Ludington City Council Meeting 11-10-2014: Lady's Night Out

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When the Mayor brought down the gavel to start this day's city council meeting the panel of city officials was missing three distaff members of Ludington government on their left side.  Treasurer Jennifer Christensen and Councilors Kaye Holman and Kathy Winczewski were absent, which was surprising because rarely are they absent otherwise.  Except for City Clerk Deb Luskin, who sits opposite the police chief and outside the video camera's scope, the nine officials present this evening had Y-chromosomes. 

 

Chances are, they may have skipped this meeting for a quilting bee because there was little to be done at the meeting that would last less than 20 minutes.  A sparse agenda was made sparser when the mayor clipped off approving a bid on work to be done at the proposed Maritime Museum, meaning that a meeting earlier that afternoon between the city council's Parks Committee and the Mason County Historical Society led to an impasse over accepting a $1.184 million bid for interior work to be done. 

 

 

At about 9:15 into the meeting City Manager John Shay gave the budget message, you can access that budget through this .pdf starting on page 20.  It is worth listening to and looking at, as the city prepares to spend several million dollars on their neglected sewer infrastructure and prepares to hire someone to conduct rental property inspections in a way that will probably violate the rights of tenants and landlords.  Don't worry, they plan on adding costs to your water and sewer bill to defray the costs.

 

They will have a public hearing at the November 24, 2014 meeting on the budget, and will likely pass the budget thereafter.  They do not have to give final approval until the last meeting of December. 

 

The only other actions the council performed were first to notify the public that they would be releasing more detailed accounts of their proposed charter amendments, and their reasons for doing them.  This should be entertaining reading, since every one of the seven proposals seem to work against the public interest at face value. 

 

Secondly, they appointed the new, and city-charter-illegitimate, Councilor Michael Krauch, to represent the City of Ludington in the West Michigan Regional Shoreline Development Commission, replacing Wanda Marrison.  This dubious honor (even Councilor Castonia jokes about it) may someday help our city, but I can't trace any significant sign of that yet occurring, just a periodic donation of our tax dollars to WMRSDC administrators.

 

Once again I was the only one with a public comment (3:00 in) and inadvertently left my name and address off after giving a shout out to our veterans (it was Veteran's Day Observed, real Veteran's Day is today-- thanks to everyone who has served and is serving their country in the armed forces, especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice).   

 

My speech was simple and was slightly less than four minutes.  I wanted to concentrate on an issue that I brought up at the last two meetings, only for it to be ignored by them and the local media.  It is an important issue, that should either be admitted publicly or denied by the accused.  Our contractors wearing suits and ties who represent us legally need to be held to a professional and public standard. 

 

Once again, however, City Attorney Richard M. Wilson remained mute to the charges, although he did have a noticeable red flush on his face during and shortly after the comment.  Poor guy has to either fabricate some story to try and explain why all those records charged the City taxpayers too much (and often for questionable services) or admit to the impropriety.  To most folks, his inability to admit his mistake and publicly tell us how he plans to correct it is a major character flaw that shouldn't be part of someone who represents the City of Ludington as their City Attorney. 

 

 

 

November 10, 2014 Ludington City Council from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

 

First off, let me give a shout out to the veterans for their day. 

 

Let me begin by congratulating the City Manager and his budget preparing team for having the budget and budget message available today, the first meeting in November, as it mandates In the city charter.  As you may remember, I addressed this body early in December 2013 and chided the city for violating several sections of the charter as regards the budget, by having it only publicly available on the day before Thanksgiving and the day of the meeting where it was adopted. 

 

This was a pattern of late budget preparation that had been practiced for each of the nine years after Manager Shay's initial year in office, so hopefully this year will be the first of many to come for budget timeliness and transparency.  The public deserves the ability to look at and give input into the budget process, if they so desire, not just have this council pass uninspected budgets right after the manager's budget message. 

 

The only other item I wish to comment on tonight is the same item I have presented among others over the last two meetings, and the city council, the city manager, and the city attorney have not bothered to respond to the public about the problem.  The City's law firm from Manistee, originally Gockerman, Wilson, Saylor and Hesslin, who now serve under the Grand Rapids law firm, Mika Meyers, Beckett, and Jones, overbilled the city at rates up to $145 per hour over their contracted rates set in agreement to the City of Ludington for special projects. 

 

I have dozens of records showing this illegal overbilling which shows that City Attorney Richard Wilson always billed over the agreed-to $185 per hour rate for at least the period between 2011 and 2013.  That City Attorney George V. Saylor III, who also serves as Manistee's City Attorney, charged the city at a rate of $330 per hour for his services to the city submitted by Attorney Wilson to City manager Shay who signed all of the invoices among my records.  All parties were surely aware that the attorneys could only charge $185 per hour.  Perhaps this unlawful behavior was part of why George V Saylor III lost the 19th Circuit Court judgeship with under 40% of the vote even though he had more and wider experience than his opponent. 

 

Presumably, the city council's finance committee must admit their own culpability for overlooking these overbillings in this three year period, okaying this act of public extortion when they paid the bills over a period of 70 plus meetings where this scheme was practiced.   Your committee should have also noticed that the city attorney's billing invoices included compensation for many thousands of dollars to a third party agency never hired by the city, but working on behalf of the city, getting paid by Attorney Wilson, who then got repaid by this City. 

 

So as public servants, continue ignoring the obvious ethical implications of your city attorney's actions, absolve them of having to create a defense for the indefensible behavior, and remain quiet.  City Attorney Wilson has already taken that tact twice when this criminal behavior was pointed out.  He has that right by the Constitution, but it doesn't serve the public when he is supposedly acting for them.  

 

The silence by the rest of you, including the reporting media, only illustrates better the contempt you have for the people of this city forced to pay the attorney bills for their services-- and whatever other charge the contracted Manistee attorneys want to throw in. 

[stump]

The city has a resale inspection of sidewalks already. Sidewalks must be repaired / replaced if needed at sale of your property. Short step to Electrical, plumbing and structure

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It's a longer step than one would think if we consider that the sidewalk is situated in part of the public right of way, just like the street in front of your place.  Beyond that is your own private property, and your local government should have very limited say on what you do with that, especially on the inside of your building. 

The resistance of property owners among East Ludington Avenue against becoming a benign-sounding Historic District should give an indication of how the rest of our citizens would react to this.  Over two-thirds of the residents therein did not want some authority telling them how to use and modify their property.

Ludington in its part as a utility provider has already recently voted themselves the right to enter your property and inspect your pipes without any regard to your Fourth Amendment rights.  Yet they have not bothered to tell the community most of its own shortcomings in their wastewater treatment plant which have prevented them from getting a discharge permit from the DEQ since 2011.  Don't worry, they are preparing on sending you the bill for it.