Ludington City Council 10-28-2013: Trick or Defeat!?

[XLFD]

Just three days before Halloween I could almost envision the Ludington City Councilors and the other public officials behind their raised dais as being a dozen monsters and jack-o-lanterns with an infernal light burning inside their heads as I looked up at them at the start of the meeting.  The illusion faded as the business of the meeting got under way, but the frightening aspect of several of them showed during the course of a little over a half hour.

 

 

The night's business was very minimal, but should pick up in the latter two months of the year as budget issues, employee contracts, and raises, and other end of the year priorities come up.  The City approved an Engineering contract bid out to three companies as the major order of business, only paying the bills and zoning reports also being heard.  On a night like tonight, the public comment usually contain the only hope for solid civic entertainment.  I led off with a five minute 're-education lesson' for the officials and the citizens tuning in.  Mayor Henderson, not a big fan of the speaker and deaf to such viewpoints, made sure of that. 

 

But then came another speaker, Jefferson Henry, who grew up in Scottville and has took an interest in the Pere Marquette Bayou issues (regarding dredging and charter boats, as noted elsewhere).  He has been used as a consultant primarily to study the bayou and determine legalities of policies that the City and State are contemplating.  His speech was hopeful for some sort of agreement with the City to get maximal funding from the State, and possibly even the County in order to rejuvenate the bayou. 

 

Though meant to be mainly conciliatory, the challenges to the City that Henry issued in his speech were later attacked by the mayor and city manager primarily, much like City Attorney Wilson did against me and my legal novice status.  The Attorney took seven minutes to attempt to clarify the record as concerns the recent FOIA decision in the Court of Appeals, which effectively declared us both victors in our respective suits.  But as with all of Wilson's previous 'clarifications of legality' he dealt a lot of smoke and mirrors which when reviewed, make up a narrative that does not put the City of Ludington in a good light. 

 

In the following video of that meeting, of note is my speech at the 2:40 mark (transcribed in its entirety below), Jefferson's at 8:00 in (he is welcome and encouraged to develop his ideas here, as he joined the Torch just earlier today), the City Attorney's seven minutes at 19:45 in (great for insomnia, this has been transcribed and will be refuted in a later thread), and the City's leaders arguing Jefferson's points at 26:45

 

 

 

Let me first express my condolences to the private marinas who pioneered the uncharted waters here in Ludington first, making Ludington a hub for recreational and charter boating before anyone envisioned a city marina being built with public funds from the state and federal governments, and constantly upgraded with substantial help from the state DNR.  The Waterways Commission last Friday allowed the continuance of charter boats in the city marina contrary to all past agreements for funding projects and against any declaration of the City of Ludington until two meetings ago to ever allow them to be there. 

Over thirty years, the City has accepted grants and gifts from the DNR while at the same time illegally hosting charter boats in their marina, violating multiple agreements in the process.  Everyone involved in this chicanery over the years should be ashamed of themselves, including all of you councilors and so-called City leaders.  

In June of 2011, when I was in exile from the City Hall due to an unconstitutional workplace safety policy, of which the City refused to defend in federal court this summer, my associate made a FOIA request to inspect the purchase invoices of the life rings, throw ropes, posts, signs, etc. purchased by the City of Ludington in 2011 with the $40,000 the city budgeted for 'water safety'.  This was a very specific request to inspect invoices of how public money was being spent that year, after receiving a tip that the taxpayer's money was being wasted. 

The invoices for purchased equipment sound like something the treasurer or clerk could retrieve in short order to show the public.  Not so, according to John Shay's reply this request took 3.5 hours of someone's time at over $27 an hour with the need to copy 39 pages at $0.25 per page for a total of $91.79.  Needless to say, my indigent associate and my indigent self, could not afford this onerous sum to inspect these records. 

As citizens, we never expected it would take a high paid clerk or treasurer a half of a day to find these recent invoices that we wished only to inspect.  So when John Shay told us of this estimated amount, we declined the offered price, little knowing that the City would ever charge us this cost later on for records we never received or looked at. 

This was typical of the charges they sought in a counterclaim to our FOIA lawsuit from 2011.  If you noticed in last Friday's City of Ludington Daily News, the City Manager put out a press release that was seriously deficient in telling the truth, a recurring  problem from a person who lied in a sworn affidavit to our local circuit court during this lawsuit while furnishing the public with records that he knew were not responsive to our request, but he certified they were. 

The court opinion which is available in full at my website, The Ludington Torch, states very plainly that we, the citizens, prevailed in our original claim for disclosure of the records.  Quote "Here, the record demonstrates that defendant (the City) only produced some of the requested documents after plaintiffs initiated this litigation.  Moreover, it took further filings by plaintiffs before defendant fully produced the requested documents.  Thus we agree with plaintiffs (the citizens) that they were the prevailing party in term of costs, as the action was reasonably necessary to compel the disclosure and it had a substantial causative effect on the delivery." (end quote)

So permit me to disagree with Councilor Taranko when he claimed that this City is transparent in last week’s mayor debates.  Wally has been part of a City Council that has been found guilty by our local court of conducting E-mail meetings where deliberations and decisions of this public body were made outside of the public's view, violating multiple sections of the open meetings act. 

He also passed that aforementioned workplace safety policy, which prohibited a citizen from coming to public meetings, inspecting FOIA responses, going to debates like he was in, and even disenfranchising that citizen from voting multiple times.   And let's not forget, he had the option of ruling on the administrative appeal sent here to open up the business records between the City and Councilor Tykoski's business... [Here's where Mayor John Henderson had me at five minutes, if given a few more seconds to conclude my points, I would have finished with:]

... but just like every other councilor, he declined to do his duty, and it found its way to appeals court, where two years later, the public was declared the victor.

But, the public also lost in that court on the main aspect of the counterclaim we sought to reverse, where John Shay's unlawful charges were afforded for about ten requests that were never delivered to the public.  For that aspect, we will continue to press forward until we can once again claim victory over the City, whether they wish to admit it or not.  And maybe we can then find out what that $40,000 for 'Beach Safety' was spent on

[XLFD]

One thing I must stress to all the voters in Ludington.  Mayor Candidate Wally Taranko was called out on his statement that the City was transparent after I said:  "So permit me to disagree with Councilor Taranko when he claimed that this City is transparent in last week’s mayor debates.  Wally has been part of a City Council that has been found guilty by our local court of conducting E-mail meetings where deliberations and decisions of this public body were made outside of the public's view, violating multiple sections of the open meetings act. 

He also passed that aforementioned workplace safety policy, which prohibited a citizen from coming to public meetings, inspecting FOIA responses, going to debates like he was in, and even disenfranchising that citizen from voting multiple times.   And let's not forget, he had the option of ruling on the administrative appeal sent here to open up the business records between the City and Councilor Tykoski's business..."

Councilor Taranko had the opportunity to refute his and the City's lack of commitment to transparency when the record was presented; he declined.  The City Attorney spent seven minutes spinning the FOIA court of appeals ruling, but he couldn't spare a couple minutes on saying what was wrong with my analysis of the City's lack of openness, and neither could the mayor candidate who says the City is transparent when it obviously is not.

[AQUAMAN]

The body language at times during this meeting were obvious and should be embarrassing to those making them. Look at the 3:16 mark: Shay and Henderson give each other the nod and smirks that the "fix was in" regarding the waterway commissions recent decisions regarding charterboats at the city marina. Again, look at the 4:35 mark: CM Shay again makes big smirks about safety issues. Look again at the 7:30, 7:43, 11:40 marks at all the additional smirks and nods of fixing the agenda. Then again at many marks towards the end of the meeting, CA Wilson gives his varnished opinions of truths regarding many inconsistencies in governing by his boss Henderson, covering up what many know is just false, but he continues his spinning attorney tactics to fend off any more questions about these matters.

[Willy]

I await your rebuttal to the City Attorney's reasoning. He sounds like Obama, trying to give a spin on the details of the City's court defeat.

[XLFD]

I finally finished it here:  clarifying-transparency.

Unfortunately, both the plaintiff citizens and the counter-plaintiff City won in this decision over two separate claims, one by each party.  I have my own legal team working on an appeal to the Supreme Court of Michigan for the result regarding the defendant's claimed FOIA fees, and possibly the record format issue which the City is obviously abusing. 

The security of a record is unchanged whether you give a requester a scanned .pdf copy in a computer file, or a copy of the original.  Yet the hard copy costs $.25, the scanned copy by FOIA allowable fees is free, unless there is exempt material thereon requiring a hard copy to be made (even though the redaction could be accomplished electronically).