Ludington City Council 6-10-2013: Citizens on Patrol

[XLFD]

There were some fireworks occurring at the June 10th meeting of the Ludington City Council.  The first three public comments all took aim at what many citizens feel is poor public policy adopted by the City of Ludington, and each felt strongly along those lines about three very different topics.  The regular order of business resumed after these three speeches. 

 

Other than that, the City Council gave first presentations of tax levies that will keep the rate the same over the next year for four millage rates.  You may wonder why they have held these hearings for the last five years when they don't change the rate, and the reason is fairly simple.  If Headlee rollbacks occur to these tax rates due to slumping real estate markets (as it did the first three years), this will effectively keep that tax rate at the same instead of rolling back, and act as truth-in-taxation hearings.

Greedy local governments that decide to keep your tax rates up while your property values go down, run counter to how government should operate.  Since property rates are slightly up this year, the City will keep the same tax rate without a "truth" meeting, because they are at the upper limit of what they can tax you by state law. 

 

The Council also agreed to end an agreement they had with Scottville to loan out the Ludington police chief and others to take care of some of Scottville's police duties.  LPD Chief Mark Barnett was still paid his regular salary by Ludington taxpayers while he was overlooking Scottville nearly half of the time.  Aren't we Ludington citizen's so nice to our neighbors?  Except, that Chief Barnett left behind a few useless stop sign placements and a bizarre Registered Sex Offender Ordinance that puts police duties onto landlords. 

 

Councilor Holman showed her increasingly odd behavior during the council's decisions to place signs in the right of way, stating that she always has been against such placement and voted against such practice twice.  Someone should have told her campaign operatives during the city election in 2011 (and almost all the candidates running last year); her (and their) election signs littered the roadsides of Ludington.  This is within zoning rules for temporary signs in Ludington. 

 

                                              Part of Ludington's proposed historic district

 

The first speaker ( 2:00 in, who was also reinforced by Natalie Wroble) spoke up about the proposed historical district and about a letter she received from the City about her sidewalk.  Nancy Mustaikis strode up to the podium with two large binders filled with papers, and spoke first about the sidewalk issue, then told about the 200 page study and draft of the committee, and the 117 pages of guidelines developed for future maintenance work in the proposed historic district.

Just after, at 6:45 into the video Ruth Storvik took the podium and directed her concern over the adult day care facility amendment to the city's zoning ordinances.  She took issue with two parts of this ordinance, that the operator of the facility uses the home as a residence, and that they were limited to four clients.  Her reasoned appeals fell to almost deaf ears, as the council passed it unanimously later on, disagreeing with Mrs. Storvak's conclusions.  Seven minutes into her presentation (13:46) the Mayor asks her to wrap it up in a half minute, 105 seconds later, she ends her plea at eight minutes 45 seconds. 

 

Next up was the five-minute-man (sorry, ladies) who actually took just a couple of ticks over the 5:00 mark, channeling the rhetoric of a rabid environmentalist I took the city to task for its atrocious record of neglecting the safety of not only its citizens, but also the contractors they hire (this starts at (15:40) You will have noticed beforehand that I have donned a new revision on an old shirt.  I was complimented by the fire chief on the way out about it:

 

 

I'm Tom Rotta, Ludington citizen from Dowland street,

In the news over this last week, a local family business owner took out a petition for an injunction to temporarily halt the reconstruction of the Washington Avenue Bridge, citing safety concerns and fears for his family and the  community.  The City of Ludington is a direct competitor against his business, a force driving his and other private marinas in Ludington to the point of insolvency due to the incredible amount of State DNR money the City's marina regularly gets for improvements and maintenance, but he wasn’t afraid of more unfair competitive practices.

This arm of the Pere Marquette Lake has been the drainage field for various toxins, many released during less enlightened times by businesses from Ludington's past in that area.  It also drained a lot of untreated sewage and runoff during the flood of 2008.  The marina owner had surveyed his lot adjacent to the bridge recently, and found he was hampered from making his own improvements without cleaning up the toxins.  Arsenic and Benzo A pyrene were in the substrate at levels above allowable human contact, and doing any project that upset the bottom would require costly mitigation of the problem.  

The City meanwhile planned on uprooting the existing bridge out of the water, along with tons of sediment, without telling their contractors of the dangers inherent or using any special means of controlling the contamination so that it couldn't spread out over Pere Marquette Lake and into Lake Michigan.  It's not a stretch to say that Pere Marquette Lake would have become Poison Marinade Lake.  Fortunately, the City has decided to put in precautions, and the citizens will continue to monitor these actions to make sure that our city is not corrupted by the corrupted of our city.   But this isn't the only time our City's management has decided to overlook the safety of the citizens and contractors.

Just back in 2012, the City of Ludington worked on Dowland Street in order to reconstruct  the street and fix several problems.  They hired Hallack Contracting to do the work, and this company set up its main base to do this work on City property at 428 E. Dowland Street.  On this property Hallack set up a portable office, parked equipment, dumped fill-earth, piping and other materials.  The City Manager encouraged Hallack to set up there, and according to their company president, they were not told of any problems with the place.  By the end of the project, the land at 428 E Dowland was changed from a grassy field to a mostly grassless plot, the majority of land denuded, a top layer of soil greatly disturbed.  

 

Grass is resilient, it will grow back in time, and it’s looking mostly like a normal lot this spring.  But 428 E Dowland is not a normal lot.  In the 1940s it became an active scrap lot and remained this way until the late 1990s.  Even before that, the lot had both above and below ground storage tanks for diesel fuel and the like.  In 2007, the City had plans of putting a new fire station there and so they commissioned a survey to determine how bad the lot was contaminated.  The soil was very contaminated, as one would think.  

Metals and hydrocarbons were tested for, and each had an allowable criteria level:  the following were found (paper):  benzo A Pyrene: 5 times higher than criteria, benzene 1.8 times over, xylene 1.9 times over, chromium 13 times over, mercury 2.1 times over, Fluoranthene 3.1 times over, arsenic, lead, selenium, phenanthrene, tetrachloroethane and others all over allowable criteria significantly.

The workers for Hallack Contracting were never told about this contamination and used 428 East Dowland freely, unsettling the soil without proper protective equipment, moving clean fill soil on and off the lot, then moving the cross-contaminated soil onto the lots of residents of Dowland Street, contaminating our front lawns with this toxic cocktail of soil.  

 

And was there any notice from our City manager or other so-called leaders...

 

Mayor Henderson:  Tom, we can hear you so tone it down a bit

 

Me:  OK, sorry, I was just personally affected by this, I have a little bit more.

 

... to warn us or the contractors of this use of soil coming from a lot of which the City Manager was well-aware of being tainted from his 2007 study.  Ask yourself whether it is incompetence, a complete disregard for the law, or just pure apathy for the citizens of this fine city.  Thank you.

[Willy]

You were loud and clear and I heard no upturn or change in your delivery throughout your adress to the Council so I don't know what the Mayor was referring to when he asked you to tone it down unless he was getting irritated from again hearing the truth. Well done on collecting and reporting information on that vacant lot but I'm sure the details you presented fell on deaf ears. As far as the Historic District is concerned, the residents and businesses had better ban together and put a stop to this nonsense before the "deafed eared" Council adds hundreds of nonsensical regulations to the property owners in that area. Again, wonderful job of researching and presenting the facts.

[XLFD]

Willy, at the meetings I have to agree with the mayor even if he's wrong, for if I don't, it may be looked at as intimidating or threatening on my part, and they may revisit the Letter of Trespass on me.  Of course, from the mayor's perspective, the City is not being threatening and intimidating to the citizens who criticize their conduct civilly and risk being socially blacklisted by an unelected, unsworn, City Manager.

Last fall, when these things about Dowland were coming to light, there was a lot of tumult going on at the time with me pressing three lawsuits regarding the City's violations of the FOIA, the OMA and the Bill of Rights (the Workplace Safety Policy).  I pushed it totally to the backburner after my personal loss in November.  With Ray Karboske's latest revelation, and the corresponding lack of empathy by our City leader to this issue, I think something will be done with this soon to rectify any future disregard for the public health by this administrator. 

[AQUAMAN]

The Mayor and council are always irritated and deaf-eared about hearing the truth when it comes to any public comment directed at them in earnest Willy, this again, is no surprise. I think X, you may have placed the mic. too close to yourself incidentally this time, but I do understand your passion and attempt to highlight that which the COL wants to again, just totally ignore. I want to bring to everyone's attention that Ray Karboske Jr. dropped his request for a stop-order injunction due to the fact that he was told that a dredging "silt barrier" was going to be placed under the bridge as a safety tool while demolition progresses on that bridge to nowhere. It's a bright yellow floating device that is supposed to go from the water's surface to the bottom. I have been witnessing the exact type safety tool at use at the Ludington Boat Club while Towns Bros. Co. has been dredging there. The silt barrier is a joke, it doesn't in fact block ALL the dredge soil contaminants being dredged up as promised. The entire PM Lake channel along Lake St. from the club to Washington Ave. daily turns a light brown in color, with sediments and contaminants being spread like wildfire. It may prevent some contaminants from escaping the area, but by a long shot, not ALL. Those affected property owners nearest are going to be witnessing one of the most significant acts of environmental pollution ever in Ludington, or at least since the Madison Ave. massacre of sewage pipe collapses in 2008 or so. I guess the only ones worried are those to be negatively affected. Afterall, it is another Municipal project, so what the Hell, right? They can and do anything within or against the laws they want to, so, Ludington boaters in the area, feel free to swim, wash your hands, wash your boat, and look at your boat bottoms turning brown with these sediments. I wonder how many people will get sick, be plagued for life, or possibly even die when all this work is finalized? The PM Lake itself will do what Nature does on a continual basis, clarify and cleanse itself until it settles again on the bottom. But, will the negative effects come back to haunt Ludington residents in contact with the water for years to come? I don't understand this, or how government preaches clean water and air, then totally ignore it themselves. For the rest of the unsuspecting boaters and lake lovers, watch out, you may just pay the ultimate price for a bridge to nowhere, just because a very few think it's a necessity right now.

[AQUAMAN]

Since we are on the subject of PM Lake and other matters, I'd like to ask anyone out here if the Ludington Yacht club will be opening that Queen's Cup race party to the general public? Or will it be strictly for the race participants and LYC welcoming committee? CM Shay himself pointed out that only "temporary signage on the Lud. Ave. can be posted with special use permission if it's open to the public"! This would be one of the very few parties I've witnessed the LYC would permit the public to attend, as as such, I would like some clarification on that. Members only and their guests is their, and most club's, general policies. It will also be real chaos and cluster time when all the 160+ boats dodge each other and the other fishing vessels normally in the lake and channel on a Saturday in late June just before the 4th. I can't wait to see all that mess, while I stay safely ashore watching nearby, hardy har!

[XLFD]

Be sure to tell us how often you hear a yachtsman ask "What is all that brown stuff in the water around here?"

[XLFD]

I choked up a bit, felt a bit irritated, when I was coming to remember all the new soil put on the front of my property due to them making my ten foot wide sidewalk down to five feet, and having to now warn my daughter and her friends not to practice gymnastics in this area of the yard.  As you can see, she's acting a bit nuts already, but that's due to genetics more than likely.

As for the lake, private marina owners and other businesses, residences in that area can surely vouch that silt shields are not 100% effective, and you surely noticed the Yacht Club guy speaking after me conveniently just talked about the Queen's Cup.

 

If you seen yesterday's City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) you likely seen that award-winning Kevin Bracisewski wrote up three articles on the City Council meeting, one about the historic district discussion, one about the adult day care ordinance and one about what was passed.  Exactly zero words about the Washington Bridge, zero words about the Dowland cross-contamination. 

For people who wonder why I call that paper the City of Ludington Daily News, consider what they report and what they don't report.  They are fairly consistent, although Steve Begnoche surprised me last week when he actually gave Ray Karboske some fair press when he bucked against the City.