Ludington City Council Meeting 11-24-2014: Deflectors on Maximum

[XLFD]

Mayor Ryan Cox began this meeting with an agenda addition that was to be expected.  The council announced it was to make a decision on settling Travis Malone's civil lawsuit against two officers acting under color of the law under the Ludington Police Department (LPD) in a 2011 incident on the streets of Ludington.  In their packet, they also mentioned that their attorney from downstate would be at the meeting to answer questions. 

Non-transparent and cowardly public bodies like Ludington's city council would not want to talk about this material openly, as the basic facts of the matter are not favorable to their image of themselves and the LPD, so the mayor's announcement of going into closed session before the vote to settle was not a surprise other than it was not originally on the menu. 

Their decision on this matter perhaps deflected the attention away from the main event that night, which went off without any hitch other than the usual citizen commenting about a few things on it during the public hearing portion of the meeting.  The closed meeting also allowed the recording of the meeting be interrupted so that several instances of note that went on after the session were not recorded for posterity in the Ludington TV section of the library (at least originally, see second video below).  By that time all the media other than the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) had left. 

In a deflection of the court settlement against two officers on the LPD, Police Chief Barnett, Sheriff Kim Cole, and the council choreographed an award presentation to Steve Wietrzywoski for his recent promotion to sergeant.  Rob Alway of the MCP, always focused for the positive on local law enforcement, used that as his sole story from the meeting.  

His precursor piece to the meeting completely deflected attention away from any misdeeds of the LPD in the suit, effectively branding the plaintiff's later criminality as the issue and John Shay's customary assurance that no Ludington officer did anything wrong and that they would have won in court.  A deflection of the fact that the facts and evidence were not favorable for the officers if it went to court. 

Several ordinances had their first reading (to be decided on at the next meeting on December 1st).  The clerk and treasurer had an ordinance each that will raise their salaries by 1.5%, purchasing of liability insurance for underground storage tanks for two years, and a redesign of the city's website purchase, which I commented on unfavorably. 

Two other things of substance were to happen at at the meeting according to the agenda:  the council okayed an agreement with the MDOT to share costs of the stoplight in front of the hospital, and once again to exempt themselves from state limitations on how much they spend on employee health insurance (even though the agenda says that they were voting to comply per 9b3).  I weighed in on the last topic in the public hearing on the budget reproduced below after the bonus second video from the meeting.  That short video is actually more interesting than the first.

November 24, 2014 Ludington City Council from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

 

A few things I want to comment on.

 

Issue one:  The city council is expected to vote to accept a bid made by Accept Plus to redesign the City's website at a cost of over $17,000.  The designer of our current website also made a bid that was over $5000 less than that, which will be effectively rejected.  A brief primer on how the competitive bidding process works is in order. 

 

According to the dictionary it is "a transparent' procurement method in which bids from competing contractors are invited by openly advertising the scope, specifications, and terms and conditions of the proposed contract as well as the criteria by which the bids will be evaluated.  A contract is then awarded to the lowest bidder."

 

Our city charter mandates that competitive bidding should be used when practicable for all contracts over $10,000.  The council will go against that mandate if it votes for the recommended bid that was 43% larger than the low bid.  That is not competitive bidding.  This has not been the first time the council will have done this corruption of the competitive bidding process. 

 

The most notable is the rejection of a bid by local company Nordlund & Associates who submitted the low bid for the engineering work that was done on the Washington Avenue Bridge whose bid was less than 28% of the winning bid; almost four times less.  This council spent over a sixth of a million local dollars extra to employ an agency whose nearest office is in Grand Rapids.  That was far from the best interest of the city, and suggests a rigged system.

 

Issue two:  I cast down the gauntlet to the City Attorney and Manager over the last three meetings to admit to the embezzlement of taxpayer funds as recorded in the invoices sent by Attorney Richard Wilson overcharging by rate for services rendered for the City-corporate performed roughly monthly for a period of three years.  I have also noted the complicit behavior by City Manager John Shay in signing approval of these invoices as if the charges were legitimate.  Last week, I noted an additional complicity by this council in not noticing such overcharges for three years by their finance committee, as well as the fact that some of these charges were not actually for services rendered by the City Attorney, but indirect payments to a cost-of-service firm that has no legitimate contract with the city. 

 

I appeal to this panel of elected and appointed officials to admit to and correct this embezzlement of public funds, and this contrariness in the safe keeping of public moneys at this meeting.  You have been amply warned of the transgression, the proof is self-evident from the billing records which have been sent to you this afternoon.  Your silence on these matters at this fourth meeting will initiate corrective actions being taken.

 

Issue three:  Travis Malone was a 16 year old Ludington boy walking home with his friends from Teen Night at the Tiki back in the summer of 2011.  According to his complaint filed in federal court, this boy was roughly assaulted by two Ludington Police Officers. The actions taken to detain this boy, absent of any articulated reasonable suspicion or established police protocols, resulted in him being taken to the hospital to deal with his injuries caused by excessive force of the LPD officers. 

 

The brief proffered in your packets written by your own attorneys admit facts that show the LPD officers did not follow the rules.  The officers claim to have suspected he was a minor in possession and tried to detain him absent any evidence other than an odor of alcohol about him.  It shows an illegal search was performed on this boy's backpack.  While handcuffed, Malone was beaten with what can only be called excessive force, fortunately witnessed by others.

 

The Officers responsible for the assault had a history with police brutality.  Officer York played a significant part in the 2009 McAdam incident, and the dash cam video shows in that incident he roughly detains Sue McAdam for DUI without any sort of test just after his fellow police officers tackle and tase her son who was admittedly innocent of any crime at the time.

 

Officer Aaron Sailor has a rich history of federal lawsuits for alleged excessive force on people who are innocent of any wrongdoing.  I have went into these in some detail before, so let's just say he has used his fists and flashlights on a group that called the police for help in 2003, [Here's where my five minutes were used up, Ludington Torch members get the benefit of hearing how it would have ended as I continue the few sentences left exclusively here.  I did sneak in the Thanksgiving wish.] egregiously assaulted a woman house sitter and her drunken guest in 2006, went postal on Malone in 2011, and pushed an older woman house guest to the floor from behind in 2012.  It is an insane liability to the City to keep this man in an LPD outfit.

 

These are your fellow officers, Mayor Cox, and one must suspect you condone such activity if you do not come out forcefully against it.  Is the blue shield more important to you than your connection to the people in your community? 

 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving."

The exemption from the state hard caps were passed in the first video, as was the budget after the public hearing where I was the only one who spoke.  One can see below that the settlement with Malone was passed with disgust noted from Councilors Winczewski and Castonia, with a very sour expression on John Shay's face most of the time.

 

City Attorney Richard Wilson (2:15 in) then goes into detail about what he thinks was happening in regard to his part of the overbillings to the city and issues an apology to the councilors, a performance that is both comedy and tragedy, which deserves its own special thread to show its shortcomings, even though it is very deflective. 

Of note is that John Shay, lone signer of these dozens of obviously overbilled-by-rate statements remained silent, letting Wilson throw himself on his own sword, deflecting blame away from his embezzle-buddy.

To answer my question posed in the public hearing, Chief Barnett explained the spike in the clothing allowance to the purchase of ballistic vests for the 14 reserve officers along with the usual infomercial on why the City is so fortunate to have a reserve officer force. 

You have to enjoy how he tells us how fortunate the citizens of Ludington are for having this non-legitimate police force work for them (actually they work only for the chief), deflecting the idea that two regular and legitimized police officers got the city into more legal trouble, 'solved' earlier this meeting. 

Let's not forget, the city have argued that these reserve officers are not city employees, yet they swear a Constitutional oath , get gear, guns, and uniforms paid by the taxpayer that designate them as officers of the LPD, and have claimed their roster and the chief's rules for them were not subject to review or FOIA requests-- until they were pressed and other localities with reserves were losing similar battles.

Lacking in the official's comments were the answers to two of my three questions posed about the budget (none were answered before it was passed) and any statement about why our city officials need fringe benefit rates so high, nearly twice as high when compared to private and federal employees.  Oh I forgot-- they know better than some bean counters that work for the state on how much taxpayer money they can use for their benefits.

Give thanks for what you still have, my friends, the City of Ludington is getting ready to take more these next years using their neglect of our wastewater treatment system and rental inspection fees to pad them further. 

 

Three questions on the budget, and then a way to provide a lot more revenue for the budget without costing the taxpayers a cent:

 

The as-of-yet unpassed rental inspection program has been estimated to bring in $27,000 in rental inspection fees for the upcoming year; how does the city plan on doing this and will this be complaint-based or mandatory for those who rent property? 

 

The police reserve budget spikes up to $6800 from the usual $800 for clothing and equipment in 2017, are we expecting a large increase of personnel in the quasi-legal reserve officer program?

 

Will the people ever get the straight story from the city about why the massive amount of upgrading is needed for the wastewater treatment plant, or just the city manager's own whitewashed version of what amounts to city negligence over the years, while he is content to spend millions on non-essential expenses like water tower painting, transient docks, and West End of Ludington Avenue improvements?

 

We could also save the taxpayers some money with reforming the fringe benefits it offers for officials and employees that are financed way above the norm for private and public agencies. 

 

The city council will likely exempt its employees and officers from the state's hard caps on health insurance payments for the third year in a row, and for each of the three years the reform has been in effect.  The main rationale they will use is that our local leaders know better how to spend our tax money than the state. 

 

That point may be well-taken and we want our local public employees content, but the reform was put into effect to make sure that city leaders do not wind up offering city officials and employees a hidden salary of fringe benefits that is way out of touch with the private sector, and tend to wreak havoc with city finances over time.  Our clerks and treasurers each receive fringes with a value of 58% of their salary, almost every other employee and officials including management have a fringe benefit figure between 54% of 56% of their wages. 

 

A current periodical notes that modern private sector employees have come to expect an average of 30.4 percent of their compensation to be in the form of benefits.  Some senior federal employees get under thirty percent.  The gap between 58% and 30% is rather large, and I encourage you to vote against making that gap any larger just because your fellow city employee's check is paid for through taxes paid in large part by private sector taxpayers. 

 

Perhaps if city officials received real-world levels of fringe benefits they might be brought a little bit closer back to the real world, and the city could give them, and the rest of us, a tax break for once.

[Willy]

X, I have to applaud you for your grit and determination as well as the way you put together a news / informational article. It just seems so ridiculous that the Council, Mayor and other CIty officials just can't seem to straighten up their act. It's as if you walk these people up to a blue wall, tell them over and over what color it is and they stand in a stupor like an LDN reporter and insist that it's red. Chimps have better reasoning and more integrity than most of Ludington's politician's.

[XLFD]

It's rather crazy when you look very closely that they ignore a three year period of overbilling until the fourth time and an implied threat of having the prosecutor look into embezzlement charges before the city attorney apologizes (to the council-- not to the taxpayers he has stolen from).  The councilors and police chief express their indifference to that by commenting on other things, like how some people should just ask them questions and they would be told. 

Hello, Chief Barnett?  Guess how often I have sent questions to the councilors before and received answers.  I've lost count at several dozen, and have yet to see an answer from any of them.  To be fair, the chief has answered a couple of questions I have directed towards his policies, but the one of three questions I asked that was answered was a budget question better answered by the preparers of the budget, two of which were there, who also don't answer questions. 

[stump]

XLFD , you should not feel alone on your questions not being answered. I don't think the mayor or any of the council has answered a citizens question at any meeting or at the next. It seems they could care less if there is a concern. Answers to the previous weeks questions should be put on the agenda .

[XLFD]

If they should realize anything by now is that I will bring back unresolved/unanswered issues at meetings when the opportunity presents itself (i.e. they are not doing a lot of questionable activities at a meeting).  A simple "I don't know, we will get an answer back to you" from them would often work.  Such latitude (if they follow up on it) should make every question asked by the public answered immediately at the meeting, and show an effort to engage.

If you accuse the city manager and city attorney of embezzlement/misuse-of-public-funds and have three years of monthly records backing it up, and they don't give an answer until the fourth time you mention it at a city council meeting, this should demonstrate how little the CM and CA actually care about their corruption being aired.  The COLDNews have yet to even make a side note about it, nor will the MCP probably out of fear they will lose their spoon-fed stories from the City of Ludington and others.

The question about rental inspection ordinances need to be brought out in the open ASAP.  The City (particularly with its track record) could easily tread into unconstitutional searches, and charge nuisance fees and maintenance to landlords that could lead Ludington in the wrong direction. 

[shinblind]

It might just be me but how come I cannot find  a website for Accept Plus?

[XLFD]

 It's not you, it's me.  I put "Accept Plus" in my speech and the company was actually civicplus , I apologize for putting down the wrong info in my notes, where I put for the city to  'accept plus' and should have had 'accept civic plus'. 

The only thing that the city admits to being the reason why they chose civicplus was that they looked better to the decision-makers and they offered text message alert capability (a service they probably didn't initially look for, until they got civicplus' sales pitch).  The current site could be made more visually appealing, but is functionally sound.  I envision the transition between the old site and the new one will take quite a while (i.e extra time/effort/expense for our clerks) since there will be a change of program system.  I have a hard time thinking these guys are doing the change to make themselves more transparent or accountable.

[AQUAMAN]

Just my observations of this mtg. since I finally had time to view the video. 1) Kathy -  you are a freshman of the group of councilors, 1st year. How do you qualify your statements about the budget being a job well done when you never have had any experience with it in your life, nor known it's contents until just recently? Your degree and experience is teaching, not Finance! It could well be a large job, but it's expected by the team that gets paid to do it, so this is routine, not the exception to duties expected and paid for. 2) Mr. Castonia - had to make another dig at Tom as a back-seat driver on budget issues. You don't offer ANY specifics on the budget that would be contrary to what Tom presented as wasteful. So again, all I see is you rock lobbing from your leather lounge chair, without any facts to support your editorial, which at best, is just more old-man dribble. 3) CA Richard Wilson - admitted he over-billed COL $1411.50 over a 2-3 year period. Big deal! I'll just bet that's his own GR accountants trying to underestimate the real damages thru creative accounting, at the very minimum. My conservative estimate would rank his over-billings into the many thousands of dollars, and so, where's his proofs? Wilson also admits he's got four, count them, (4), rates which he bills the COL. I thought his contract limited him strictly to $185/hr. as the one and ONLY RATE he can legally bill. I don't see any contracts for him to be able to justify legal billing of any other rate for any other reason, does anyone else? And again, what exactly, if true and legal, are all the separate 4 rates for? And how much is each individual rate? For a man who says he goes by the book of law, and knows the law so well, where are his proofs? All I hear is cheap talk, and vague excuses! Even if he only over-billed $100, that's still larceny and embezzlement in the eyes of the law. And would require any decent law abiding council to fire him promptly! But the City Council again sits on their conspiratorial hands, and says and does nothing. Does he expect to get away with petty larceny, or excess billing now, in the past, and into the future? He again has no written concrete proofs contrary to the long list of past cheating, nor proofs established in written invoices by his offices. It's one thing to admit to being sloppy and incompetent, it's quite another to be bilking the taxpayers with intent and vigor to gain ill-gotten monies! The way things add up and read to me right now, is that CA Wilson can bill whatever he wants to, and even get hazardous duty pay, if he's attacking Tom and Toni to undermine and destroy any citizens efforts to reveal truths of corruption by the COL.

[XLFD]

I just want to supplement/complement/clarify/answer some of your numbered observations, Aquaman.  1)  The budget does look like an impressive task to perform, but most of the data is already there from the previous budgets.  The 2015 Budget has been pre-budgeted as far back as 2012, when they offered that year's three year budget and capital projections, much like 2017's is in this budget.  The charter smartly made this the way to do things, and it allows the public to see what the city plans up in the future.  Most aspects of the budget don't change very much, that's why the couple of dozen amendments make the 2015 Budget passed in 2012 look almost the same as the one that was passed this Monday.  It's not the eighth wonder of the world, Councilor Winczewski, your school administrators made one each year too.

2)  Nobody among officials wants to address the ungodly-high fringe benefits that city administrators and full-time employees receive because then they lose support of their real political base, their fellow taxpayer-subsidized co-workers.  Each city worker that gets a 1.5% raise this year gets an extra 0.8% raise in their fringes.  Few municipalities actually exempt themselves from the state's reforms made in 2011. 

3)  I have only been referring to Wilson's overbillings in terms of rate per hour, not for times that he should not have been utilized by the city.  The City of Ludington through its unlawful hiring of the City Attorney to represent them in a simple FOIA lawsuit wasted around $30,000 and a lot of public resources, when even Richard Wilson admitted that every civil suit against the city and its officials would be defended automatically by the MMRMA attorneys which are paid via our municipal insurance.  These MMRMA attorneys would have likely just told Shay to give up the records they were illegally not disclosing, making the city only need to pay my court filing fees and service fees of around $160.

4)  I will comment on that shortly in a thread, and on Monday, which is another meeting.  I believe the under-billings he talks of are the rates paid to Wilson's lesser qualified associate attorneys and legal interns, like Kate Glancy was, for doing mostly non-professional clerical tasks.  If councilors aren't upset about why the taxpayers had to foot the $30,000 bill to try and block the disclosure of Tykoski's business records, they lack any sort of soul-- except for Councilor Tykoski, who assuredly didn't want his unethical, unlawful dealings which would have got him up to $150,000 if his hands weren't caught in his wife's DDA revenue jar. 

[Willy]

Thanks for the clarification X.

[Willy]

Well said Aquaman. This is how I look at the "over billing" situation. Wilson can bill the City for as much as he likes. He could bill the City for 1 million dollars an hour and be perfectly legal if the City wants to pay him. The problem arises when the City agrees to the over billing and pays him contrary to the contract. The person in trouble is the bookkeeper or who ever authorized the payment. It's possible an error could have been made for an occasional over billing but not for 3 years worth. And that's where this gets sticky. 1 or 2 excessive billings is possibly an oversight but not 24 or 36. So we seem to have person's in the bookkeeping sections of both parties, the City and Wilson's firm, who have made serious errors or are complicit in an act of fraud. The City has an obligation to investigate this and the local Press has an obligation to also investigate and inform the people who read their product, but of course we all know how these things work in Ludington. Silence by all parties involved and again the citizens who put these people in power are going to be receiving another screwing.

[XLFD]

Every single legal service invoice in the period between January 2011 and January 2014, all 38 of them, were signed solely by the person whose contract comes up for extension at this next meeting, a certain John E. Shay. 

Very good job in discovering who has the ultimate blame in the City of Ludington for this overbilling situation, and, more venally,who has allowed a business without a contract with the city, bill our contracted city attorney big money and then paid for it with city funds, without council approval (at least at any open meeting).   Didn't see any apology coming from that guys mouth, and you never will hear a sincere apology coming from it.  The guy can't even swear a Constitutional oath of office or abide by the city's purchasing/contracting policies delineated in the charter even when caught violating it repeatedly in the past.