Ludington City Council Meeting April 11, 2016: Fool's Parades

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The April 11th meeting of the city council had an agenda that was less ambitious than most recent ones, despite a three week hiatus since the previous meeting.  The actions taken by the council this night on agenda items was mostly rote approval of a lot of special events. 

The only decision not made unanimously was for an added 'beach bonfire' (15:00 in) to be added to the three already planned by the Ludington Convention and Visitor's Bureau (CVB).  Councilor Rathsack indicated that three bonfires this year were enough, costly in resources, and that this new one should only be approved if the timing is important enough to cancel one of the others.  Councilor Katie Moonbeam then echoed his concerns, but stated she thought it was timely for having a bonfire that night, eventually voting for it herself after noting Councilor Krauch's affirmation of these events.

The Ludington Boat Show sponsored by the COLDNews was surprisingly moved to the end of the season (September 8-11) instead of at the beginning in May, perhaps as a consequence of the USCG decision to have a seasonal port in Ludington.  COLDNews reporter Kevin Brasiczewski put the approval of this as the first topic in his coverage of the meeting to the surprise of nobody.  As noted in the agenda, all of the four other events in communications were passed without controversy.

The city approved the long-term continued employment of their long term auditing company, Berthiaume & Company, a company that apparently hasn't caught anything fishy in all those years I've been uncovering fishy things like the three years of overcharging for the city attorney and the unethical use of public money for private charities with all sale proceeds of those shirts you brought going to the 'charity'.

And I do little more than keep my eyes and ears open.  In other financial business, they restructured the way the school reimburses the city for the service of collecting property taxes for the LASD (see page 62).  According to John Shay, the new method would come out to about the same amount, but if that was the case why would either party decide on the change?  As usual, the council took the manager at his word and passed it unanimously.  Look to see the city being more vigorous in getting penalty monies.

Ordinance 332-16 was passed which we were told was to be for competitively bidding out contracts for the upcoming water & sewer projects.  But section 4 of the ordinance goes against the concepts of competitive bidding.  Real competitive bidding is simple.  Qualified contractors look at a proposal with specifics drawn up by engineers and they submit a bid, the proposer would then open all proposals and choose the low bid.  This method needs to be followed or cronyism and favoritism charges become valid.  But the City thinks they have a better method, which winds up costing you the taxpayer tons of money:

The Fishbeck and Thompson engineer appointment for the WTP was figured out previously with that flawed way of competitive bidding, because our city officials wanted to hire them, rather than give others a fair shot.  Fishbeck was aware of that and likely gave what amounted to an uncompetitive bid.  As noted the dredging bid was primarily for the Loomis boat launch area and presumed to be unnecessary for the year.

Three departments gave their annual reports this evening:  Building/Zoning Enforcement, Cartier Park and the Senior Citizen Center.  One of the more interesting parts of the former was that the Rental Inspection response numbers were in.  852 properties were identified as possible rental properties with up to 1900 units.  650 letters were sent out to property owners, many sent back forms that said they were exempt, 70 were not returned and Assessor Carol Anne Foote was explicit in saying the seventy non-responders  (42:45 in) "will be charged a failure to register fee which is $500 per unit."  Good luck in collecting that unlawful fee, city leaders.

This is what the officials offered on their agenda; surprisingly the few people who spoke out at this meeting went away from the city's agenda.  Janelle Schade approached the podium right after I went away from it the first time at (6:00 in) and voiced her disapproval of the West End Scheme and what could be done to improve the end of Ludington Avenue in her opinion.  It seemed rather unobjectionable. 

Diane Chippi spoke at the end of the meeting (51:00 in), giving her story about what has been happening down at the PM Bayou, (referred to here) citing the 480 page DEQ Report that shows massive contamination, and the lack of the City to do anything pursuant to the 2008 storm damage where the road and the raw sewage courtesy of the city assisted in decimating her old family business.  You may remember her son speaking at the previous meeting regarding the same topic.  Let's hope they keep bringing this up at these meetings.   They should not be so easily dismissed by the mayor and the Fourth Ward Councilor who effectively dismissed it with the city-manager-purchased 'executive summary', that was erroneous at several spots. 

I spoke right after her, continuing my comment from the beginning of the meeting, of which I was surprised the mayor didn't gong me for addressing something that was not on the agenda of this meeting, much like Janelle's comments, mine were on the agenda of the previous meeting.  I had a solid defense for being able to speak up about topics on prior agendas being within the city's recent restrictions on free speech.

My speech started at 2:30 into the meeting, and continued about 53:00 into the meeting, and addressed two issues of unethical conduct by the city attorney/city manager and the Tykoski's.  I had to redo the second portion for continuity since I was cut off mid-sentence and mid-issue.

April 11th 2016 Ludington City Council Meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

"At the last two meetings, I questioned the gift of $50,000 to our city attorney to supply legal services for the water and wastewater treatment plant constructions.  Rural Development requires such a legal agreement between the public body and an attorney or law firm, and it is not unheard of to have the city or village attorney to do the required mundane legal work as part of their yearly retainer.  Union City Michigan contracted their village attorney to do the RD legal work for their substantial loan in 2013 for no extra compensation other than his Village Attorney retainer.  The town of Alexander NY did the same. 

Carroll County RD Attorney Services Agreement in 2013 for both water and wastewater projects similar to Ludington's had a LSA for a price not to exceed $8000.   Oakfield New York's LS agreement was made not to exceed $7500.  Yates, New York had a LS agreement not to exceed $9750 for their substantial Rural Development projects.  The highest I found other than Ludington's was for Bozeman, Montana who was up at $15,600 for a multifaceted project. 

Yet, our City manager and attorney craft a deal without any competitive bidding for $50,000 even though the job entails exactly what is already in our City Attorney agreement as regular work, and part of why we already pay the city attorney over $50,000 each year already as a retainer.  Let's also not forget, this firm overcharged the people for over three years, with collusion by the city manager allowing it each month, and they conducted a scheme where they funneled money to Richard Wilson to pay for contracted work they didn't want the public to know about.  This is nothing less than robbery from the Ludington taxpayers initiated by John Shay and Richard Wilson.  Like the sewer work, it's a crappy enterprise.

In similar vein, our Downtown Development Authority is providing the husband of our community development director also known as Councilor Tykoski financial gain of more than a de minimis nature, that is, a gain of over $100, in its purchasing of products from Safety Decals, of which Councilor Tykoski is President thereof.  Section 2-72 subsection 3 of the charter says under prohibited conduct that:  "No officer or employee shall make an unauthorized use of his or her public position to obtain financial gain, other than de minimis financial gain for himself or herself, or a member of his or her immediate family..."

Subsection 1 explains further:  " An officer or employee who makes or participates in making a decision... which places or may place him or her in a potential violation... shall deliver a written statement to the governmental body of which such officer or employee is a member or employee and to the city clerk disclosing the potential conflict of interest and explaining why, despite the potential conflict, he or she was able to make or participate in making the decision fairly, objectively, and in the public interest."

This was not done according to the minutes of the previous DDA meetings, but needs to be done when our officials and their family make a profit from the actions of our public body buying $964 in T-shirts and $508 from signs and banners used for DDA sponsored events.  Thank you in advance for addressing this now and in the future."

Finance reports of the last two meetings, showing profit making by Councilor Tykoski via the purchases of Community Development Director Tykoski

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That's about $1500 that Councilor Tykoski made unethically, and in direct violation of city charter codes. And because he and daddy don't charge for the usage of their truck for a NYE ball drop, for a few scant hours, it's okay? I also noticed Krauch made reference to the MDNR PM Bayou report in such a way as to say it's in fine condition. His defense was to read boring stats that put people to sleep hearing them, and sounded more to me like there was no problem of contamination, or did I hear him wrong? Of course we always have a cackle out of Holman during any meeting, saying she wish she wasn't term limited, or she'd run for at large ward again. Who needs her? Disgusting Sasquatch woman! Then of course Shay has to defend overpayment to his buddy Wilson, defending the payola scheme with more lame excuses, instead of asking why the accountants and CPA's didn't catch it long ago, and make Wilson refund the city for his ill-gotten gains. That too must be swept under the rug, more fraud at it's best!

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At the end of every DDA meeting minutes of the last few years is the phrase "respectfully submitted by Heather LV Tykoski", but is it respectful to use public money to filter money to yourself through your husband's business?  If Nick is altruistically making these signs and t-shirts at a fantastic rate for the city, that needs to be noted in the record at these meetings.

That they still don't do this after being caught back in 2011 in a variety of ethical shortcomings involving the $150,000 sign projects our city leaders gave Nick back when he was on the DDA's sign subcommittee and Heather respectfully submitted those minutes is outrageous. 

But then, we pay the city attorney over $50,000 each year just as retainer, we now have to pay them $50,000 more to do what they are already contracted to do.  I have posted Ludington's city attorney agreements often enough on this website; the work here is not a special project, it is subsumed in their normal workload.  Nobody on the invertebrate city council challenged this.  

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On the rentals. 1900 units? how long will it take to inspect all those? Now the next thing they'll come up with is hire 2 more inspectors The city is making extra off penalties already, 70 no returns with a minimum of $500. some landlords have more than 1 rental. Maybe they can give the slime ball attorney Wilson some more money to try to collect the penalty monies.