Ludington Council's April 5th Meeting Violated the Open Meetings Act. No Fooling.

[XLFD]

At the end of the March 20th Ludington city council meeting, Mayor Kaye Holman made sure to remind us of a special meeting coming up on April 5th and 5:00 PM for a goal setting meeting, she added that it was open to the public, without any other official contending otherwise.  It was also noted on the bottom of the agenda that night without the mayor's addition:

On the day before the meeting, April 4th, the City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) ran an article in their newspaper written by veteran news writer Kevin Brasiczeski, and on their website regarding this meeting.  Among other things, it said that: 

"Ludington City Council members and other city officials are scheduled to gather at 5 p.m. Wednesday at city hall to discuss issues that are expected to include a proposal to charge non-residents fees to park at Stearns Park... City Manager John Shay said he expects the city council will discuss the issue when it meets at 5 p.m. Wednesday at city hall to discuss upcoming projects and proposals."

There was nothing in the article that declared it was a meeting open to the public.  Nor did the other local media, The Mason County Press say anything of this meeting. 

To the contrary, I went to city hall on the morning of April 5th and found a public notice for this special meeting, showing it was not closed to the public, unlike the meeting on February 24 where several councilors and officials met with parking kiosk specialist, Tom Neff, and mulled over the same topic.  

What was odd was that notice or alert of the special meeting never made it to the city's website before April 5th, or even afterwards, nor was there any councilor packet or agenda for the meeting on their minutes-on-demand page.  WMOM did put up on their Facebook page a notice which left out whether the public could attend or not to give their feedback, they probably weren't sure either:

As a member of the public who may have had an interest in attending this meeting, you would have thought you were invited if you listened to the tail-end of the March 20 council meeting or saw the public notice at city hall.  You may have thought you were invited if you read the March 20 meeting agenda or the WMOM Facebook page.  You may have thought you weren't invited if you read the March 4th COLDNews and saw no indication the meeting was public.  You would have thought there was no meeting if you used the city website for meeting notifications.

Sound confusing, it sure did to members of the public like Barbara Lyon who had an interest in attending but thought it was one of those all-too-frequent meetings held by our officials without a public invitation.

The City and our local media failed to be consistent in getting the messages out, that's common enough for both agencies, but did anybody break the law in failing to notify the public, leading to people missing the meeting due to this confused babble? 

Sure enough, the City of Ludington did by not putting anything up on their website as public notice for this work session of the city council, which happened to be a meeting of the city council and therefore subject to the Open Meetings Act (OMA). 

First off, it was a meeting of the council since a quorum of councilors was present and they got together in order to deliberate over public policies.  Page A8 of the April 6 edition of the COLDNews has a picture showing more than three councilors, while the story below it quotes the positions of Councilor's Krauch, Winczewski, Castonia, Johnson, Tykoski, Rathsack, and Henderson at this meeting.  All seven for once. 

The OMA has special procedures to follow for special open meetings of a public body.  In section 5 of the OMA, subsection four clearly states: 

"for a... special meeting of a public body, a public notice stating the date, time, and place of the meeting shall be posted at least 18 hours before the meeting... on a portion of [the public body's]website that is fully accessible to the public. The public notice on the website shall be included on either the homepage or on a separate webpage dedicated to public notices for nonregularly scheduled public meetings and accessible via a prominent and conspicuous link on the website's homepage that clearly describes its purpose for public notification of those nonregularly scheduled public meetings."

A review of the home page before and after this meeting has no such mention of the special city council meeting that should be open to the public.  It has a notice for the Doppel Dock fundraising party and a couple places that could possibly work out, but when you go to the Non-regularly scheduled meetings link, it goes to the council's standing committee meeting schedules.  When you check out the other link that might work Stearns Beach Parking Fee Issue, you get sent to a February 21, 2017 press release.

The City's incompetence to even hold a special meeting within the easily defined parameters of the law, not to mention confusing hosts of people that had the same trepidation as Ms. Lyon, should make you wonder how they can competently run the rest of their programs that actually have a degree of complexity.  That includes the beach parking issue, and even the simpler task of being a record keeper for the Shop with a Cop donations.

[AQUAMAN]

Good point X, that was confusing, and looks like they did violate the OMA act. I had thought this was a special workshop/town hall mtg. where the information was being discussed and shared for casual comment with taxpayers too. What I found out was that what few could attend at that early part of evening were screened and had to follow the 3 minute comment rules of regular city council mtgs.. The amount of comments of FB pages like Brandy Henderson, and many other local groups, was enough already to see it was, the Stearns Park fee idea, a big loser in public input. The city by my interpretation, also wanted input and ideas for programs, volunteers, donations, and like type actions/proposals. How is anyone expected, individually or as a group, to discuss such issues if they are told they only have 3 minutes to offer their input? I think it was an agenda just to say, hey, we gave the public a chance for input, and again, we got very little, so we'll again go ahead with this plan anyhow. No Voting allowed, we make these decisions, like it or not.

[XLFD]

The problem with the law as concerns public officials is that they are allowed to break it, as long as they have 'substantially' complied with it.  I found this out the expensive way by filing an OMA violation lawsuit against the City and seven of its officials for another improperly noticed meeting three years ago. 

The city used a lot of leverage in the local court and the judge ruled that the city 'substantially complied' by posting a notice on their website, but nowhere else-- I had even brought it to their attention at the beginning of the unlawful meeting, instructing them not to deliberate or make decisions on public policy.  They did anyway, wasted a few thousand dollars defending their actions after I filed and got the sad result.

As Aquaman points out, this was likely a tactical move by the city leaders to defray the opposition to the beach parking fees by putting the meeting at an inconvenient time and making it confusing as to whether the public could come to it.  The city leaders arrange a special work session or subcommittee meeting and invite the public, so that later on they won't come to the meetings where it's discussed and bring their 'A' points because they have already made them-- though not on public record.

This was done with the rental inspection ordinance and they also did it with proposal to make the buyers of properties without sidewalks pay the city half of the money to install sidewalks.  The latter was scrapped only because Shay had a change of heart.