

 

3 & 4- I was surprised that the LDN disclosed this, but it was a very incomplete disclosure and colored by the fact that it was part of my statement not verified by the reporter to its accuracy.

 

5- Rotta maintains the City had no reason to create those documents or the power point presentation, as it was totally irrelevant to the point of that appeal they abandoned when I didn't show-- perhaps it was that whole threat of arrest and incarceration thing again due to that law you passed, Gary.  The City Manager even ignored my request to attend that meeting via written permission, but why engage in technicalities when it doesn't suit your purposes.

 

6- This is pure drivel by the purest driveler.  These are records described by the City DDA's own financial records, and if their dates don't match, perhaps the DDA administrator should be better at dates and organization, or is that asking too much, or threatening in some way?

 

7- This is true CC Judge has offered to disqualify himself, but the junior reporter makes it sound as if he did so because he didn't want to oversee the case, not that because his son was on the Defendant's legal team.  The offer was also accepted, and we had to remind the Circuit Court when we saw this in the paper, that they needed to find a judge, for there will be more litigation going on.

 

Once again, a great example of reporting by the Ludington Daily News... of what not to do.

[masonco]

I read the article carefully. I found it interesting they dared mention that Heather and TJ are now married!

Also they did mention you sent emails stating your position. I thought they must have had an independent legal advisor to help them write the article in a way to avoid being hauled into court yet decrease their fear and trembling as they bow down to his majesty. ..King Shay.

All in all, I felt that while they bowed to pressure to submit the news, they were less favorable towards King Shay. Even as they tried to implicate you XLFD. Most not in the know would read that you were not there because King Shay did not want you there and that you did try to communicate your requests and response.

(disclaimer for those from King Shay's court) I am not being influenced by XFLD in any way, just posting observations of the past few years when a member of Ludington talks, from reading newspapers and of course getting UNBIASED information at this site.) When I worked in Ludington, I heard many commoners who live in Ludington refer to the great  KING SHAY and his court jesters aka the board. (referring to those who work for King Shay and not the citizens of Ludington)

[XLFD]

It did help that I sent the Sunday E-mail to the LDN, WMOM, the Traverse City Record Eagle and the Manistee News Advocate, so if the LDN varied too much from my note, they at the LDN may have made eyebrows raise in the other sources if they left out some of the material. 

But check out the E-LDN today, for some reason they have retracted the FOIA article which I copied and pasted from there to here yesterday.  It leads one to ask why. 

Thanks for your unsolicited testimonial Masonco.  The only other thing is I have to mildly disagree with in it is that this forum is not immune from bias, particularly since many of the comments are based on (we would hope) reasoned opinions, usually not pure facts.   There is some editorializing on topics, and that generally includes the writer's bias.  The facts should back the bias when it occurs for good posts.

[AQUAMAN]

Check, Masonco. You did it again. Thanks.

[XLFD]

Here's the 3-12-2012 Meeting:

Untitled from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

At around ten minutes in, Richard Wilson says: 

We have another appeal for Mr. Rotta and that's in your packet, CM Shay has explained what is going on here. 

In my view, technically, we didn't have to provide Mr. Rotta with any of these invoices because he's given us, in this case, so much detail that he's got the detail wrong.  If you look at his request, for example, he's given us not only invoices, he's given us the reference number and he's also given us dates.

The dates that he's given us, however, does not match up with any of the invoices, the dates that he's given us match up with the dates of the City Council action approving the payments of the action, not the date of the invoice, and so as described in the FOIA request, these documents do not exist, however, using a little bit of imagination we were able to ascertain what he wanted and City Manager Shay has provided these invoices to him, you have copies of these attached in your packet. 

The invoice #5 which seems to be the key element in the appeal is the copy in your packet marked #5 is the same invoice as invoice #3 and #4, so we didn't give Mr. Rotta 3 copies of the same invoice-- he apparently thinks we're hiding something from him (chuckle), we aren't because these are the only invoices we have.  And I've checked with  City Mgr. Shay, as far as we can tell we've provided him with every invoice he has requested relative to his request and on that basis there is no reason to overturn the City Manager's decision because there is no more invoices to give Mr. Rotta, he has them all.. he has all of them listed here other than the dates which are wrong.. if you ignore the dates the amounts, the reference numbers match up and as I said before they simply appear to be copies of the same invoice, we had an original invoice for $19,105 we paid half of that, there was a subsequent payment, but that was the same.

So it is difficult to understand what he's appealing, but that's the best I can do for you in explaining.  There are no documents that are described as invoices for these amounts with these reference numbers other than the ones we released. 

 

Editor:  That last statement was pretty much what I was looking for, but the records we received were not invoices, but checks and a statement, so why can't John Shay say that "invoices" for these transaction either never existed, or were lost or destroyed.  This is a necessary duty of a FOIA Coordinator when a record is not produced.

[XLFD]

Dale, you may have the answer to this question:  Why did the Ludington Daily News retract this story in their E-edition?  Some pressure from the Tykoskis, maybe?  Here's where it was :  http://www.ludingtondailynews.com/news/64331-rotta-city-foia-issues...

But now it's went blank.  What happened?

[XLFD]

Good luck to Larry in his endeavor.  He seems intelligent enough, but he needs a little more soul, IMHO.  If he captures that unachievable ideal of being truly unbiased, I wish him the best.

[Willy]

Best of luck Larry. Are you going to invite all of us to join?

[XLFD]

This request was basically to find why the City doesn't have invoices that the financial records of the DDA explicitly say exist.  That they cannot produce "Invoice 8009" or "Invoice 74" and substitute two checks and a statement with no reference to those numbers, should make even a XLFD-skeptic wonder what's up with these records. 

This request and appeal are tantamount to the actions I take after my current Circuit Court appeal to seek criminal sanctions against the record-holders that aren't keeping the records properly for the people's perusal.

[Willy]

X

One thing I noticed is what  appears to be a flagrant violation of Ludingtons ordinance was the fact the some of the payments for work was divided into more than 1 payment in order to  bring each payment down to under the $10,000 level so the work to be performed would avoid the ordinance that would require work to be done under bids and contracts.

[XLFD]

Yeah, Willy, that was done on a couple of occasions, after Tye's got the signage contract. 

Dale, Larry, Wanda, Robby and the like want to quibble all day about minutiae of what I can and can't do under the letter of trespass, even though it's usually something the WSP prohibits.  But obvious violations by Nick and Heather are not even defended, or if they are, it's because of my threatening and intimidating behavior. 

But what is more threatening or intimidating than having your rights taken away from you for doing nothing other than report what certain public records indicate.

[AQUAMAN]

So right Willy, we noticed this some time ago, and mentioned it many times, then the COL says these documents still do not exist, or are lost, somehow, someway, but methinks they have been shredded, to the COL's advantage, does anyone else suspect the same? Or are we all just ROBOTS? To infer that all is always okey-dokey? Obviously Dale always thinks things are ok at city hall, that is probably what he get's paid for nowadays, not just in the past, but always, so his thinking must just be right too, right?  Dale and Larry just add credence to the fact that the Torchers are always wrong, even if in fact they produce the critical evidence, and that spin-doctor say-so makes it a fact. So, which story sounds more credible?

[Willy]

Dale
There you go again. Dancing around the issues. You never want to address  information presented about possible misconduct by Government officials. Instead you throw up a smoke screen by making silly statements. "Mock trial", "snickering about people", "laughing at city officials", most everything you say is contrary to what really takes place. Your entire emphasis on this forum is to reflect and counter any information presented about Government officials and focus on X. Your not interested in the lack of bidding for  contracts, nepotism, unconstitutional laws, possible collusion between officials, possible misconduct by officials, the appearance of splitting invoices to avoid bidding requirements, potential misdeeds by the representative attornys, possible judicial misconduct, possible FOIA misconduct, or any number of potential problems displayed by those in power. But you want to focus on X not contacting Shay so he can enter City hall, which I might add, was an unconstitutional abuse of power by the City. Any or all of the possible wrong doings that have been discussed should make any person take note of what is going on but you and a few others just don't seem concerned. Why is that.  It's a good thing X has supporters. Because of people like you, who endorse and condone, government corruption, others have to step up and act like adults and be the concerned citizens. And again Dale, are you in any way connected to any City of Ludington department or legislative body or the Ludington City attorney's office?