Scottville and MCC Recaps: August 26, 2024: Homecoming Games

[XLFD]

Three public meetings took place on the evening of August 26th, and this reporter wanted to attend and contribute at each.  Physically that was impossible, so I took a field trip to my hometown of Scottville to attend their city commission (SCC) meeting at 6 PM and then go across town to the high school for the Mason County Central (MCC) School Board meeting at 7 PM.  

In the past, in such situations, I have wrote correspondence to those who were holding the third meeting, the Ludington City Council to be read aloud, but due to their developing policies that go against public participation and accountability invoked this year (which also includes shutting off comments on social media, disallowing harmless, protected speech during public comment, and jacking FOIA response costs up without rationale), they do not allow for this option.  They still record their meetings, however, and so I will comment on a couple of things that arose at the meeting in a future article because they need to be pointed out and addressed critically.

You may wonder how someone who has lived in Ludington for the 30 years can make a good difference eight miles west in Scottville as regards transparency and accountability in city/school government.  Here's what the Ludington Torch witnessed and accomplished.  We helped prevent a move that would potentially be in violation of the Open Meetings Act, and took action which will hopefully make the school district follow the rules so that they can compete in a sportsmanlike fashion.

Scottville City Commission

The agenda packet promised some action on the thin slice of city property that Stallion Tracks LLC wanted to purchase to help them expand to the south.  This would be done without input from the LLC, the city manager having assessed a cost for the property to be $2500, which would effectively recoup the legal costs the City had spent over the course of the process of dealing with the land sliver.  

Two other actions involved an update on recovering financial losses from Nordlund & Associates for the water main break totaling over $4400 and hiring a contractor to take care of three trees in the City right-of-way.  Nordlund has failed to respond to the request for two months, and Interim City Manager Clarence Goodlein was urged to resubmit the request, otherwise they took the low bid of $7400 by Extreme Trees to remove the trees without any additional issue.  

What brought me to Scottville this night, however, was the last item of business on the agenda, a proposal to make the Personnel Committee, a committee made up of three commissioners, a non-public entity by excluding the public and employees from attending same.  A memo (shown below) explains why Goodlein thought this was a good idea, reasons that may be mostly irrefutable and even prudent, but the Ludington Torch imagined a way that could preserve both frankness and openness: 

XLFD:  "In regard to the proposal to make Personnel Committee meetings non-public, I must raise an objection.  Back in 2018, a brilliant woman and I brought a lawsuit against the City of Ludington alleging improprieties in the way they ran their standing committees and at its core were violations of the Open Meetings Act based on multiple instances where their committees, which like yours are supposed to be advisory and only able to make recommendations, were making decisions that the full council needed to be making.  These were subtle but firmly engrained and we broke them down into three types of OMA violations which disenfranchised the public.  After years of trying, we managed a favorable settlement that changed city policy.  I would not be surprised if Scottville is making the same mistakes in their committees, intentionally or not, and this action might invite closer inspection of the Personnel Committee to see whether they have been more than strictly advisory, which would then require them to follow the OMA explicitly.  

I would advise the commission to not exclude the public, including employees, from such meetings.  There are mechanisms within the OMA that allows for a closed session with an employee and others to discuss evaluations, discipline, and the like if the employee desires.  The city government's reputation has been marred over the last few years due to moves towards non-transparency and intrigue, closed sessions of commission meetings where the topic for such was never shared with the community.  The citizens and city employees of this small town deserve to see and hear their public officials in action, notwithstanding Manager Goodlein's concerns." [END comment]

All conceits aside, this lone public comment at the beginning of the meeting seems to have helped them table this action during this meeting and have the city attorney look into possible alternatives at future meetings rather than the drastic action of keeping the public and city personnel out of Personnel Committee meetings.  The battle for transparency continues, and we hope that the city commission takes a cue from what Ludington initiated in 2019 with their standing committees to make them OMA compliant while striving to keep them advisory.  

One could say the Personnel Committee has been given power by the city code (section 7.8) to conduct investigations involving city personnel and should be considered a public body in itself whenever it might exercise that power independently.

Susan Evans, who diligently recorded this meeting and others in the past, urged the commission at the end to allow more transparency in the Finance Committee.  Mayor Marcy Spencer commented in response that she would like committee chairmen to at least audio record and preserve the recording, especially when the clerk isn't able to attend and take notes.  A modest sized audience of about ten citizens saw Scottville leaders make a couple of concessions for a more open government this evening, which is always encouraging.  Video of the meeting is below:

MCC School Board meeting

Unfortunately, the agenda packet for this meeting was not available on the live feed to the public, but they did have some extra copies at the meeting.  Board President Jim Schulte was absent, so Gina Nelson led the board meeting.  Treasurer Steve Griswold reported on a supplemental investigation of concerns regarding coaching, involving other parents that were overlooked initially. The district did not change their overall finding that none of the relevant coach's actions merited any discipline for bullying or anything else. 

He reported that the district formed an Athletic Advisory Committee with parental membership to look into future claims in that arena.  They have already developed guidelines for parents that are coaches and plan to further define the player/coach dynamic so issues do not fester in the future.

They did a late addition, adding the endorsement of Ray Purple and Brock Cameron to being paid assistant coaches, to a light agenda which had the board recommend approval of the course offerings of both the high school and the adult ed program and passed a resolution for the operational (18 mill) and debt (2.27 mill) tax levy.  If you didn't make the meeting, you wouldn't have been able to see the agenda beforehand or the packet that went with it.  I described why in my opening comment, but also brought out a potential issue with their due diligence in regard to the athletic program that as we have seen has been under a lot of fire:

XLFD:  "Four days ago, MCC seems to have put a link to their agenda packet for this meeting, but it is not openable, I presume the board member's copy of this packet was delivered to them more successfully.  Why not put such a link up on your social media page as a backup just in case something like this happens again.  

I would like to introduce a topic involving a recent transfer to MCC from a neighboring school.  The parents were involved in a rather large controversy for such a small district and from what they said and what actually happened, their son was transferred to MCC this spring and was immediately placed into the MCC athletic program.  One could make a good case that this was an athletic-motivated transfer as defined by the MHSAA, but MCC has apparently allowed him eligibility based on the first exemption, that the whole family has moved to the MCC district fully and completely.

My own research and investigations, far from being full and complete, indicate that claim as being specious.  The family still owns their house in the other district, it still looks lived in, and they have no other real property in the MCC district.  Peoplefinder and voter registration databases still have them living and able to vote in your neighboring district.  Maybe those all just haven't been updated, so I contacted the superintendent with a FOIA request, since the MHSAA puts a duty on this district to establish eligibility for such cases.

I was expecting to get confirmation in several ways since the eligibility checklist for this exemption includes mandates for:  the proof of sale or lease of the new property, proof of rental arrangement of the old property for someone outside of the family.  It should also include the following in cases like this where the outward proofs are against such a move having taken place:  an updated driver's license for parents showing the new address, utility bills for the new address, mail being received at the new address.  What I received was a residential change check list without any boxes checked, nothing else.  No property sales or rental agreements with the street address redacted, nothing.  

I plan on sending my findings of this incredible lack of accountability by the school district to the MHSAA for further review and investigation.  I expect MCC administrators and the athletic director to internally look at this issue and determine why the ball was dropped in terms of your duties to establish eligibility. [END comment]

Earlier today, I submitted a request for an investigation to the MHSAA, having received nothing in response at the meeting, or anything further from the FOIA Coordinator and Superintendent, Jeff Mount.  In further terms of fairness, I am aware of another student who started off at MCC and found himself unable to continue further with MCC's current coaching staff, and his parents decided to move to the Ludington Area School District around this same time period.  The superintendent and athletic director of MCC reportedly were very diligent in that case to make sure that the family was properly moving to the LASD to be able to play school sports immediately.  

How surprising that they are lackadaisical when a good student athlete transfers over, but meticulous when a good student athlete tries to transfer away.  Other members of the public would also ask the board some questions-- it's about all you can do when you aren't given a lot of answers proactively. 

Margaret Greiner would inquire about the district's attorneys (Thrun Law for the last 25 years) and about whether the district had a newsletter (only electronically).  In a mostly rural district where up to 30% of the homes may not have internet service, it might be a good idea to find out who in the district cannot easily access such material and prepare a hard copy for those who are offline by design or not.  Barb Wood expressed a desire to see the minutes and work product of the new committee, whether online or not.

[AnxiousGuy]

I am learning there are more and more people that are glad you are investigating this. Hopefully the truth comes out and fairness prevails.