Ludington City Council Meeting January 9, 2017: Firewalls Holding

Firewall (n):  2. a person, thing, or event that acts as a barrier or protection against something undesirable.

Arriving at the chambers for the January 9, 2017 Ludington city council meeting, one could not help but notice two things:  a bunch of firefighters decked out in their dress uniforms and a host of city officials mugging for the cameras behind their panel.  The poses by the city officials were primarily for the fawning local media, eager to capture the new lineup after the 2016 elections.  The rows of faces had only one new face, however, Brandy Henderson taking over Kaye Holman's councilor seat. 

The ten or so firemen were there for a reason.  Captain Gary Lange was set to retire after 45 distinguished years on the department.  When I interviewed to be on the LFD in the year 2000, and at many times during my scant eight years as a fire extinguisher, Captain Lange (pictured below) was inspirational in my development and always more than fair and direct-dealing.  

His chief and the mayor begin the accolades for the captain at 14:00 into the video, where he is given the key to the city and gives a gracious thanks for those he served with and those close to him in his family that allowed him to have served so long.

Perfunctory tasks that mark the first meeting of the year were the main course otherwise for this meeting.  Appointing five standing committees for the councilors and 18 boards (see p. 13+ here for details) required just a couple of votes, plus am abstention by Councilor Castonia, an ex-LPD member for the Police Pension Board.  Castonia would be nominated this year's mayor pro-tem, a late addition to the agenda.  Unlike past years, there appears to be no appointments that go against city charter rules.  As they do each year, they selected depositories (banks) where the city would hold its accumulated cash.

The other business involved okaying two contracts.  The city will pay TNT Enterprises out of Scottville $20 per public restroom cleaned May through October for the five restrooms the city manages, and $25 to clean the open-all-year restroom at the James Street Plaza when it's needed during the off-season.  The City amended the contract with the water treatment plant contractor adding or deleting thirteen minutiae that summed up to roughly $70,000 extra, which will come out of a half million dollars in contingency funds the city had set aside, according to the city manager.

All of the various tasks considered were passed with little discussion only made for clarification.  Of more public interest to watch was the four public comments that took place at the meeting.  Two happened before the business of the meeting.  I went first, and managed to adapt three minutes referencing the minutes of the last meeting which get approved after the comment period. 

County Clerk Cheryl Kelly followed me, thanking the city for providing a place to do the presidential vote recount back in December, and the efforts of City Clerk Deb Luskin.  Kelly clearly violated the idiotic Krauch rule that allows only three minutes of agenda-oriented public comment at the front of the meeting, a rule she also broke on May 9, 2016.  Once again, she was not chided for her lack of decorum after being told the rules.  My first speech started 2:33 into the meeting, I have supplied some links for those who haven't been following up until now.

Lcc jan 9 from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

I thank Councilor Winczewski for gracefully admitting her error regarding her statement about a local hardware store as noted in the minutes of the last meeting.  And whereas those minutes also reflect Councilor Krauch's initiative to have Water Plant Supervisor Malzahn come in to set the record straight, I can not gauge the basis of why a recent newcomer to the area without any experience in municipal water systems like Councilor Krauch can express the opinions that Ludington water is safe and that the water tests taken by the city are objective. 

There is no evidence to back those claims, to the contrary, our young children and Scottville's young children are at the top of the state's annual reports on high blood lead levels for the last three years.  The tests the city runs contain a significant amount of houses built after lead-free plumbing and solder became the law, and contain the homes of city officials like John Shay and Chief Barnett that were assuredly added to the testing list well after the state mandated the testing, as they moved to Ludington well after the times these tests started. 

So what we have is unexplained high blood levels in our young kids, and mandated water tests that are not being administered to at-risk houses as they should, rather to 'safe houses' and houses of people that have a vested interest in keeping Ludington lead free at least in the test results.  If you do your research, Flint officials did the same thing.

John Shay told the media last year that Ludington water had zero lead and pointed to those results, which did not say that; the last two tests reflect that lead is in the water, even in his cherry-picked list.  Shay lied and our water supervisor chooses to live way out on Hansen Road, undoubtedly getting his water from a well, not from the city. 

I ask Councilor Krauch to clarify  his claims that the water is safe even after the manager admitted that the water department still finds lead goose-necks in their system, after the tests have been shown to be improperly administrated, after our schools had water fountains above the action level just six months ago, and after our kids are much more at risk of elevated lead levels than Flint's kids are. 

Lastly, let me add that the citizens will be losing a great man and firefighter who has protected us and our property for over 45 years, Captain Gary Lange.  As you retire, thank you for your service, dedication, humility and humanity."

Near the end of the meeting, my fellow citizen, Tom Tyron, gave a poignant message to the councilors of which I thought was worth transcription: 

Tom Tyron (30:50 in) "I was troubled at your last meeting where you mentioned something about charging an administrative fee to collect taxes and such, and cited revenue sharing going down.  My idea of revenue sharing was that it was for capital improvement projects not payroll.  I don't understand what that's about.  But judging by the amount of condominiums and construction that has been going on in this city, I find it hard to believe that taxes are stagnant, and if they are, you're doing something wrong. 

All I'm here to say is, I don't need any more tax increases, you just threw a rental inspection tax on me.  And I know when my costs of operation go up, while my revenues go down, I have to cut costs.  I don't... you have to cut out things, sometimes you have to take a look; if the taxes are stagnant, maybe your payrolls remain stagnant.  Just my thoughts on the matter, thank you."

Mr. Tyron, as usual, supplied common sense wisdom, and respectfully chided the officers for their fiscal irresponsibility in raising pay rates and benefit rates, while the citizens are being put around $30 million into debt to pay for their negligence of the utilities over the last five decades.  This topic would actually be part of my last two minute speech, given right afterwards, which I will provide in the article Sludgegate along with references and links. 

The city officials would not comment about anything brought up by either citizen, or anything outside the agenda for that matter.  The City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) had a splashy front page story about Gary Lange, a much smaller page 8 article about the two contracts.  The Mason Clown de Pressed (MCP) also showed up and runs a similar tribute and the above group photo (complete with their picture copyright) of the council.  Nothing about public participation is noted in either, just bios of Captain Lange and brief, incomplete recaps of the contracts. 

The city council's firewall, for the second meeting in a row, was successful-- to a point.

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Thank you Tom for addressing this issue. They have know problem with giving raises to all the higher ups.  Pure blood suckers.

So many good points in one post X, ...nice! Other than a couple of them ticked me off.
Yes, most definitely kudos and congratulations to Mr. Lange. Only had a few snippets of interactions with him, but seems an honorable man.
Lead- will they ever acknowledge and will they truly fix? Or will they just follow Flint's footsteps? I think most contamination comes from the actual water supply lines and not so much from each household. Also how much will the water treatment plant upgrades affect increase in lead contamination?
The lackluster media- lets it's citizens down once again with no reports of anything of substance.
Thanks to Mr. Tyron, a few of us will actually will know what's going on with the city's fiscal irresponsibilities.

Pretty much business as usual, keep contamination swept under the rug where lead in water is concerned. And make sure to appoint new committee members that also follow and agree with city elected officials, they too can step up and run later for vacant offices into the future. And please make sure everyone gets more raises, whether the fiscal status can afford this or not. Lastly, somebody has a great coat to wear, that Green Bay Packers coat sure looked good, even though not much else besides the fireman retiring. Thanks for the continuing fight to make Ludington better, and possibly someday, really accountable for their actions, and lack thereof.

I'll have you know that just a month and a half ago I was being ribbed for wearing that same jacket by Lions fans whose outlook was pretty rosy at that time.  As I said to them, it's a warm jacket that fits me well, don't read any special loyalty to 'The Pack' into my donning it during this time of year.  I will root for them on any week they aren't playing the fruitful Detroit Limons.

After reading some of these replies, I am kind of surprised I didn't notice earlier and tie it together that the City of Ludington just hired a cleaning organization called TNT Enterprises to clean their bathrooms.  Two Toms have been getting up at their meetings (T and T) trying to get the city to clean up city hall's acts of defecating on the citizens and their recreational waterways.  Coincidence, of course.

Twenty dollars seems cheap to clean a restroom. My question is,,, how many times a day will they clean them. Seems like they left the lid open on that deal.

Ya see if the city would say that they have a lead problem like Flint has, the state/federal government would give the city all kinds of money to fix the problem. The city then could use that money to do all kinds of different things not pertaining to the lead in the water problem, something on the order of the bayou clean up money . What a wind fall, but then again , maybe not.

You would think our city's professional beggar, Heather Tykoski, would be salivating at the mouth about getting the opportunity to get some of that extra cash for checking and updating the city's utilities or cleaning the bayou, so she and John could promptly divert it to drinking events in the downtown or at the beach.

Main priority is "tourist related" functions, and drinking alcohol is the "prime subject" to get more DUI's and make money for the courts and LPD. They are running out of locals for this now as it is rampant.

Time for another FOIA to see if the police really use these events to increase the city coffers .

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