Ludington City Council Meeting October 24, 2016: Flowing and Splashing

[XLFD]

As would be expected, the last city council meeting before the November election was short on meat.  The council would assuredly pass the New Year's Eve fireworks permit, needed to shoot them off as 2017 comes to Ludington.  A technology support contract would also indubitably be given to IT Right, who kept their rate the same from their previous contract, though the city has no record of seeing whether they could get the service cheaper from other IT companies.

At the end of the meeting, it was revealed that the Splash Pad envisioned for Copeyon Park received a $60,000 grant from the Community Foundation for Mason County, and $32,000 from other sources.   Back at the August 22nd meeting, a group looking to make the water fun park estimated it would cost $215,000, which they were planning on getting through donations, eventually signing the finished project over to the city corporate.  The city council at that times seemed interested, with some reservations noted.

The small bit of controversy was introduced by the Third Ward council candidate, Tom Rotta (myself) who saw some troubling numbers in the councilor packet.  The council effectively were just changing an existing contract with engineering firm Fleis and Vandenbrink to separate the water and wastewater projects, to qualify for Rural Development loans.  My comment begins at 2:50 into the video.  Nobody else from the public would speak other than C. Dale Bannon at the back end of the comments.

October 25, 2016 Ludington City Council from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

"In the councilor packet, p. 29, a memo from the city manager said that as per city spending policy, that he and the Finance Committee Chairman, the current mayor pro tem, approved an additional cost of $19,900 in early April to purchase [Editor's note:  'purchase' was a mistake on my part, the record says it was for renting those meters] flow meters without approval of this council.  These meters were to be used for analyzing the amount of sewage going through the mains in order to install the right size sewer main for the 2018 project.

 

Although the expenditure was approved, it did not show up in the finance committee reports in April or May, and the only appearance in the available public record for a $19,900 non-budgeted expenditure for flow meters is in this memo.  Furthermore, it is unclear from the memo whether this is an amendment to the existing contract with Fleis and Vandenbrink, in which case, it would require a separate action from this council, not just approval by two city officials making a decision where $20,000 of the taxpayer's money is given away secretively.

This is a recurring challenge of our local government, where accountability and transparency has been sacrificed on the altar of expediency.  Where our civic leaders spend tens of thousands of our tax dollars without any concern to the people of whether it was done properly, cost-effectively, or within the public interest.  This purchase of expensive flow meters to accomplish a singular task is just one instance of a long list of times when public knowledge has been circumvented in Ludington.  There really is no reason for it in this case... unless the two actors responsible have some vested interest in not bringing it up in front of the council and the public."

As noted, the $19,900 charge was for renting flow meters, it seems to me to be a rather high charge just for renting in order to analyze the amount of flow through the wastewater system.  Our city officials tried to justify the process and the costs involved here, but first let's revisit the City of Ludington's love affair with the Fleis and Vandenbrink (F&V) firm. 

Last year, F&V won over a half dozen other firms in getting a related contract to this project, and I looked over the noncompetitive aspects of  Competitive Bidding Ludington-Style.  As noted, without following the true bidding process, they narrowed it down to three firms before opening the price envelopes, perhaps wasting $180,000 or more like they did when local engineers Nordlund & Assoc. were overlooked for the Washington Bridge engineering work. 

On February 8, 2016, F&V got another pass through the competitive bidding process when the City had six firms submit proposals based on the same specifications. 

They instantly dismissed without any rationale two of those firms, threw out two more after interviews of the remaining four, then opened only two of the six bids.  This is the circus our city parades as fair bidding.  Once again, the citizens may have lost hundreds of thousands.

In this meeting's instance, Shay and Holman made a decision on April 13 to spend money on rentals, over six months later there is nothing available to the public that showed this decision was made.  It turns out that the money hasn't even been spent yet, according to Shay and Wilson later on, but it appears to be firmly committed.  A non-budgeted $19,900 spent on renting flow meters committed for over a half year without any vote by council, and no oversight by the public.

While Shay notes about 15 minutes into the video, that these meters would be used to determine the flows through these force mains, and that that information is important when choosing pipe widths because there are problems when the pipe is either too big or too small, he doesn't make the case about why we need the measurements of these rented flow meters. 

The wastewater treatment plant keeps records of normal sewage flows per day.  There have been plenty of rain events since the 1970s, so they should know the influence of storm water into the sanitary sewer lines by now.  The variance between the big summer flows and the small winter flows should also be known. 

The City of Ludington approximates your sewer usage by saying it equals your water usage, they should know what buildings are serviced by the various force mains, they can very adequately guess the flow by using simple mathematics with the data they have.

In the end, measuring flows on any given day (or extended time period for that matter) with rented meters, won't necessarily give you a better idea of what the flow will be when the sewer is completed many years later, or for a future hundred year storm.  So can we at least get some justification for why we are ready to waste money measuring how much wastewater our system services and waste the taxpayer's faith in their Ludington government further by having it committed to in a secret process?

[Brad]

Speaking of transparency... not the blatant use of the term by most politicians to incorrectly to say they are when they are NOT...

But when would there ever be a good reason by Ludington government to justifiably keep something from the citizens..?  (think I've seen this mention by you or another local)  I can't think of one, and I can see few instances federally.  

[Willy]

Your exactly right again X, the city should already know what the flow rate is, how else can they currently discharge the waste without that knowledge? If the pipe sizing were inadequate there would be constant back ups and I'm assuming there would be a report regarding that. This is standard procedure for any waste treatment plant and any manager running one of these plants should know what the maximum capacity of their operation is.

This kind of shenanigans is a mainstay for this City Manager and Council. I don't know how many flow meters are going to be required but $19,000 would purchase 3 of them which the City could use over and over.

[stump]

It's just like the city lights down town, buy new light fixtures instead of changing the bulbs.