Ludington City Council Sept. 14, 2015: Public Service for Inadequate Public Service

[XLFD]

It wasn't on the Ludington City Council packet agenda, and it hasn't been in any of the local news outlets since Monday except for this one in the straightforwardly named FOIA Lawsuit Initiated Against Ludington.  But even though its existence was ignored by the public officials for the full length of the 40 minute meeting and by the local media (at least until they get City Hall's press release telling us how baseless it is, when it's nothing but base), it's still out there at the end of the week. 

On my part, there was a little bit of choreography by performing the initial service of process during the public comment period by two of the people peripherally involved with the lawsuit.  It may look like a bit of showboating, but the city's legal team has precipitated this course of conduct in the initial service of process.  I have used certified mail, return service requested to do so on one of my previous lawsuits, but the good folks of the city took a look at the return address and refused the letter, as anyone has the right to do with such mail. 

The city's legal team also complained when my agents hand delivered court process to the city clerk during city hall's normal business hours, and have tried to claim such service is not proper, without legal citation on their part.  So it just makes sense to give them process where they cannot deny they received it properly, because the service airs on Ludington TV.  My two servers were very motivated to do their job.

This was the major moment at the city meeting, and it will not be addressed objectively by Ludington city officials or their friends in the media, because they have the losing legal argument no matter how they spin the results when I wind up winning once again.  The only question is whether the local courts will decide on punitive damages for them. 

Fueling the rumor mills, Mayor Ryan Cox was absent and replaced by Mayor Pro-Tem Richard Rathsack who had a few faux pas along the way.  Chief Barnett led off with an appeal to the Supreme Being for his fellow public officials, noticeably leaving off any praise for those who aren't, finishing ten minutes before I criticized the unprofessional acts of two of his poorly trained police officers in the public comments (transcribed and delivered in full below under the video). 

I arrived with my two process servers a little late due to the extra travel time I had to do, arriving during Deb Mannikko's public comment, which touched caustically on the ramifications of the rental inspection program and asked several questions which remained unanswered.  Anybody who knows her, knows that she cares deeply about the people she rents her multiple properties to, and the arguments she has been bringing to the table are sound, unlike the majority of the officials deciding this issue.

Deb's 75 second speech allowed late-arriving me to have my comments and my service, and ask my own questions.  Neither of our questions or other commentary received replies by the officials at any part of the meeting.

What else of importance happened at the meeting?  They approved some health care changes to new hires that are members of the SEIU public service union, designed to lessen the city's obligations to post-employment benefits.  They then formally approved a contract with the Franklin Holwerda Company for emergency services to replace the water treatment plant's filters in case of failure during the time they are improving the Water Treatment Plant, which will cost about $3600 over the next three years.  Insurance.

The next official event was to clarify for legal purposes the street right-of-way abandonment the City made in 2011 with Floracraft.  City Attorney Wilson noted their were several problems with the property descriptions which included references to railroad tracks that have been gone quite a while.  It's explained in detail in the council packet linked to above.

Councilor Winczewski then described why it was a good idea to create a charter amendment to submit the city budget to the council/public at the second November meeting rather than the first.  The news she fails to tell us, is that the current city manager has not followed this charter provision since his first year, and has received exactly zero grief from his employers on the city council during that time.  I hope this gets put on the ballot, for if it would be rejected by the voters, which it should, it would make John Shay's willful charter violations even more meaningful.

Lastly, they made the official nod to rezone the old Paulina Stearn's Hospital property from government service to waterfront.  So as you can see, the five topics that came up on the agenda were uncontroversial and for the most part, mundane and uninteresting.  Which makes it odd that the local newspaper avoided the words and actions by the public who attended and spoke or served court papers.  Why upset the public with non-agenda news.

September 14, 2015 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

" (4:50 in) Permit me to ask a question of the city attorney regarding the pending rental inspection program that his law firm is drafting in its final form before it will likely come to this council for a vote.  When Manistee adopted their own rental inspection program about 15 years ago under this same law firm, it was introduced much like our current proposed program is. 

We could argue over the regulatory need for this program, which doesn't seem to exist, since no specific tenant complaints about Ludington rental units or landlords were reviewed by the committee.  We could argue over the constitutionality of the program, as there is no language in the ordinance that allows a tenant their right to refuse a government inspection of their living quarters absent a warrant, without the tenant being summarily fined and/or imprisoned.

But perhaps the best argument against the program is its cost.  The City of Manistee on the recommendation of fired City Manager Mitch Deisch discontinued having the program oversaw by the building inspector earlier this year, citing a tremendous loss of revenue in running the program.  They hired a contractor known as the Spicer Group to take over the rental inspections, who have summarily hiked up the price and explicitly stated they follow the international Property Maintenance Code.  This code has clearly defined limits of ceiling heights, room dimensions, and several other hard limits on what's allowable or not in both new and existing buildings.   The City of Manistee is now effectively out of the inspection business, except for future liabilities of their hirelings, and more money is taken out of landlords hands which reduce their ability to make meaningful improvements.

So the question for the city attorney, is if this is what has happened over at Manistee and is likely to happen here in our future, then how could it possibly be in our city's best interests to adopt a rental inspection program? 

You councilors will have probably forgotten all about a FOIA appeal I made to you in March about certain police records that were declined because they were allegedly part of a police investigation whose disclosure would interfere with law enforcement proceedings.  I shared with you not only the law, but also Michigan Supreme Court precedent that said the FOIA Coordinator and Prosecutor Spaniola were utterly mistaken in denying the totality of an arrest report and associated records using generalizations that defy the public policy of this state which establishes full disclosure of non-exempt material.  

What's troubling in this immediate case was that the arrestee was also not provided with the records generated by the police and which needed to be provided to him by the prosecutor through the discovery process, namely the arrest warrant and any search warrants and the affidavits used to obtain them.  Such exclusions not only point to FOIA violations, but also prosecutorial misconduct. 

Perhaps even more troubling is the actions attributed to the two LPD officers involved in the search and arrest, Dave Krause and Tony Kuster.  The LPD has a search and seizure policy, which these two officers willfully ignored repeatedly on the date of March 10, 2015 when they invaded the households of two innocent parties without their consent in a search for Gene Foster.  Officer Kuster, who is the school resource officer, allegedly grabbed a woman's phone and looked through it extensively after his home invasion despite her protestations.  Neither officer ever exhibited a search or arrest warrant to her or the other apartment's renter. 

Is this the future of Ludington, where government agents freely enter the homes of our innocent citizens and search their belongings without any warrants?  Is this the type of behavior we want our ever-increasing burden of tax dollars to fund and protect?   

No answer is needed beyond your actions, but in the meantime, please accept this service of court process for the lesser FOIA violations from those whose rights you have trampled over, Mr. and Mrs. Gene Foster.  If you need an extra copy of the lawsuit, I will be posting it on the Ludington Torch later tonight.

[Jasper]

Who performs John Shay's job evaluation of his performance?   

[XLFD]

Those naysayers fail to realize that there is no money to be gotten from FOIA lawsuits for the plaintiff.  If they prevail, they get the records and have their 'costs' reimbursed. 

When I (and my girlfriend) prevailed with my first FOIA lawsuit against the city regarding the withholding of the Tykoski business records with the city, I lost over $1000 of my own money plus countless hours of my time.  In defending the indefensible defense of the city, conservatively over $30,000 of the taxpayers money was used for legal fees of our city attorney who arguably should never have even been on the case without formal approval of the city council. 

In that case, if Judge Mark Wickens, who replaced Judge Richard I Cooper who sat improperly for four months as arbiter while his son was on the city's legal team, actually followed the law (before he got overturned by the Michigan Appeals Court and after he got it handed back to him with instructions he never followed) I could have recovered even that $1000. 

With some sweeping changes in FOIA law taking place this summer, there is at least some potential to make these cases less palatable for public bodies that would willfully withhold records.

[Jasper]

What is really strange...is just a couple of days ago one could go to Ludington's government web-site and download a FOIA printable form.  Today, an email etc...is required to access the form!  WTH???

[XLFD]

Snide,

I would also add that the city council is made aware time and time again of violations of the charter and laws of this state by the City Manager and City Attorney, including repeatedly ignoring competitive bidding for contracts and ignoring the low bidders when they do.  This costs the city taxpayers plenty and keeps our contractors from even bothering to be competitive in their bids because the fix is in. 

This has been well documented here on the Ludington Torch with one of the two most glaring examples being the water tower painting contract from 2009 which had us contract without bids an out of state contractor to paint both water towers for over $1.2 million, when it was painted for $900,000 less than that in 2000.  Meanwhile, the usually-crazy folks of Scottville got their water tower painted in 2010 for under $50,000 to the taxpayers.  Shay pulled basically the same stunt a couple of years back to hire that same out of state company to paint the modestly-sized, out-of-the-city-limits Brye Road water tank for a quarter of a million, without a competitive process.

The second that comes to mind is the engineering services for the Washington Bridge reconstruction.  A local Ludington engineering firm with experience in bridge work bid under $70,000, but a GR firm with a bid $180,000 higher, that's right, nearly a quarter of a million dollars, got the bid when given the same specs and offering the same services.  Someone is getting rich with our tax dollars, someone able to dupe the councilors, who should be figuring there is something wrong with the figures.  But their lack of effort shows a degree of complicity itself

[Willy]

Ludinton is blessed with a bunch of lazy councilors whose work is being done by the eager Shay. The reason for that of course is that then Shay is in control and can dictate to the "lazys" what is required for each project or concern. This allows the "lazys" a 2 week vacation in between each council meeting. Occasionally they will have a committee meeting which forces them to get off the couch and do some thinking but Shay is there, again, to rescue them which he does by taking over more of their responsibilities. Each councilor should be required to fill out a log of their Council activities and contacts. This is the only way to show if they are actually doing their jobs or if they are handing the ball off to Shay so they can sit on their hands and pretend to represent the people.

[stump]

I think it's the HOME DEPOT man

[XLFD]

I have some of the older evaluations around somewhere, I asked for those via FOIA a while ago and got the records after the usual obstructionism. 

To my remembrance, it was whoever was on the personnel committee, which consists of three city councilors.  This is currently staffed by Councilors Johnson (chairman), Krauch and Rathsack.  All of whom have never openly criticized the current manager, despite the numerous things that have come up.  They do yearly evaluations, most of which are meaningless because the public never sees them, and the extent of what they can evaluate him over is their limited contact with him at meetings.  Complaints from the public and city employees are not discussed in such reviews, just a rating system and some comments on style.

[Jasper]

Question being...will Mayor Cox be present at the next COL Commissioner's meeting??

[XLFD]

He can't dodge them forever if he wants to remain mayor. 

Sadly, Mayor Cox leaves himself vulnerable to exploitive folks bent on gaining power and money by not confronting the situation at hand, allowing it to fester and smolder amid the background of disastrous city policy being considered.  Recall at the March 24, 2015 meeting he made the statement about John Shay, while Cox's own personal problems were unfolding, after I listed ten substantive reasons why Shay should be fired for his unlawful and unethical acts:  "I can personally guarantee with the utmost certainty that I have not known another individual that acts more unselfishly or for the betterment of their place of employment."

How could you say something like that about John Shay (without snickering) without some sort of coercion?

[Jasper]

The position of City Manager needs to be an elected position rather than appointed.

[XLFD]

Most major cities have 'elected city managers', they are called mayors.  Here is a link that describes the various city government styles in Michigan, beginning on p. 10.  If a city manager is part of your government, his presence is there because some progressive folks wanted to take politics out of the executive position of city government. 

What it results in is that the city manager can do whatever a majority of the council may want done, and the councilors and mayor duck any accountability to the people.

[Jasper]

XLFD...your vague comment pertaining to Mayor Cox, and his "personal issues" in which nobody has addressed other than subliminally has to do with??  

Is Mayor Cox going to be present at the next COL Commissioner's Meeting? Mayor Cox's personal issues should not be involved in his position as the Mayor.  Unless of course, Mr. Cox has committed(or been accused) of some type of punishable crime.