Ludington City Council Meeting 12-1-2014: Pickleballs and Billing Pickles

[XLFD]

Following only a week after the November 24th city council meeting and the Thanksgiving Day weekend, one would think the Ludington City Council would have a quick time of it.  But their agenda showed a bit of ambition; plans to adopt four ordinances, approval of four contracts/agreements, a resolution, a FOIA Coordinator appointment, an update on the water system, and finally deciding whether to convert the three tennis courts at Oriole Field into pickleball courts. 

The new tradition of adding to the agenda at the meeting's beginning continued with a procedural step of approving the minutes of the closed session at the last meeting regarding the Travis Malone lawsuit settlement. 

I gave my usual five minutes of public comment dealing with three topics:  the city's website redesign unlawful bidding methodology, the bizarre appointment of a private attorney to be FOIA Coordinator, and the billing scandal of the city attorney and city manager. 

The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) reported only that I said John Shay was the wrong choice for City Manager.  At least they spelt my name right this time and didn't put extra words in my mouth.  The full narrative and more follow the video below.

But first the City entered into a two year contract with Crum & Forster for Storage Tank Pollution Liability Insurance (STPLI).  A view of the C&F website indicates this company does not generally offer such coverage, and a check on the EPA's List Of Known Insurance Providers For Underground Storage Tank Owners does not include them or their parent company. 

There are 66 of these EPA-approved STPLI organizations that could cover Ludington's needs; the council chose one without competitive bids and spent a couple hundred dollars extra for optional 'terrorism coverage', which we didn't have before (an actual part of that coverage is presented here; the council said "Give us two years with Terrorism, Mr. Crum")

Perhaps if the assistant city manager wasn't spending all her time filling T-shirt orders and lying about where the proceeds go on Facebook, she may have had the time to get some competitive bids from reputable STPLI providers.

Competitive bids were the concern for the next contract with a website designing outfit.  The city is supposed to get them for any contract with a business over $10,000.  The process involves sending out the product, services, and criteria we want in a request for proposal (RFP) with two or more companies.  The more the merrier for savings.

As typical of our city management, we had two contractors bid, and also typical, the city ignored competitive bidding and took the larger bid, justifying it by saying their product was nicer and that they could split payments for the next three years.  Fine but that goes against the process, city law (see my comment), and has cost the taxpayers an extra $5000 plus.  I look forward to criticizing the move in the upcoming years when the inevitable glitches come up, which were minimal with the old site, whose provider had the low bid.

The clerk, city manager, and treasurer then had their 1.5% raises granted them, the manager getting another year on his contract in the process with an unanimous vote, and praise from the new mayor and two newest councilors, and the most senior councilor (Castonia).  Councilor Holman was absent, which was good, since she votes for renewal every other year anyway.

Even though my comment touched negatively on several aspects of City Manager Shay, I knew his contract renewal was a foregone conclusion with this collusive city council, and so I persevere in looking at the positive.  I figure it's like Batman must feel when he hears that the Joker has escaped from prison again; he has a renewed purpose to defeat the evil in his beloved city.  This just happens in a non-fictional venue.

Councilor Winczewski's comments (21:20 in) were the wackiest in this regard:  "he (Shay) keeps all of us in line" she remarks as part of a prepared statement.  The last time I read the charter, and the way it works in every other city, is that the city manager is under direction of the city council.   True city councilors should only be kept in line by their conscience and their constituents, not their appointed servant.

A new FOIA Coordinator for Ludington was put in place (19:20 in), an attorney who moved his practice into Ludington just recently and has no experience with municipal matters was given the thumbs up by Shay, who had the councilors in line by unanimously agreeing to it without any substantive discussion.

The meeting wound down with a legal consent of easement holders for the property of 410 E. Dowland.  One would think that with all the properties on Dowland that were environmentally contaminated, that all of the street work done in 2012 should have had more DEQ and/or EPA oversight, but all of the contaminated properties had their right-of-ways, at least, dug up, scattered around and left behind with the new water and sewer lines.  And not a single sighting by this resident of the street of either agency or mention in the records that I looked through.

For the third time, a bid between only two companies was considered at this meeting for sidewalk work, with the contract going to Spuller Concrete, the company we've had for awhile.  Last time, there was no competition before Spuller was agreed to, this time they went against a company that does not typically do sidewalk work, Larsen's Landscaping, whose 'hardscaping' work does not even mention conventional sidewalks.  It's not hard to imagine they had the higher priced work, but for some reason, the city abided by the competitive bidding process in picking Spuller.

City Manager Shay once more detailed some of the water system upgrades, unfortunately he is still keeping a lot of the material away from the public regarding the problem, and charging a lot for any information and wrongly exempting even more when you ask him through his FOIA Coordinator.   This was followed by the pickleball courts being approved, a sizable contingent of pickleballers on hand to witness the event.

My public comments start at about 2:30 in and are transcribed below in full, with its conclusion.  You will note that the latest charge against the city attorney is that they are double-billing their client, aka the City of Ludington, and at the overbilled rate.  But nobody from the city council thought such things were important, even though they have oversight and supposedly represent the people's interest in making sure their money is spent wisely and their employees are not cheating the system.  Manager Shay really does have them walking the line.

Perhaps this is the best reason to keep them from appointing city clerks and treasurers as they propose in their charter amendments.  They have proven themselves over and over again that they are poor stewards.

December 1, 2014, Ludington City Council from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

"Let me reiterate a plea to the city council to engage in real competitive bidding mandated by our city code, and do not vote for a company that bid over 40% more than our current city website provider .  Understand, both companies should have been given the same specific qualities our city was looking for in a website at the time of bidding, and the two companies offered their bid with that criteria in mind. 

At that point, the only criteria the city had in resolving the competitive bidding process was to accept the lower bid; a city official just can't change the rules at that point, it goes against the public interest and is indicative of corruption.  If you vote for the high bid tonight, you will be violating the city code section 2.4:  "Competitive bids for all purchases and public improvements shall be obtained where practicable and contracts awarded to the lowest responsible bidders."

You are being told by the City Manager tonight to appoint a new private attorney to handle the city's FOIA requests.  I did a little research.  The only cities I could find that allow attorneys to handle FOIA requests were cities that were big enough to hire a full-time city attorney, who would have this as one of their official duties of the job and not be paid extra.  I could find no public body in Michigan that employed an attorney that wasn't already at least a contracted city attorney. 

This is the only place that has decided on such an inefficient system.  More research shows that the candidate, Carlos Alvarado, has absolutely no experience in municipal law nor has he been in service to any public body before.  So there is a good chance that he will not know how to locate specific records requests. 

Consider this:  if we had a clerk working FOIA requests, they would almost certainly know where the record would be located, so they could find a request within minutes at no extra cost to Ludington taxpayers. 

With an inexperienced attorney who has been arbitrarily chosen by someone who has already proven that he cannot handle the job of FOIA Coordinator, we get the following extra steps and charges for just a simple request.  One-tenth of an hour for reading the request, one-tenth of an hour for sending an E-mail to whom he thinks may have the record, one tenth of an hour for reviewing the record received, and one-tenth of an hour for getting it to the requester. 

A simple FOIA request therefore costs the taxpayer, not the requester, at least $50, for four tenths of an hour at $125 per hour, and that is only if the attorney contacts the right people who may have the record.  Understand, there can be additional liability for the city if Carlos responds incorrectly that no records exist, when he just didn't contact the right officials.  Please ignore the manager's bizarre recommendation and appoint a city official to be a FOIA Coordinator like every other responsible Michigan city.

Lastly, you will decide whether to reappoint the city manager tonight.  As this city council believes it can make no wrong decisions in picking replacement councilors, the city clerk, and treasurer, you will undoubtedly ignore my recommendation, made with my heartfelt belief that John Shay is the wrong choice.  Four times I appeared before this council talking of a billing problem from our city attorneys overcharging for their services.  At last meeting, Richard Wilson did appropriately own up to and apologize for the deed, even if his justification was difficult to believe when you have access to the records.

But missing was an admission and apology from the City Manager for his part in the embezzlement of city funds perpetrated for three years knowingly by him and the city attorney.  I offer the council this graphic [show] showing Manager Shay's 38 rubber stamp impressions on these invoices over a period of over three years of overcharged services and his initials inside the payment approved section.  Is this proper oversight of our taxpayer funds when he is approving invoices that charge up to $330 per hour for special projects when the contracted rate is only $185 per hour?

  

Attorney Wilson claims they have went over the invoices and found a little over $1000 as the extent of their overbilling.  Yet in these special project billings he repeatedly charges the taxpayers for attending council meetings and doing other routine discussions with city officials [Here was where I was cut off by my hard cap of five minutes, I conclude my statements here] ...at the overbilled rate.   Councilors, read the city attorney agreement and check those invoices I sent you last Monday.  Verify this for yourself.

The contract we have with Wilson and his associates says that attending meetings and a host of other tasks are covered by their generous monthly retainer of $4250 per month.  Wilson knowingly double bills the taxpayer, and owes us a lot more than some hokey apology and the $1100 credit he offers.  Worse, is that his partner in crime, John Shay, owes us an apology and his resignation for conspiring in this scheme and the many other lapses of judgment that have and will cost our city even more dearly, including illegal contracting with companies through the city attorney.  Thank you."

[Willy]

it's still amazing that none of the dumbed down City Councilors even question what Shay is doing. Like I said previously, Shay does their work for them so they remain ignorant of what is going on. The Council in it's entirety act as children, begging for Daddy Shay's approval. What's the point in electing Councilors when a City Manager has all the power granted to him by a non functioning Council. Good job X.

[XLFD]

Thanks, Willy, your assessment is becoming more evident every meeting. 

Councilors and others who haven't been paying attention:  doesn't it seem odd that I only commented on recent and unresolved events and actually touched on several problems of the city manager that are hard to dispute unless you're mindlessly toeing the line?  Let me lead you through them just with this meeting's five minute public comment, but you can follow the videos back to 2012 and see a recurring pattern of lawlessness and wastefulness on the city's management led by John Shay.  Feel free to comment yourself, if you believe I'm in error:

1) Ignoring the concepts of competitive bidding (CB).  CB is done to prevent favoritism, cronyism and general graft and corruption.  CB is done by sending requests for proposals to as many contractors you can, each with the same parameters and criteria for acceptance, and then opening sealed bids and choosing the lowest bid.  CB is mandated by our city code, and is a hallmark of good usage of public monies, and Shay claimed it was used for website design and several other contracts in the past, which it hasn't.

2)  Using an attorney for FOIA requests:  John Shay by default should be the FOIA Coordinator, however, this job was given to a contracted city attorney in October 2013, and is assigned to a regular attorney now without any experience.  A simple request will cost minimally $50 if he uses the same fee structure Judge-elect Sniegowski used, and the process actually gets a lot more complex: if you think about it, more city labor resources are used than before to fulfill a request.  Inefficient and costly.

3)  Conspiring to embezzle public funds, by fraudulent fee billing, double billing, and knowingly billing through illegal channels.  Yes, Attorney Dick Wilson wrote the invoices with illegal rates and charges he knew he was already paid for on the retainer, etc.  But John Shay signed 38 of these over three years, nobody else, allocating they be paid. 

The city council and mayor agrees they follow him into the hells he creates, throws out accolades, gives him a significant raise in spite of this.  They know that the only problems in Ludington are people questioning their bidding process, making public records requests, and pointing out their attorneys' billing practices.  John Shay has told them so. 

[XLFD]

 In a meeting that featured the city council wanting to upgrade their website by violating competitive bidding so they can get a better looking product and the knighting of a new FOIA Coordinator Attorney, one can't help but notice the lack of anything directing the user of the site currently to get further information about the city through FOIA requests.  No contact person, no E-mail address, nothing.  This would be a simple feature to add on. 

If you do a search, the only info on public records requests is using FOIA to get police reports from LPD, and no directions who to contact for that.  This is not the fault of the current provider, but the current officials who would rather keep the majority of their records away from the public, and effectively sell access to them at inflated rates. 

If one looks at the reasons they want to spend 40% more on the site, it is for the appearance and text message alert feature, however that might work.

[wildfire]

well that is crazy same price for daily  if you live their or not but the seasonal is 30.00 if you live their n if you don't its 60.00 who makes up these prices?