Ludington City Council Meeting, July 8, 2024: A Midsummer Night's Hoax and Hike

[XLFD]

Despite public pressure and legal authorities seeming to point the other way, the Ludington City Council went its own way and passed a series of ordinances that raised property taxes on the citizens of Ludington by over $300,000 (using their own estimate) and they did it unanimously.  The latter point was surprising in that five people spoke out against the wisdom of assessing these tax hikes two years in a row to area families, one of those being the candidate running against Fifth Ward Councilor Wally Cain, Mike Shaw.

Cain and one of the three other councilors under the threat of facing a recall election could have safely helped their political life by effectively taking a political knee by not raising taxes, but unity and teamwork seems to have carried the day and this should help ongoing recall efforts as petitions are due early next month.  

For the public hearing, I led off the popular revolt of five citizens that were at least concerned enough about the raising of taxes in two consecutive years by $300,000.  If you look in on the video, you will see a sign I had that said:  "The $300,000 tax-hike-council hikes again!", I would explain what that meant in my comment:

XLFD: (16:00 in) "I was recently dubbed the $300,000 Man in local media by a young lady inspired by our councilor's coffee talk with her.  As I understand it, the $300,000 figure comes from attorney fees and settlement costs of various lawsuits I have filed against the city's wrongdoing over the years when our elite leaders lacked the humility to admit their mistakes and their lawbreaking and my attempts at mediating release of FOIA responses, enjoining the city from violating the Open Meetings Act, and otherwise the city's failure to follow other laws.   

Unethical entities often project their own sins onto others so as to obviate themselves from the guilt anybody with a conscience would feel after being involved with corrupt activities.  THIS is the $300,000 tax hike council, this is the council whose corrupt actions cost you $300,000 in attorney fees and settlement costs over the last 14 years when they were held to account. 

You pass these appropriation and revenue ordinances in the summer, hiking taxes $300,000 five months before you adopt the budget that you should be using to justify your raising of taxes.  Have you ever thought where that extra $300,000 comes from?  It's not ARPA, it's not the City doing anything productive for our local economy.  No, what it is, is this greedy batch of folks on their elevated dais before me that agreed last year without any discussion that families dealing with inflation across the board would throw an extra $300,000 per year to city hall coffers; you were working against our local economy by doing so.  

No reason was given then, because the budget wasn't even under construction.  Each one of you made the decision that your constituents' economic problems were less than the city's.  Can you point to next year's budget and tell the people tonight where the $300,000 you are going to take from them under threat of government force is going?  Hmm?  Hmm?  Let the record reflect there is no answer forthcoming."  [END Comment]

And of course, since they haven't even started working on the 2025 budget yet, no answer 'forthcame' the rest of the night, not even a half-hearted attempt.  I was pleasantly surprised by being followed in the hearing by Dan Hahn, Shaw, Trisha Pendleton, and Annette Quillan, all expressing some misgivings about the tax increase, the public notice says as much on its title line.  Quillan would ask an interesting question about the City's recent donation of the faux skating rink, bought initially by the money and efforts of local businesses and apparently gotten rid of in the usual secret squirrel way the city works its magic.  

Councilor Winczewski, who has chaired the Finance Committee since Les Johnson went to the county board, was tasked with giving the city's hokey justification of why they were hiking taxes $300,000 again, which amounted to claiming that their tax rates were going down and the council's mission was to stop it from free-falling.  Her exaggerations and inability to understand that the city was enriching itself at the expense of her constituency in the 2nd Ward and beyond, was given in a pedantic and grandmotherly way which made it easy to swallow for those who didn't know better (this comes at the 26:30 mark of the video, it is one of the most execrable pieces of propaganda ever put out by the city that did not involve saying what a terrible person I am).  She claims their hearings are about transparency, but it's the direct opposite of that, as nobody knows what will be done with the money, other than budget preparers, who just this year, unlawfully did two budget amendments for 2023 in March and May.

As noted, they all passed unanimously, but you should see these coming back to a city council chamber near you.  What Ludington has failed to do over the years in holding these hearings is to set the tax rates by resolution beforehand.  This is required by law in the section of law for "Truth in Taxation" hearings (MCL 221.24e) which reads in subsection 7:  "The proposed additional millage rate, which is required by subsection (6) to be part of the notice of the public hearing, shall be established by a resolution adopted by the governing body of the taxing unit before conducting the public hearing.".

By failing to set tax rates by resolution before these public hearings, they potentially could forfeit the money gained by their unlawful actions last year and need to redo the process this year.  Perhaps they will follow the charter and not do these ordinances until they can tell us why them having this money is better than us having this money.  Doubtful, since even if they recognize the inevitable and pass a resolution before adopting these ordinances, they will just do it later in the summer and effectively say "screw you" to the city charter and state tax law once again.  

The Agenda Packet for the July 8 meeting was otherwise quite light in content, with three actions taking place that were also a bit interesting as to how they were handled without former City Manager Mitch Foster.  City Attorney Ross Hammersley at the head of the meeting indicated they were looking at an 'alleged' section of the city charter which may affect the appointment of the interim city manager, Jeanne Oakes.  

I would address this shortly after Annette Quillan, with another good comment where she discussed what she read recently about the homeless issue and pointed out the history of how housing crises in the past were corrected in various ways, many of which have been made illegal due to zoning and other local government interference.  She may have just as well have been talking to a brick wall as these officials have only wanted to go deeper into zoning laws and none have ever expressed any concern with the homeless, except that they were hanging out in places that tourists wanted to be at and wanted that situation corrected.

After Fourth Ward's mayor (Chuck Sobanski) made an enigmatic comment, praising the city for Copeyon Park but suggesting it had not enough playground equipment, I finished the first comment period with a throwdown, one that I've covered here but adapted to under three minutes:

XLFD: (12:30 in) "Our city charter says quite plainly in section 6.6(a) Prohibitions:  "Holding Other Office. Except where authorized by law, no Council Member shall hold any other City office or employment during the term for which said member was elected to the Council, and no former Council Member shall hold any compensated appointive City office or employment until one (1) year after the expiration of the term for which said member was elected to the Council."

Third Ward Councilor Oakes was elected to this council at the November 14, 2023 meeting in a two-step voting process.  She abruptly resigned on June 10th without reason, but that reason would soon become clear after Councilor Ted May spilled the beans that there had been a backroom deal made, and Mayor Barnett would later in that meeting introduce a motion to make her the interim city manager, effective immediately and be compensated $6500 per month for the new job.  

Despite the charter's plain language, and clear intent against a councilor benefitting from their public service, former Councilor Oakes became the most powerful city employee, paid nearly 22 times what she got paid by the city ten minutes prior.   When I think that this city can't get any more corrupt than it is, they deliver another blow to their integrity like this to install Interim City Manager Hoax.  

If this council so blatantly violates the city charter when they feature two attorneys and another in the wing, why do they feel the need to revise it in the first place?  It's time for the corrupt profiteer Jeanne Hoax to vacate her compensative office position and for this council to recognize that she violated the charter she swore to uphold when she was elected to her position.  [END comment]

I fully expect the city attorney to come back with some sort of opinion to appease those folks who pay him the big bucks at city hall, trying to make the case that her elective position was effectively an appointment or selection by the council, if he does it will be challenged as the hokum it is.  There was no further discussion by the council on this topic as they later accepted the Hoax' report.  

In other actions, they approved the Gus Macker event for 2025 and 2026, with the major change being that WMOM would be primarily handling the event.  Accolades were freely given out by several city officials, and this reporter has heard positive things by regular folks suggesting this year's Macker was better than it has been in the past.  This was predictable; in Ludington all events put out by our local businesses with the bare minimum of government involvement seem to be the most successful, as witnessed more recently by the parade and fireworks sponsored by the Ludington Jaycees (a more active and locally involved group than the local chamber of commerce, which covers most of the county).  

                                  Andrea Large and Jeanne $. Hoakes at another executive swap for the Community Foundation

Third Ward Candidate Tim Large was appointed by the council to fill the vacancy in that ward within 30 days.  This was interesting, because at no time did the council look for people interested in being appointed to the seat; I know one person who was very interested and had tried before, but was never given the chance because the city council had come to the decision outside of an open meeting that appointing Large would be more efficient than putting the seat out for an individual who would need to give it up in six months.  A Large Hoax, if you will, perpetrated on those in Third Ward.

This shady way of filling a vacancy looks even shadier when one makes connections between Jeanne Hoax and Large.  When Hoax retired from executive director of the Community Foundation, she was succeeded by Tim's wife, Andrea Large back in 2017.  One has the feeling that Large will fit in well with the groupthink one now finds in the current council.

If you looked at the packet, checked out p. 89 (seen above) and looked at the video, you would note that they repealed Ordinance 494-22, but you won't find anything therein about what the ordinance was about.  This was the original ordinance getting into a three-year deal with the USDA's Wildlife Management Services in order to do deer culls in the City of Ludington.  You wouldn't know it though, because both the packet and the meeting didn't want to mess with it anymore, as witnessed by the unanimous vote to effectively cancel the last year of the contract, with even Councilors Cain and May on board.

Such action would not have likely happened without pressure brought to the table by citizen Terry Grams, who filed a lawsuit and alerted Cartier heirs to the fact that the City was conducting deer culls in Cartier Park under false pretenses, all while the 83 year old maintained a stop the Ludington deer website and ran regular ads in the local paper against it. 

The Ludington Torch also revealed what appears to be a lot of fraud that went with the program, questioning the deer kill number of 21 on the first night in the 78 acres of Cartier Park, when that very night I had traversed the vast majority of that acreage in full Aragorn mode for over an hour and saw no deer at all.  At the same time I was there, they entered the park with their noisy little ATV that one could hear over 100 yards away, and they claim to have shot 21 deer in a little over an hour's work, while I and other observers paying attention heard only a dozen shots and found no evidence of one deer being shot the next morning after a thorough review by numerous folks looking for deer gore.

The obvious deer kill fraud committed, the grief the USDA, DNR and City received for holding a cull in a park and campground without any complaints of deer, only compliments, the upcoming lawsuit that will come from the City's agents nearly killing this reporter for their inability to pass along correct information to park users, the controversy that assuredly played a large part in sending a competent city manager running to the local college, and the potential threat of further legal action by the Cartier heirs, led to this repeal that they appear to be ashamed about. 

And they should be; had there been any rational talk about the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of a cull within the city limits, rather than a lot of prevaricating anecdotes by a mayor who wanted his own personal deer cull for his back yard, this cull would have correctly been a non-starter.  But this dumb idea could be resurrected at a later date, so one hopes we can properly drive a stake through future culls and put holy wafers in its mouth, so it stays six feet under.

[Freedom Seeker]

It's really disgusting that people like Jeanne $HOakes (good title, X) and "Winky don't understand law, economics or finance" continue the corruption, secret squirrel meetings of Ludington and raise taxes outside of law.

[XLFD]

What make the new nickname even better is that her middle initial is 'S' and that the word "hoax" means "a plan to deceive a large group of people", which is how she got this new nickname.  That and the transition from 'Oakes' to 'Hoax' is simply a matter of dialects.  Cockney English and other dialects would pronounce 'Hoax' as 'Oakes'.  So, in the future I could talk like a chimney sweep out of "Mary Poppins" when referring to her corruption, such as "She 'as a 'efty status at city 'all tis 'orrible 'Oakes."

[Willy]

The City Government reminds me of your process and effort to eliminate the defects and corruption it displays. Like a car needing a serious alignment. No matter how hard you try to straighten the damn things direction, it keeps pulling to the left. Even after many of your attempts to correct the situation, the City hires fixers [lawyers] to keep it steering left knowing full well it legally must be driven straight ahead. It's crazy!

Thanks for the article and your attempt to again try and straighten the City's direction. 

[XLFD]

At the Ludington Torch, we appreciate the past help of Councilor Angela Serna in righting the course of the car and suffering the slings and arrows of those who wished to stay the crooked course the city was going.  She also was the original coiner of the 'secret squirrel stuff' line that describes the Ludington City Hall modus operandi, and as you note, it's not a good way if you want to stay on the street of success.

[Freedom Seeker]

Love it Willy! That would be the SSS