Shay Admits OMA Violated at DDA Meeting, Local Paper Disregards It

[XLFD]

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to a Downtown Ludington Board Meeting

On Monday, January 12, 2015 I prettied myself up as best as I could (who am I kidding, I ran a comb through the hair and wore a dress shirt) to prepare for the Downtown Ludington Board (aka DLB or DDA) that was scheduled to occur at 11:00 AM.  I brought some new recording equipment along so that I could later broadcast the meeting.  I walked the two and a half blocks to the city hall.  I knew it was going to be held at 11:00 today because my reliable City of Ludington Daily News (COLDNews) said it was to be in the Saturday paper (circled in orange):

On entering the vaulted halls shortly before eleven, I noticed little activity about so I checked the bulletin board to make sure that the meeting, which has almost always occurred at 11:00 on the same day as the first council meeting of the month, was playing today.  On viewing the notice board, I saw that the meetings in 2015 for the DDA was to occur at 3:30 PM on the second Monday of the month (which it was), except for the month of May.  This was likely to accommodate the Mayor's school schedule.

So I politely asked clerk Karen Haldeman about the DDA meeting and whether it was on for 3:30 instead of 11:00, she appeared confused, claimed she wasn't sure and got Assistant City Manager Jackie Steckel to answer my inquiries.  Ms. Steckel told me that the DDA had already met last Monday at 3:30, and I pointed out that the public notice for the meeting said it was supposed to happen this Monday instead, she came out and looked at the glass encased notice that had Heather Venzke Tykoski's signature on it claiming the meetings were to be held on the second Monday. 

She appeared a bit nervous noting that the notice was in error, and said she was going to change it.  I was slightly amused, but I still had to fine tune my speech for the night's meeting so I left and did some other chores, eventually winding up at the library where I looked up some recent newspapers. 

I scanned this Saturday's paper to make the first image above showing they were supposed to have the meeting at 11:00 AM on January 12th.   I then looked at the previous Saturday's COLDNews and determined they had no meeting of the DDA scheduled for January 5th, the day they actually held the meeting according to Ms. Steckel.  The omission is circled in orange, and the New Year's cartoon is added to show this was just after that day, the scanner could not get the paper's date. 

Of course, I also checked the city website, which had no formal notice for the DDA meetings or any reference to the change in the schedule.  There wasn't any notice up at the courthouse at all. 

Digging a bit deeper into the archives of the city website I found that the unapproved minutes from December did mention that they would be meeting at 3:30 PM on January 5, 2015 and every first Monday after that at the same time.  This, of course, contradicted the COLDNews' community calendar totally, and the notice that had been up at the city hall since the new year was ushered in.  But this was by no means a public notice in those unapproved minutes.

Just after 3:00 PM, I once again entered the Ludington City Hall and looked at the notice board and caught the revised notice, which you recognize was posted that very day by Jackie Steckel. 

Seeing this, I once again approached the clerk's counter and asked Ms. Haldeman politely whether Ms. Steckel was available, and shortly she was.  I asked her whether the original post that was on the board was available to inspect, and she notified me that John Shay had it, but he was in an important meeting. 

I then looked around on the counter to find a bit of scrap paper, telling Ms. Steckel that I wanted to submit a FOIA request for the inspection of, or scanning of, the original notice that was posted earlier that day, and I promptly wrote that request on some scrap paper that was handy.  I informed her that I would normally pursue the proper channel of seeking such information from Carlos (the new FOIA Coordinator Carlos Alvarado) with a more formal request, but I wanted to make sure the record would not get damaged, shredded or thrown away.  I then left the building to spend some time with my favorite girl before I had to get up that night in front of the wolves in city hall.

Before I elaborate on what actually occurred and the potential ramifications, listen to John Shay at that night's meeting, noting that I never conversed with him earlier or said anything about the incident in my commentary that night when he says the following at 44:30 into the video. 

LCC Jan 12 2015 from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

City Manager John Shay:  "Your honor, I have one thing.  Mr. Rotta was nice enough to point out today regarding a meeting notice on our DDA (aka the Downtown Ludington Board or DLB) meeting last week.  The meeting notice said that the DDA would meet the second Monday of each month.  There was an error in that notice, it should have said that the DDA would meet the first Monday of each month. 

The DDA did meet last Monday, January 5th, and at that meeting they did approve... they took the following official actions:  they approved the agenda, they approved minutes of previous meetings, they approved the financial report.  Then they also discussed that they would approve at the February meeting of a slate of officers.  So the official action that they took at the time was to approve the agenda, approve the minutes from the previous meeting, and to approve the financial report. 

We've corrected the error in the notice, and we're going to have the DDA re-enact if you will, those approvals of the agenda, the meeting minutes and the financial reports at the February meeting.  But I just wanted to let the council know that there was an error in the meeting notice, and we've corrected it, and will take the appropriate steps at the February meeting to vote again on those issues involving the agenda, the minutes and the financial report, and I believe the city clerk will also swear in those members that were absent at the meeting last week.  I wanted to let the council and the public know that."

What Happened, and Why Did John Shay Make Such Statements?

If you couldn't tell, John Shay was doing damage control and trying his best to protect the City of Ludington from another Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit, even if he didn't say so.  It is anathema for any city official to admit they actually went against the law, and John Shay is the best manipulator of weasel words that the City has. 

It surely worked on the COLDNews who wrote a lot about this meeting, but failed to mention anything at all regarding this admission.  They dedicated 50 column inches to Jamie Spore's appreciation resolution, 56 column inches to board and committee appointments, and 30 more column inches to the other business at the meeting in their Tuesday paper. 

Yet COLDNews ace reporter Kevin Braciszeski failed to mention anything about the oversight, and the obvious implication any newshound could gather from Shay's words, about the OMA being violated.  Besides their usual complacency for reporting such gaffes and violations by the City of Ludington, perhaps the COLDNews own member of the DDA, their Circulation Manager Julie Payment, had some say in killing any mention of it.

The violation is easy to see: there is absolutely no posted notice that referred to the actual meeting time on their bulletin board, the newspaper or the city website.  There was no way for the public to know there was a meeting on January 5th.  I was wanting to record a video of this meeting, and I was thwarted from knowing when it was to take place, so anyone like myself could conceivably launch a legal action to invalidate everything they did at the illegal meeting, and even a non-attorney like myself could win it. 

But if the City takes its own actions to invalidate their own decisions and deliberations at the meeting before any such action, they would make the lawsuit moot.  Notice section five in the OMA section above:  "where an action has been initiated to invalidate a decision of a public body on the ground that it was not taken in conformity with the requirements of this act, the public body may, without being deemed to make any admission contrary to its interest, reenact the disputed decision in conformity with this act."  This is why Shay states the reenactments will be done, but probably not like the one below.

He also properly takes the tactic that this was an accidental violation, and it would be hard to prove that it wasn't.  Just another time that Heather Venzke Tykoski messed up and put the wrong thing down or up.  Hence, you would probably just lose the argument if you said any city official intentionally violated the OMA.  About the only relief one could seek for this violation of OMA is injunctive relief, and that would likely be questionable, so John Shay's admissions and proposed corrections were a great firewall move for the City's latest transgression against openness and transparency.

But at least he called me nice enough.  As of this posting, I still haven't got a response to the FOIA request for this small slip of paper that had Heather's signature and the wrong information for the public on it.

[AQUAMAN]

My educated guess and experience with Shyster Shay, and the rest of the rogues that cover-up with him, is that the small slip of paper went into file 13, trash can. Or better yet, the shredder under the Shyster's desk. Don't hold your breath waiting for it to reappear in good faith and honesty any time soon or later, lol. Making the public admission he already did at the city council meeting, naturally after consulting CA Wilson for permission, is about as candid and transparent as you are ever going to get from these clowns. If you X, had not brought this to their attention as quickly as you did, it would have never been admitted to ever, and swept under the rug as per the usual routine. Next time take the picture/video "before" you ask for anyone's help at the counter.

[XLFD]

Who says I didn't (*wink*)?  But I sure would like that souvenir, so I can display it here without the glare from the glass.  If they don't produce it, it's another victory in showing how crooked these guys are that they would blatantly destroy potential evidence of an OMA violation committed by them. 

[XLFD]

Today I received the original meeting notice through a FOIA reply, a notice which was reportedly posted on Dec. 15, 2014 and mistakenly alerted the populace that the meetings were to take place on the second Monday of each month; this was the one taken down and replaced on January 12, 2015 after it had potentially caused some citizens to miss the January meeting held on the fifth (along with the misinformation given by the COLDNews noted in the above article): 

[stump]

Are the meeting dates correct on the NEW LUDINGTON calendar?

[Willy]

If the LDN printed those calenders you can bet there would be a lot of misinformation, half truths and lies.