Ludington City Council Meeting, July 9, 2018: The Legacy of the Johns

[XLFD]

The July 9 2018 meeting of the Ludington City Council meeting could have easily passed for a council meeting from five years previous.  For sure, in June 2013 the city council had seven different members than it does now, but the events of this night were destined to be nostalgic as it was the last night that John Shay would be at the meeting in his capacity as city manager, as he moves to his new job in Ottawa County as a deputy county administrator.  

A look at the 7-9-2018 agenda packet shows there was a bit on the agenda, but most were either first readings, change orders, and routine orders of business.  They did select an interim city manager to replace Shay, Steve Brock, but this was more a routine in itself if you had the opportunity to attend the special meeting an hour before this meeting where they made that choice with all but the vote.  

Tonight effectively was a bacchanalia of John Shay celebrations, you could tell by the resolution and the cheesy send off picture in the packet, not to mention the reception at the end of the meeting which was undoubtedly paid for willingly by the grateful public.  Not the case if other receptions are any indication, you paid for this if you loved or loathed Shay.

So let's consider this aspect of the meeting, as nothing else was controversial and passed unanimously by the council.  You will notice in the video that former three term mayor John Henderson was seated in back of me.  He would later notify Shay twice that he has always had his back, but at this meeting, he had mine.  Complete with the 'back talk'.  I was the first to speak tonight and I include links to where the bad and oft-criminal behavior was documented.

July 9th, 2018 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

XLFD (4:40 in):  "After reading the resolution of appreciation for John Shay in your packets, and posing a question dealing with his accomplishments on multiple areas of social media, I haven't seen one specific action over his 15 years of management that supports a positive legacy. The resolution notes that he accomplished the minimal duties of his office and had a certain type of character that the 15 year record effectively refutes. It reads like the eulogy of a man who hasn't accomplished anything over their years on Earth, and can only be memorialized by general statements of dubious accuracy.

I have five minutes total tonight, so I will present five specific points of Shay's real legacy that we have been forced to deal with, I won't even mention the biggest debt and pension liability that the City has ever faced.

In 2008, the City settled with former Building Inspector Jack Byers for $250,000 in order to squelch a federal lawsuit involving violations of the Whistleblowers Protection Act and the Open Meetings Act. The available record shows Byers was just doing his job with concern for the public, while city leadership was not.

Shay led the creation of a workplace safety policy in 2011 which allowed him the ability to keep citizens out of public facilities without any due process. I was issued one apparently to prevent me from inspecting public records at the city hall and police station, and I had admittedly done nothing wrong or even threatening. Shay's actions once again led the City and him personally to federal court where they spent tens of thousands in legal fees and settlement fees and reluctantly changed their obviously illegal policy. True to form, Shay hurled false and slanderous allegations at the victim at the end of the next city council meeting without reprimand from his employers.

In another court case in 2012, John Shay created an affidavit claiming that he had provided me with all of the records compliant with my FOIA request to support our city attorney's legal brief. Other public records shown he was clearly lying, with a few of those records authorized or signed by him eventually brought forth. Willfully lying on a sworn affidavit amounts to perjury and yet the presiding judge would not look at it that way and a good reason why is that the judge's son was on the City's defense team, something our city attorney and manager would ever divulge until the judge finally admitted it much later." [END, I deferred my final two legacy points to the last comments]

I think John Henderson wanted to get up then, but he was beat to the podium by Jason Adam, who lamented over the safety issue of crossing the street in the 'Wesco Block' of Ludington Avenue.  But then he got up at the 8:40 point and said:

Former Mayor Henderson:  "A couple things, and I will make sure to stay within my 3 minutes mayor and I will make sure to use my following two minutes to talk to Mr. Rotta.

But let's just start this way, I was fortunate enough to be the mayor of Ludington for a long period of time, and I could not have been successful, and we would not have been successful as a city if it hadn't been for John Shay. You know I was part of, and the council at the time were part of, hiring John back in the day, and there is no regrets whatsoever, John has been a huge asset to my team when I was mayor and the council that was here.

Tom, unfortunately, has taken on a vindictive approach to our city and directly at our city manager, which is unfortunate, Miss Mayor, he finds ways to twist the truth, leaves out the facts, in numerous times when I sat in your chair I have to correct him and re-correct him and control the council because Tom's ability to absolutely forget that one sentence or, by the way, the judge ruled against you right, so therefore you were wrong; he'd forget to point that out. 

As far as some of the stuff he brought up tonight, John didn't do that on his own, the council was responsible or agreed with those decisions, and most of the time, we were the ones making those decisions, not John.

John was the hands and feet, like any city manager is, and as he is for you today, and soon will be moving on to another county job which we hope great success for him in the future. We have benefitted largely from John's ability and his foresight for the city, I'm very proud to say of John he not only worked for us, but I've worked with John he's a friend of mine, and more importantly, he's been an asset to this city, and all of us should be very grateful for what we got from John. We got everything we thought we were when we hired him and somebody's going to get a lot more out of John because we've taught him some and he's taught us a lot along the way.

So John, I know it's been painful and you've taken a lot of blunt hits for us as a city, specifically in and around Tom's comments, but please don't-- Tom's an individual, there's 8000 of us, there's a lot more that believe in you and what you've done, than one man who stands up here every meeting and continues to find entertainment. And I'm sure I'll be entertained soon by his, wherever he's going to go in two minutes at the end of this thing, so some of us do have your back, I know that I do and I want to thank you for what you've done for us, thank you for your time. Wish it could have been for a little longer but I do understand it's time to move on and wish you all the luck in the world, so thank you so much. (starts applauding, then sits down, END)."

Hizzoner Henderson had a point, the city council was complicit in the majority of the legal problems I mentioned in my first three, but Shay was the hands, feet, mouth, and foot-in-mouth who lied, slandered, perjured, and persecuted me, Byers, my co-plaintiff and others in those three legacy points.  Even though Henderson's actions played a significant role in at least two of the legal actions mentioned, he defers any blame on himself.  

Oddly enough, I had to filter through a lot of Shay's problems with ethics, competitive bids, and the law when narrowing my list to five, if I had more time I could have went quite a ways deeper into the corruption and incompetence he exhibited over the years.  I grouped the legal issues for the first three, since the agenda had my next comment coming after the Shay love-in where his family entered the chamber, the mayor cried while giving him the key to the city, and the resolution was read.  The latter two minutes were devoted to policy issues:

XLFD: (54:00 in)  "Painting the water towers at top rate during recessionary times is the fourth part of Shay's legacy. The water towers were painted for $300,000 in the year 2000, and shouldn't need repainting for at least twenty years. In 2009, when the City should have been tightening it's belt, it tightened it's noose by getting in a contract to paint both towers at $1.2 million, four times as much, without any competitive bids. Shay has said at a meeting that the contract called for a "free" repainting in the tenth year of the contract, which would be 2019. Guess what, Shay lied, the contract never said that and he's clearing out before that lie is confirmed. Is it any surprise that this company no longer exists?

Lastly, Shay's legacy of negligence and lack of leadership would not be complete without his actions at the PM Bayou. In 2008, the sewer main under Madison Street dumped 15 million gallons of raw sewage into the bayou after large portions of Madison went in as well. Nothing was ever cleaned up. But worse is that in 2012, another sewer force main developed a leak and dumped up to 2 million gallons of raw sewage into that area and much of that was due to Shay giving the order to bypass pump the sewage into the bayou without any authority to do so. Is it any wonder he never properly contacted the DEQ or the health department about it? Hopefully, our local private marina owners will hold him to account for such villainy when they no longer have to support his legal defense."

Henderson got up immediately thereafter 

Henderson (56:10): A couple things, as I said John, I have your back, and we'll clarify these two items, but before we get going, again congratulations, thank you so much on behalf of my team; I'm sure on this team here, and the citizens for all you've done for us. You know, Tom wonders: "What do we do?", so I would ask you this: 15 years ago, think of where we were at. James Street was pretty well a vacant property problem, we had derelict buildings, we were upside down, we had lots of vacant buildings. Look at it today. It's thriving, its because of the culture that we all created. John was part of that culture that created that. That culture exists today because of what John has helped us pull together. You think of all what Ludington has to offer, why people want to come here, why people want to live here, why do we live here, why do businesses relocate here. When I took over, when we took over, we were looking at very limited ability of people wanting to develop here, to build here, and even to do business here. We had business folks say "I wish we could move away. If it was possible we would relocate. Today, they're growing there businesses; it's because of the culture you helped build here.
So let's talk about Tom's favorite topic: water towers. I've heard about water towers forever, I think Tom actually dove into a couple of dumpsters to check a can if I remember right, I think he referred to us as that. But what Tom doesn't understand is through good financial planning, good times, bad times, while you have sinking funds, why you have strategies, we were following the strategies that were set out way before us. Why water towers had to be painted on a recurring basis is that we want safe drinking water.

Tom will sit up and tell us that we have lead pipes and all of this other stuff, but we've been going through fixing all of those things. Tom forgets to talk about maybe the city was in a better shape than he wants to say it's in. He talks about us getting sued. He's sued us more often than anyone has sued us for very sill things, but in his mind, they're important, and in some cases he's won, but most often he's lost, but whatever the case is, you know John... "

A this point, Mayor Holman apologetically let him know his time was up, but he just lurked off the podium while new firefighter Becky Cain got up before Jen Tooman could, introduced herself and said: "I'm going to yield my two minutes to John Henderson."  Henderson continued:

"Can I have two more minutes now that I've been yielded to?" Mayor Holman agreed for two more minutes. "So John, here's the deal. You have done a great job for us, you have helped this council and previous councils move forward. You did not make any of these decisions by yourself, it's been we, we are a team.

Tom... don't listen to what little negative this, every community has those, think of all the positive, we are all here, there is many of us here that want to thank you for what you've done. I want you to leave tonight with your family thinking the same way. You have done a wonderful job for us. Don't let silliness get in the way of all of the good things. You know you've done it, I know you've done it. We all know what you've done. So thank you so much. (leads applause standing ovation).

John Henderson perhaps cemented his ultimate legacy with these seven minutes of praising the undeserved and condemning the public's representative.  The over 8000 citizens of Ludington who he mentions and who didn't show up, are mostly indifferent or have had enough of Shay.  Why else would they pass up free cake and other treats they paid for?  As Henderson sat down the fire chief got into the feeding frenzy:

Jerry Funk: (59:30)  "Just a short one. Once again Mr. Rotta has (interrupted by mayor to say his name) Mr. Rotta thinks he can wear that fire department T-shirt, we cannot stop him from doing it. What surprised me an hour ago when he was at a meeting here, he didn't have it on. He just wants to call attention to the fire department, but he does not represent us, and Tom, you should be ashamed of yourself for trying.[glowering look, END}"

No, I wasn't shirtless earlier, but I actually wore the LFD shirt this evening as a type of armor to handle the slings and arrows that were surely to be sent my way for desecrating the name of John Shay, when all I did was recant what specific things he had done for-- and to-- the people of Ludington.  The meeting then devolved into more of a going-away ceremony than a meeting of a city council. 

But as I noted earlier, this meeting was very nostalgic considering that you had Henderson talking on and on about having John's back and council teamwork, you had me bringing up legal and ethical issues that coincidentally all happened during the mayorship of Henderson (before 2014) while wearing an LFD T-shirt, you had Chief Funk getting up and getting upset about a shirt on one of his former firefighters of 8 years, who served with him and Mayor Henderson

                       XLFD, 3rd from left,  Henderson 6th from left, Chief Funk furthest right all in the standing row from 2002

You even had Henderson breaking the rules for himself with Mayor Holman's complicity by getting extra minutes with a new maneuver I will surely try to use in the future when I have more to say.  I won't be successful, mind you, for Ludington officials do not care about issues of fairness for one that isn't on their team. 

Even though he sometimes wears the uniform.  I once thought that everybody in Ludington was on the same team, but our officials constantly remind us that that kind of thinking is wrong.  They are the elite, we are insects to be squashed when we question their self-importance and their version of the facts.  

[Willy]

Thanks for reminding me of why Henderson was and always will be an anchor around the necks of the good citizens of Ludington. The fact that he attacked you shows how classless he has remained. Now as in the past he has never offered any facts on how he and his pal Shay, along with the other corrupt actors on the CIty Council treated the taxpayers like crap.

Think about it. Henderson and Shay have never explained any of the misdeeds, lies and corruption they have been accused of and even now he spews loads of BS without really explaining any of his and Shay's questionable behavior.

A perfect example is the heavy equipment waiting to tear up and eliminate the most accessible water front beach in the area with still no explanation of what is going on. Why haven't the stupes on the Council presented at a Council meeting a program or presentation of what is about to take place at the Ludington Ave west end beach. Does anyone know what the hell is going on down there. This is the legacy of idiots like Henderson and his "friend" Shay. Please Shay, take Henderson with you. I wish I could say good riddance to both of them.

[AQUAMAN]

Very well said and accurate post Willy, you make my day now, thanks. And YES!, take Hendy with you Shyster, to another innocent and well being Ottawa County far away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[XLFD]

Both Johns had each other's backs, the everchanging city council over their tenure were on their team, no exceptions noted.  Is it any wonder why city hall is so tone-deaf when it comes to serving the real team they are supposed to work for:  the people of Ludington.

[Freedom Seeker]

I second that, Willy. At least Henderson admitted that he and (his team) are responsible for the mess Ludington is ... From a quaint place tourists wanted to visit and people wanted to to live in peace and retire to, to a congested cluster. Too much congestion will run some of the most diehard tourists away. Those that love Ludington came here for natural beauty and small town peace and Henderson and shay and community development Tykoski want to make it like Rochester or Boston and run the locals our of town. I hope Henderson also takes responsibility for the debt. Not a one of his team have a sense for keeping in budget. Shay got us in debt so bad and runs away blaming it all on Rotta. You've hit them too many times where it hurts in ethics and budget, XLFD, and it hit a sensitive nerve and Henderson lashed out, very undiplomatic last night. Henderson had a vision to make Ludington a big city but didn't control the budget and it won't be long and they'll start realizing it when his children's children's children still are paying the debt ... For not taking care of the infrastructure every year in budget. Shay didn't want to be around for the tax increases. Not a one of Henderson's team are or were skilled in dealing with the public or taking honest criticism. Dealing fairly with the public takes wisdom, age and experience. They were (are) all a bunch of young polyannic marketers.

[AQUAMAN]

And Freedom Seeker you also hit the nail on the head, thanks for your post, it is TRUTH, not blatant LIES!

[XLFD]

And didn't you love that Hizzoner Henderson effectively called Ludington little more than a third world country when he became Mayor in 2002, succeeding Mayor Carol Pomorski after winning a close election, and through his and Shay's awesome superpowers changed the culture.  Oh if I could be a bat inside the recesses of the interim Fourth Ward Councilor's head and see what she was thinking during his presentation.   She actually had some accomplishments in her four years that were more than Henderson did in his last eight.

[Freedom Seeker]

Yes. Ludington was just a graveyard of vacant buildings according to Henderson. Never gave Pomorski any credit, just himself and correcting himself to remember his team. Henderson happened to come into a time of economic decline and rebound and where businesses and residents saw opportunities. Just think what we could be wth an ethical, financially responsible management that knew how to take care of infrastructure? Maybe we wouldn't be facing $50 million dollar debt, increased taxes and fees What? Maybe one business wanted to leave who talked to Henderson back then?

Who wants to leave now? The Treasurer, the fourth ward councilor, the city manager, and the county economic growth alliance Spense Riggs all this summer . Good for them looking for a better place. What do these officials know to make them leave? Is calamity coming to Ludington? Who is next to leave?

[shinblind]

How was the cake and beverages?

[XLFD]

They offered me a special slice of cake; for some reason it was eating a hole through the paper plate, so I declined.

Actually, I left right after the meeting, not wanting any of the morsels or grog they brought with the people's money rather than their own.  As I left, I ran into LPD's Dave Maltbie, who was parking his Tahoe in front of the LPD station; he was disappointed he missed the end of the meeting, but I told him he was right on time for the reception.  As I exchanged pleasantries, Councilor Winczewski exited the building, and started walking towards me, when he had went towards the entrance.  

We had an exchange.  She was upset with what I had said at the meeting and wondered why I do what I do.  I put it back on her to consider who may be wearing the white and black hats.  She seems so out of touch that she thinks what Henderson did was somehow good, attacking and character assassinating a citizen, while what I was doing was somehow bad, criticizing the documented shortcomings of a public official who was abandoning the city after putting it in a bad place financially and ethically.  She seems like she's joined some sort of cult, I'm just glad this haughty ex-teacher didn't whack me with a yardstick.

[AQUAMAN]

Moonbeam Kathy is not only a distorted individual, she's an extreme leftist with a fixed agenda that agrees with her cronie cohorts, and a very little person with no perspective on life's realistic values for positive changes for our small town. Someone should run against her next election too, someone that really cares about Ludington's positive future, not the warped fixed agenda of the present.

[Brad]

"June 9 2018 meeting"???  Or July 9th meeting?  Almost didn't read the article as I was looking for the latest one.  Sorry for being critical, but I guess you can probably handle it. LOL  John H's comments and treatment of a citizen, no matter the citizen's comments, should never be treated so disgustingly.  No public official or former official should ever treat any citizen that way.  Not only is it unkind, but also discourages other citizens from speaking up.  Also, we should line up at future meetings to "YIELD" more minutes to you, as the precedence was set that night-- either June or July 9th LOL.

[XLFD]

I guess I want more summer, is that so wrong?  Wait, we'd have an extra month of John Shay....

Thank you-- I guess maybe XMOL Henderson was right about me twisting the truth and leaving out facts, when I can't even get a month correct.  I'm sure I'll hear about it next meeting.  

Councilor Moonbeam:  "Mr. Rotta, why do you think Mr. Shay invented our twelve month calendar?  Just to hear you not follow the rules and claim that it's one month when it's actually another month?  Our city establishes those months for a reason and if you cannot determine what month it is, how can you be trusted on anything else?  You just keep living in the past, we will move forward, thank you very much." (starts clapping, receives a standing ovation)."

In the future, if I can inspire some other ne'er-do-wells to go with me when I have more to say, I will not only try to get them to go to the podium and cede their minutes to me, I will also do that clapping-for-myself thing that Henderson did and expect my cadre to clap and give my words and sentiments a standing ovation.  Expect the usual death-ray glares from the city officials when you do.