Scottville City Commission Meeting, May 27, 2025: Transparent Commitments

[XLFD]

The post-Memorial Day Tuesday meeting of the Scottville City Commission (SCC) was held at the city's senior center, just south of the county's sole operating marijuana dispensary, the Hempire Collective.  Commissioners at this meeting (and the meeting before) have been so mellow doing their jobs over the course of this and the last meeting, that one begins to wonder whether they've been doing a bowl up of the nearby product beforehand.  

In attending the last two meetings of the SCC, one cannot help but notice that regardless of the topic that comes up, the SCC debate is non-existent, with any policy deference ceded to City Manager Clarence Goodlein, who lives a county away in a Custer-sized village named Luther.  Goodlein does have an impressive lifetime resume and has shown a level of proficiency in getting the city's financial crisis under control by making some tough choices, but since he has come on board last year, it appears the SCC has retreated into the back seat and let him take full control over driving the city sedan.   

The six-member SCC could at any time dispel such an appearance by taking a more active role and portraying some genuine empathy towards the citizenry.  But all they do is make motions, second them, and if they have any discussion, it's mostly self-congratulatory or superfluous, reflecting the unanimity of their groupthink, which they concretely show in their unanimous vote to approve recommendations from the city manager and/or their standing committees.  

A handful of citizens and representatives from the media attended, as did all SCC members, Goodlein, the clerk, the assessor, and the DPW's Justin Coolman.  I would be the only one to address the board, eying a couple of agenda items during the first comment period:

XLFD:  "One expects all city officials to be committed to transparency, so I am hopeful that this commitment can be clarified in the course of this meeting for two items on the agenda.  First, a resolution is before you to amend the city's fee schedule and it shows what the fees will be should this resolution pass.  But it doesn't show citizens which fees actually are set to increase or explain why those fees need to increase to accurately reflect the costs that are incurred by the city.  If the city manager or the Finance Committee chair can explain any increases or decreases before the vote is taken today, that would be appreciated.

Second, the commission is set to approve a new FOIA policy and while it seems to adopt boilerplate language used in FOIA policies in cities throughout the state, it doesn't exactly determine the city's philosophy on responding to FOIA requests.  Attorney Tracy Thompson who served the city for decades, advised that such requests should be fulfilled quickly, and supplied without fees or unwarranted redactions.  I never had an issue with him in the range of ten years where I would make infrequent FOIA requests to the city.  This changed when attorneys changed and within a couple years, I had a nine-count lawsuit against the city with FOIA violations making up a third of them.  I hope the new FOIA Coordinator will share his FOIA philosophy now that we have a FOIA policy."  [END comment]  

These seemed like simple requests asking about the change in city fees and to find out whether actual FOIA policy would follow either Thompson's transparency or Alvarado's obstruction models.  Yet when those topics came up, there was no attempt by Goodlein or the SCC to tell the public about how fees increased or what would change with the change in FOIA policy.  This is not being committed to transparency, nor is it being responsive to the public that these officials supposedly serve. 

They did do a last-minute amendment to the fee schedule by upping the daily camping rate from $35 to $39 after Commissioner Wallager reported that Henry's Landing campsites jumped up to that rate.  Goodlein's preamble to this resolution says the schedule "accurately reflect the costs that are incurred by the city", but this simple act shows that's not accurate-- they will adjust for what the market allows.  

We tracked down the current Scottville-Fee-Schedule-2024.pdf and found out that the only thing that seemed to change was the monthly cost for rental of a campsite at the Riverside Park, the amended daily rate mentioned, and a couple of other things.  They removed the water and sewer rates, apparently because they were not true fees (but they also removed some associated fees); however, they added a host of new fees for turning water off and back on.  This was never touched upon in the packet or at the meeting, but it should have as it affects the folks of Scottville.

Since the FOIA question wasn't answered, I'll have to do a little FAFO-ing to discover what their philosophy is by sending them some requests I may not have sent otherwise.  I have found, with no exemption thus far, that a public body who doesn't readily respond to FOIA requests like Thompson advised and former city managers applied, are trying to hide things.  This leads to more FOIA requests sent to them than to those who comply readily-- who presumably and in practice, have little to hide.

The SCC would approve awarding Hallack Contracting (Hart) to work on significant improvements to the Scottville water system with a contract for services worth $7,055,550.50.  This will be paid through a grant from the state's EGLE Department, as will another contract approved for engineering services for the project awarded to Fleis and Vanderbrink in the amount of $590,000.  Goodlein would explain that the project was pared down a little bit in order to get it within the grant's funding limits.  

Goodlein would explain that a local PILOT expired and the owner did not pay anything for years (we will find out who this is, if they exist, through a FOIA request, naturally) and this necessitated amending the assessor agreement so as to have her do a reappraisal of city parcels in order to get a more accurate amount coming in.  The fallacy in his memo (p. 27 in the packet) to the SCC was that the additional $6614 paid to the assessor for reappraising 20% of the parcels each year would "not cause additional tax burdens on current residents while providing tax revenue to the city."  Where then would that revenue derived from property taxes come from then, Clarence?

Commissioners would then approve to add outstanding delinquent water bills onto the 2025 summer tax bills of about two dozen city residents, totaling over $8000.  Lastly, they approved the purchase of two lawnmowers to be used by the city DPW.  Though it was hard to hear the numbers and the specs of the mowers from the low volume commissioners, it sounded as if they were spending over $86,000 on two new lawn mowers.  For a city that has got to the point where they cut city services drastically and allegedly need to pinch pennies, such a price on a couple of lawn mowers seems extravagant and unnecessary.  Their DPW's representative, Justin Coolman, however, was moved enough to thank the SCC for the investment as the only one to speak during the last comment period.  I would've spoke to thank them for answering the questions I offered, but they didn't.

Yet, nobody questioned these high-end lawnmower numbers on the SCC, who sacrificed their own pay earlier this year in order to help the city's financial situation.  Until now, because this is another item worthy of a FOIA request to find out what they left out of the public's agenda packets only to include information to a too-mellow SCC at the last minute for approval.  

[woodsman]

     Sure seems that everything is cut and dried before the SCC meetings as there is very little if any SCC comments on anything.  Seems reasonable that there should be some comments unless they just do not care or are told not to ask. Would like to know which.   $86,000 for mowers seems like some big mowers to get the job done quickly and save more time to patch the cities hundreds of pot holes.

[XLFD]

I have low tolerance for city commissioners/councilors who get into office without supporting any initiatives or issues and serve their time just following the herd.  Perhaps less tolerance than for those who espouse voter-friendly positions and either ignore them or change their position when they get installed. 

Right now, I just see six marionettes whose only point of discussion for a resolution approving the action of each commissioner shooting themselves in the foot would be about which foot they need to aim at.  I'm hoping that Commissioner Daws misspoke when she said the $86,000 figure and meant the more reasonable $8600 figure, but I don't think she did, and she surely wasn't corrected by any others present.