The December 9, 2024 meeting of the Ludington City Council (packet here) was historical.  This council, known for hiking taxes over the last two summers without any reason given, scrapped nearly a century's worth of zoning ordinance and replaced it with a lightly tweaked version of a Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) adopted by a host of other progressive-minded cities.  The Ludington UDO (LUDO) would evolve an organically homegrown land use zoning code and replace it with form-based code, relying more on set regulation than land use and the property rights of landowners (deeply explored here).

Two surprising councilor votes came out against the change.  Lame duck Ted May, recognizing that the LUDO would be bad for his single-family home Mecca in the First Ward, and likely hearing an earful from them, agreed with Third Warder Tim Large that the people were not happy with what they saw in the LUDO and the loss of many of the discretional aspects of the existing zoning code.  All other five councilors were willing to go ahead with the LUDO, despite the popular unrest with it, with Councilor John Bulger suggesting about a half dozen changes to the LUDO in sections 15.03 and 15.09 in the UDO currently on display at the city website:

This is just one place in the LUDO where the rules are so oppressive that they defy being usable.  Imagine needing a zoning permit and a building permit just to put out a political sign in your front yard, you saw a lot of those this year-- that's what this section does.  This was in the draft of the LUDO up for adoption through the ordinance procedure, but through two simple motions, they amended the ordinance under consideration and thereby made their action invalid, as the ordinance enacted states:

This does not allow for amendments made by a councilor at the last minute before the ordinance is passed, so the two motions were effectively null actions:  what the council passed was the version of the LUDO introduced at the first reading.  The charter tells these guys that "no ordinance of a non-emergency nature shall be enacted at the meeting at which it is first introduced".   

It shows how ill-prepared they were, how eager they are to take more control of your property, how little they regard the law of the people of Ludington, the city charter, and even how little they thought about the existing zoning code they threw away.  I had presaged what their intentions would be and stated as much in my first comment: 

XLFD:  "On June 1st, 1942, over 82 years ago, this city council unanimously passed the city's first comprehensive zoning ordinance, a 14 page document mapping out nine distinct districts within Ludington while covering all aspects of zoning and land use.  In the eight decades since, the amended zoning code has grown to 19 distinct districts and 115 pages, with a process that involved the input of officials and citizens of the city.

The citizens are now threatened with this council enacting Ludington's Unified Development Ordinance in a 200+ page document that lists 12 distinct districts.  This LUDO is form-based code using physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code, prepared by a big city consultant using a lightly edited version of the UDO template that they use for other cities. 

This is not 82 years of negotiation and compromise within the community in order to create guidelines for land use, this LUDO sets strict rules discretely subsidized by State and Federal money that leads small cities like Ludington into direct obedience under a regional master plan subtly contained in this mostly city-uniform form-based code. Land use rights are literally stolen from Ludington landowners when you pass this, those rights are lost as the city, state and federal government increases their power over private land in tyrannical fashion because they think they're better property managers than you. 

If you want to win accolades from your constituents and simplify our zoning code, endeavor to get it looking more like the 1942 zoning ordinance than the despotic and cumbersome 2024 LUDO.  Thank you. [END comment]

One hopes that they will come back at the next meeting with the first reading of an ordinance featuring Bulger's six amendments to this ordinance, recognizing that this meeting's motions had no effect on the ordinance actually passed.   They have too much pride in themselves to come back and have another first reading of a sufficiently amended LUDO recognizing Bulger's corrections and any others found over the next two weeks.  So don't erect or move a sign without purchasing a building permit in the interim.

I wasn't the only one who spoke out at the start of this meeting, three other older guys got up and indicated displeasure with the direction of the city.  Daniel Jensen led off with some scripture then concatenated some state and federal law correlating them to issues germane to the city, but probably landed over the heads of the councilors.  Jeff Henry followed with his own rendition, suggesting at one point that they stop the UDO or resign, with his best line being that the city has been so drunk on grants for over forty years, that they will gladly welcome in grant-hawks to fully exploit our city.  

After my comment, Jason Kirkpatrick remarked that he doesn't like seeing his taxes raised, and related a story about seeing a group of three DPW workers out patching potholes in the street and remarked that although he likes the DPW and what they were doing, he didn't see why you had three people doing what was a one-person job.  All of these comments would not be addressed by the council over the course of the meeting. 

The packet on p. 22+ has the gist of the presentation made about invasive species, where surveys paid for with ARPA funds have indicated an Asian invasion, with Japanese Knotweed, Oriental Bittersweet, and Chinese Sumac (Tree of Heaven) spread throughout the city.  Zach Peklo of CISMA indicated there was still enough funds left to go after the knotweed in public areas, which was the most impactful species but least prolific.  Whether the city will devote its own funds to fend off invaders in the future is uncertain, but councilors seemed amenable to what has been done so far with the survey and initial actions against the invaders.

The public hearing on the 2025 budget led off with City Manager Kaitlyn Aldritch 'dispelling misinformation' regarding posts on social media where the public notice for the hearing was taken at face value for what it said.  Experienced as city manager elsewhere, the "Ludington way of budgeting' was new to her, and she didn't understand what was going on until she had it explained to her-- by people who do not understand the process and violate the law of the city and state each year.  I would correct the misinformation she helped propagate:

XLFD:  "State law, MCL 141.412, mandates what the public notice for a hearing on the budget of a local government unit shall contain, one is the statement:  "The property tax millage rate proposed to be levied to support the proposed budget will be a subject of this hearing."

But in the dozen years of Ludington budget hearings I've attended this has never been the case, even when our city charter also mandates that proposed tax rates will be a subject of this budget hearing with a vote after the budget is passed, saying in section 8.6:  "To implement the adopted budget, the City Council shall adopt, prior to the beginning of the ensuing fiscal year a tax levy ordinance authorizing the property tax levy or levies and setting the tax rate or rates."

What has happened instead is that our city attorneys have allowed you to pass these millage tax rate hikes during the middle of summer.  Ross "Sewage" Hammersley has permitted you to pass tax hikes bringing in over $200,000 more above the inflation rate in property taxes in both July of 2023 and 2024 than would have been raised had you not overrode Headlee rollbacks with your unanimous vote stealing money from your constituents that you weren't entitled to.  

State law clearly says you must pass such tax levy proposals after the budget hearing, the city charter is even clearer that it must be done after a budget is adopted.  Why won't you follow the law laid down by the people of this city and the people of this state? 

Lastly, I expect that there will be no budget amendments for 2024 once 2025 arrives on the calendar.  Making 2023 Budget amendments in March and May of 2024, as this council did, was illegal and you all should know that. [END comment] 

Why would state law mandate an untrue statement to be put on a public notice?  Why is the explicit language in the charter ever considered by the council and administrators?  Simple answer:  they are not worried about breaking the law as it applies to them.  This is highlighted in my last paragraph, as they have historically over the last couple decades amended the prior year's budget as late as May of the next year, when state law does not allow any such amendments when the prior fiscal year ends (see the last sentence in this state manual):

They never acknowledge their errors; they just compound them through the years.  The budget would be passed unanimously but not before Fifth Ward Councilor-elect Mike Shaw weighing in on the budget.  He acknowledged he was guilty of putting out the confusing budget hearing notice on social media and wondering why taxes were being raised, but he expressed a hope that this next year when he's on board that maybe the operating millage could be reduced a mill or a half mill as a sign of good faith by the council.  The look on the sitting council's collective face was priceless after he said that.  Most of these guys wouldn't vote to give up a stolen taxpayer dime to their constituents, but I hope you can prove me wrong next year, Mr. Shaw.

City legal would heed my advice, albeit belatedly, to formally waive the residency requirement for Officer Marshall Law of Irons.  Originally, they allowed the Personnel Committee, a strictly advisory body, government authority in this waiver.  One month later, they figured that rather than encouraging a future Open Meeting Act lawsuit, they would correct their error; now if they can only do that with the budget stuff.

They would introduce ordinances setting the pay for the clerk and treasurer for 2025 and adopt a multi-year contract through ordinance with Civic Plus (for maintaining the electronic code and charter for the city).  

The city would 'loan its credit' once again to their Cartier Campground enterprise fund, giving over $100,000 to them to continue the subsidization by the city of their bathhouse project.  The campground fund does not have to reimburse the city for this loan, doing some budget acrobatics to repay the money through the expected future sale of their property east of Thompson's Marina.  The complicity of this ledger legerdemain is compounded when one realizes that enterprise funds are supposedly self-sufficient and in this case is competing with other private campgrounds in or near the city. 

A discussion on smoking in the parks was had that covered some time.  In summary, most of the council is wanting to interject their own biases against smoking into the issue and refusing to look at the issue as one of conflicting rights and duties of the smoker and the public.   The council seems intent on pursuing some degree of a ban and are gravitating towards a full ban in parks.  If that is passed in the near future, how long will it be before they ban gas-powered vehicles from the park, as one pickup puts out a lot more hazardous chemicals in the air than a whole gang of smokers.

They could foreseeably pass a smoking ban at Stearns Park the same year that they decided to have contractors sell alcoholic beverages there.  Talk about mixed messages to the bar crowd.  Jason Kirkpatrick (a non-smoker) would smartly make that a main point of his comment at the end and remind them that the city is on the high side of violent crime where a lot of those instances could be traced back to a Budweiser, not a Swisher Sweet.  

But before he could do that, I got up for the third time for the final comment period and laced into the City of Ludington for their accounting procedures while irreverently putting my mitts on a couple of their sacred cow expenditures:  the K-9 unit and Shop with a Cop.

XLFD:  "Article 7, section 26 of the state constitution states in relevant part:  "no city shall have the power to loan its credit for any private purpose or, except as provided by law, for any public purpose."

When the people and this council is told by our police thief that the expenses for a K-9 unit will come exclusively from a non-profit organization, the use of the city's credit card to buy dog food and vet insurance is a violation of the constitution.  The city extended a line of credit to a non-profit group and so it doesn't matter whether the K9 NPO repays it or not, the constitution is broken and everybody in front of me who has sworn an oath to affirm that Constitution should be clamoring to make sure this doesn't ever happen again.

And yet in the general fund you see another $15,000 expense made at Meijer's for another NPO, the Shop with a Cop program.  Why is the program not using the funds raised through donations and pie auctions and instead using our general fund to make such purchases, when such loan of credit by the City is a direct violation of the constitution?  If any of you tries to answer this question, please don't try to obfuscate or shame me by telling me how much this program means to underprivileged families, since you are all guilty of hiking taxes on them by $200,000 over each of the last two years without giving us any reason why.  [END comment]

The dais of officials did not comfortably sit for this, however, they did not have to formulate a response because it triggered Planning Commissioner Chairman Patrick O'Hare who apparently has no issue with the city's credit being loaned out.  He would speak up at public comment without saying whether his opinions were his, the planning commission's, his non-profit agency, or the COL's, so one can already see that his accounting and accountability skills ain't all that great.

O'Hare:  (1:45:15 in):  I want to respond to a comment that was just made.  Mayor Barnett spoke at the last meeting regarding the comments regarding the K-9 unit.  I am a member of the Friends of Ludington Police and as you know, the city actually purchased the K-9, the dog Bella, as they did the vehicles.  These are assets of the city that were funded through donations, that were paid to, made to the city.  And so the donations come into one account, the dog was paid for by the city, and internally the clerk and treasurer make the money move back and forth. 

And so the notion that the city is acting on behalf of the non-profit, the dog is not a non-profit.  The dog Bella belongs to the city.  If you follow non-profits at all, this is the way non-profits quite often operate in terms of-- they may have an asset and their may be a non-profit funding the asset or paying for the maintenance on it.  We do it at the state park with the DNR all the time.  It's not this big mischief thing; it's how accounting works and so forth...

When I hear these comments it really offends me, because it's a hit on the citizens and others that have in good faith made donations to this non-profit to fund a program for the benefit of the city, and it is not that the city is doing anything wrong.  We are trying to take steps so that the dog food is not being paid for by the city and being reimbursed, and they in fact make us go through extra hoops at the non-profit just to clarify, so that the chief does not have to respond to this nonsense."

It's not nonsense.  My original comment was that Thief Jones lied to us all when he made explicitly a comment in the press that no money from the general fund would be used. 

In O'Hare's comment he seems to be indicating schemes that fly in the face of what the article says about private donations being used and what most would consider good accounting practices.  Obviously, when the city's actual credit card tied to general fund purchases, the city is extending their credit for what we were told on multiple occasions would be the purview of a non-profit. 

Shop with a Cop and charity softball tournaments have had the same issue.  The general fund, with or without using credit cards, should have nothing to do with paying for these charitable events, and then problems arise when city claims are not truthful (as it was here and for charity softball) and shortcomings arise when the receipts are added up (as it has for the SWAC program in the past).  If the city wants to act as a fiduciary agent for a non-profit, payment and receipts should have their own section in budgetary records, not be filtered into the general fund area.  This is basic recordkeeping and recommended highly by the MI Municipal League.

The official madness ended with Fourth Ward Councilor Cheri Stibitz at 1:50:15 in, where she decided to lecture us all on how to become better informed, echoing a statement by the mayor at the last meeting, because she heard a lot of misinformation today, and suggested it was from the public, not her peers.  When Councilor-elect Shaw tried to clarify himself with a brief reply to her assertion stating he checked with city officials, he was severely reprimanded by the mayor.  Although it seemed as if she was gaslighting everyone who may have spoken that night on topics, I have since clarified from her that the comment was directed at Shaw and his post making the assumption that council would be raising taxes that night (which it likely would have been, had they followed the charter's dictum as noted above rather than their July exercises).  

On the bright side, she would indicate she heard no misinformation from this source at the meeting or on recent social media posts.  But we all knew that already.