Ludington City Council Meeting February 11, 2019: The Hidden Agenda

[XLFD]

The regular agenda looked as if everything was pretty much already settled, all that was needed was an affirmative vote or acknowledgment to make it official.  A quick tick off of those issues as they appeared on the docket and their disposition:

-Three annual 2018 department reports from the Zoning/Planning et.al., Fire and Community Development Departments.   Acknowledged and appreciated.

-Approval of the Petunia Parade and DDA/DLB events for 2019.  Approved and appreciated.

-Payment of bills  Affirmed unanimously.

-Designating Street Administrator as Jackie Steckel  Affirmed unanimously.

-Designating a No Parking Zone on the east side of the private street leading to the fire station, affirmed 6-1, with Councilor Serna dissenting due to it not being applied to the west side also.

-Approving a Waterways Grant of $110,000 to repair city marina docks with 50% match from the marina fund  Affirmed unanimously.

-Setting a public hearing for applying for a Recreation Passport Grant for the Splash Pad at Copeyon Park for $150,000 with a match supplied by the Splash Pad Committee  Affirmed unanimously.

-Approving an ordinance establishing a Marijuana ad hoc committee, and setting a date for when the 3 citizens will be picked to be on the committee (Tuesday March 5, at 7:00 PM at city hall).  Approved unanimously.

-Appointing Mitch Foster to be the next city manager.  Appointed unanimously.

-Agreeing on the city manager contract  Affirmed unanimously with some concerns raised about the generosity of the terms.

-Affirming the FOIA Coordinator's decision to withhold the applications and requests for confidentiality of 34 city manager candidates.  Affirmed by voice vote.

So why have I called it "The Hidden Agenda" in the subtitle?  Well, it wasn't just because they snuck in three loan resolutions at the last minute for the wastewater treatment plant amounting to slightly over $23 million (roughly $9, $8 and $6 respectively, where the larger bonds had an interest rate of 2.375% and the smallest at 2.5 %).  They needed to approve the two signatories (Acting CM Steckel and Luskin).  Bond resolutions will likely be approved at the next regular meeting, so this was not really hidden, just a late, expected development that was foreshadowed in prior meetings.  

In the first public comment, Mayor Steve Miller led off without restricting the comments to agenda items, nevertheless my first comment started with acknowledging he hadn't at his other two meetings, and I had to adapt my prepared speech a little bit to reflect his proper move at this meeting.  Then I talked about hidden records and an illicit closed session starting at 2:30 into the meeting:

February 11th, 2019 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

XLFD:  "The June 25, 2018 city council meeting minutes reflect that a motion was made to drop the requirement that the 3-minute public comment period at the beginning of the council meeting be on an agenda item. The motion was passed unanimously including votes made by five members of the current council. It hasn't been changed since that time. Yet, none of those five councilors have taken the time to correct the mayor in his first two regular meetings... he didn't make that mistake this time, when he restricts the comments to be on an agenda item. It's a shame that it seems to be in the city council's DNA that they can ignore rules that are made to open up communication with the public, even when they have voted those rules in themselves.

This was the case with the meeting held on January 10 in order to whittle down the city manager candidates. The council members relied on their city attorney and the Michigan Municipal League's Jeff Mueller to legally navigate them through the process. But rather than just consider and review the candidates that requested confidentiality, the council, according to Mueller, decided [in closed session] the number of each candidate that they collectively picked and “that he would go through the [narrowing down] process with Council first before any decisions were made by Council on which candidates will be selected to interview." He never did this in open session, therefore that decision was made in closed session.

Sadly, I know of Mueller's instructions only because it was included in his memo to the council, a memo which should have been given to me through my FOIA request, but never was. That's a violation of FOIA, and I hope this council, when they decide my FOIA appeal later on at this meeting, will admit that mistake and realize that the other public records I asked for cannot be shielded simply because Mueller took back those records from you. When the public body used them in the performance of an official function, as you did, they become public records and you must disclose them unless they are totally exempt for some reason. The only reason the FOIA Coordinator has used is that they do not exist, which is a lie that you can all verify as a lie since you have looked through those records.

Embrace honesty, integrity, and transparency in providing the records and admitting that mistakes were made."

In retrospect and on closer inspection after the meeting, I had made a mistake in not noticing that the memo I referred to was deep in the file of one of the records I was supplied, so that they weren't in arrears on that record.  But deep in that same file I found confirmation that the other two city manager candidates eventually interviewed never requested confidentiality (this will be developed shortly, with prosecution of the OMA and FOIA violations following). 

The MML and City could have easily preserved confidentiality without going into closed session for 135 minutes to review the little amount of information the OMA deems confidential, instead they decided to claim everybody requested confidentiality and added that the full application was confidential-- including the requests for confidentiality!  This betokens a hidden agenda, but it goes deeper.

Dianne Seelhoff, followed with introducing herself to the new councilors and mayor, and then relaying an amusing anecdote from Clint Eastwood about the good, the bad and the ugly of being elected mayor that lightened the mood before advising the wisdom of using opposite views and developing conflict resolution, more communication, transparency and setting the tone for community involvement.  Tom Tyron followed with his observations about the new city manager contract and how he believed it was too generous.

The aforementioned annual reports were then given (see more starting at p. 9 here) over the next 30 minutes, culminating with the mayor's genuflecting before the Community Development Director.  The meeting continued to run vanilla until the 46:20 mark, when Councilor Serna questioned Chief Barnett on the wisdom of not restricting parking on the west side of the private street leading to the fire station.  The chief was worried about ticking off the people at the LRC for taking some of their overflow parking, but Serna is totally right, it's foolish as it gets

The aerial view shows that this private street is the same width as two regular street lanes on Tinkham (see and measure red lines).  If parking is allowed on the west side, almost an entire lane is wiped out, and the street becomes one lane, which is insane because you will be having up to 20 responding volunteer firefighters hurriedly coming down that street, when fire trucks are hurriedly trying to go up it.  "I believe this will be sufficient," he says before it gets voted on unanimously by those who value being in the chief's favor over common sense.

At 1:19:00 they considered my FOIA appeal, where they related a 5 page memo/opinion from the FOIA Coordinator delivered that evening to the councilors just before the meeting.  The city attorney went over a lengthy defense that obfuscated some of the main points of contention, and introduced a new exemption, that the records existed but were 'work-product'.  It was rather hard to follow the logic and law, even for somebody who has filed multiple FOIA and OMA lawsuits.

The council was forced to vote for it, even without doing any real review of the opinion (Councilor Serna, like most reasonable persons, wondered why it took well over two weeks to make and give the opinion and was concerned that she could not give due diligence, and though it's not seen, she never voted).  The rest of the council had no concerns, as usual, as to why the records that were said not to exist, did exist (Wilson admits it) and how they became 'work product' when the public taxpayer was drained $17,000 for having the MML's service keep them secret from the purchaser.

Definitely hidden agenda stuff, but still outdone by the revelations in my second public comment and the rebuttal by a former mayor.   But before I reveal that, Dianne Seelhoff spoke after me and told a story about Brandon Wheeler Sr., who recently died, who lamented that he wasn't able to fish at Copeyon Park because of the steep hill preventing him and eventually the removal of the fishing dock.  She encouraged a reconsideration of placing the Splash Pad there.  Chuck Sobanski echoed another concern about access issues at Copeyon, and congratulated the acting city manager on a great job at her first meeting (amusing to all, since she didn't really contribute).

XLFD (1:33:15) Thanks for your 'review and consideration' of my FOIA appeal. 

"The lion's share of the city council's usual business is in the committee reports section of the agenda, there was 5 items on there tonight, usually there's more. It seems odd to me, however, that according to the city website, none of the five committees other than finance have met since November 19, nearly three months ago and 6 regularly scheduled meetings ago. Yet we still see multiple committee reports being made by the respective chairmen as if they had met since October or November, when in reality the items are not coming from those committees at all.
The public is short shrifted in knowing about public policy because they, like many of you councilors, don't see the agenda until the weekend before the meeting an issue comes up for vote and are introduced to those items without adequate time or adequate information to digest them. Such protocols do not promote transparency, citizen involvement, or public trust of city hall.
Case in point, tonight you agreed to approving a waterways grant without telling the public how did you get a grant for $110,000 when your application for a waterways grant for $362,000 was denied last April by the DNR shortly after the deadline for that grant, and the Waterways Commission has never approved such allocation of funds since, at least at an open meeting. It looks like some of their policies are made the Ludington way, in secret discussions out of the view of the public. Thank you."

That is the hidden agenda, standing committee reports coming from committees that never meet, but from some administrative hack at city hall who introduces it to one-and-all the weekend before it comes before a council that has been trained to complete the fait accompli by using their rubber stamp.  For each of the four actions outside of the Finance Committee this evening, and many others, have only been introduced at the eleventh hour to the public, and even most councilors.  

I invite anybody to point out in any committee notes existing (look through the minutes (and agendas) on demand) where those four committee actions in the agenda for this meeting were indicated.  You will not succeed in finding any for these newly devised action by committees that have not officially met for three to four months.  Previous agendas show that this is nothing new.  Yet, former Mayor Kaye Holman, in an odd refutation offers a defense later on during that public comment which asserts a level of transparency that the City has, but actually illustrates my point. 

Kaye Holman:  (1:38:30)  "I have been involved with the City for over 20 years, both as planning and I had Brandy's job for a while, 13 years and as the mayor, and I can't ever remember us bringing something up that we hadn't discussed in committee.  I'm sorry, that's just not true. 

Even if I would stop and talk with Jackie or talk to Steve, or talk to anyone else, any of you, it always came back to committee, because that's the way we do things.  And I take... just right royally pissed off actually, I take great umbrage of you thinking, of anyone thinking that we're hiding things.  My 20 years tell me that is not true, and I don't think any of you up here would agree that we slide things through.  We might stand around and talk about them, but we don't slide them.  If you want to know what's going on, ask. 

If your answers are not satisfactory, ask someone else.  It's just the way the City works.  I've gone through, as someone said earlier, I've gone through three city managers and have enjoyed most of it.  I've been mayor, and enjoyed all of it.  But we always discuss things, we're not sneaking through here, there's always a reason, and I really, really, resent the fact that we've been called whatever-it-is-we've-been-called, I know there's a word for it.  Thank you." 

Kaye, you were assisting in hiding and sliding things throughout your career, it's been documented in multiple court records, meeting minutes, and readily observable in your past actions.  Your defense amounts to having a bunch of officials talking about things outside of open meetings, answer-shopping, going through 3 city managers (this is frightening if you are a city manager), and saying it's 'just how the city works' when the city attorney earlier at this meeting  admits records exist, but were properly shielded by saying they do not exist-- and 6/7 of the council bought it.  Let us hope that someday the city will work with accountability, with transparency, and with the citizens rather than the skewed way it does now to promote a hidden agenda proffered by hidden agents.

[Willy]

Thanks for the report X. I'm glad to see Councilor Serna being thoughtful and concerned with what is taking place. I hope she continues to advocate for the people unlike the others. Then there's Holman. What can be said about the brainless comments she makes. Not once did she mention the interaction that is required between the "City" and citizens. And admitting to discussing issues outside of public scrutiny and making decisions on those discussions shows at least one of the major problems with the clowns at City Hall. "It's just the way the City [swamp] works", declares Ludingtons's Ocasia Cortez. The other boil on Ludington's a_s, attorney Wilson, needs to go. He is a major hurdle to the flow of information from City Hall to the people. His decisions and opinions are not conducive to an open Government. He's either the worst lawyer north of M20 or he's deliberately trying to undermine the will of the people.

I've said all along that the entrance to Copeyon Park is hazardous even under normal conditions but using it as access to a potentially busy and totally unnecessary water park is absurd. Not only will the water park be a drain on resources, this boondoggle will cost the taxpayers plenty when engineers tell the Clown Council that the access road to the park will need to be reconstructed to meet standards.  Stupid, stupid people running Ludington.  And where is all of this grant money coming from? Someone has to pay for it.

Maybe you can answer this quesion X. How does the City of Ludington have the authority to control traffic flow on a private drive?

[XLFD]

Your welcome for the summary, and thank you for your own summary which is very perceptive and your ability to pay attention to details.  Attorney Wilson, who is a contractor from another county representing a law firm from GR, can only function the way he does by the complicity of the city officials who praise and retain him for presenting their lawless activity and giving it the appearance of legality with the deftness of a skilled illusionist.  No wonder his middle name is Merlin.  Councilor Serna is a rare gift, that actually uses her position to work for the whole community, not just the vested interest of the city corporate and their sponsors.

To answer your question the Uniform Traffic Code has rule R28.1136B which says:  

  "Traffic -control devices on private property; violation as civil infraction. (1) With the consent, or at the request, of the owners or persons in charge of private property that is open to the general public for travel, the traffic engineer may determine controls of the movement of vehicles and pedestrians and the parking of vehicles as needed for the safety and convenience of the public and users of the property. The traffic engineer shall place and maintain whatever traffic-control devices are necessary to give notice of the controls determined to be necessary."

Technically, if it wasn't part of the initial agreement to split the property between the LFD and LRN, the City should get consent for this traffic control from the LRN, and that should be part of the record.  Another technicality one could push is that Barnett refers to the section as a 'driveway' when it is actually a 'road' for most of its length.  By legal definition, a 'road' serves more than one facility.

[Freedom Seeker]

Thanks for another informative article, XLFD! I wondered if Willy was referring to the "private drive" of Copeyon Park? I've heard people say that the city doesn't actually own the road down the hill, but that they have an easement granted from the Pere Point property as well as the Yacht club. Sounds like a bowl of worms. Anyone know for sure?

[XLFD]

FS,

I don't know the answer to your question, but my initial guess is that the private 'road' (it serves as sole vehicle entrance/egress to Copeyon Park (public), Ludington Yacht Club (private business), Pere Pointe Boathouse (private residential amenity), and the electrical substation (private utility)) belongs to the earliest established entity, which I believe is the utility.  The LYC has an official address of 80 Second Street, which would almost suggest that the 'private road' is a public street.  

[Du Wright]

Thanks Willy. Couldn't have been better said in a summary!

[Freedom Seeker]

A comment about Kaye Holman's comment:. I agree, X, that she probably has been a big part of the problem, if her speech is indicative of her knowledge of the OMA. What sums it up is the attitude:. If you want to know something, just ask. I hope Steve Miller and the council were rightly embarrassed by that statement. Hey, great idea. We could rewrite the Open Meeting Act, simple, to the point, in one sentence:. If you want to know something, just ask. But then she adds part 2:. If you don't like that answer, then ask someone else. And do without the euphemisms.

Directing the comment to the chair, she takes "great umbrage" at Steve Miller thinking that we're hiding things."

[Freedom Seeker]

... and the word they've been called that Kaye can't bring forth from her rattled umbrage? It seems she's trying to think of "non-transparent" or is it something worse?

Kaye, here's a hint: If you don't want to embarrass the city any worse, don't speak off the top of your head, the middle, or the bottom. No where in there is truth in the way government should work. What a sad commentary on city transparency.

[XLFD]

I suggest that she's a rare gift, like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, one who has the ability to illustrate the absurdity of 'swampthink' to the common person just by opening her mouth and letting her raw thoughts issue forth unfiltered.  

Do not try to shame O-Kaye-sio from going to the podium and speaking her mind, she has every right to illustrate and punctuate every one of my points about how the City is and has been acting.

[Freedom Seeker]

YMy comment was really meant more as a word to the wise not to embarrass the city by making poorly thought-out comments, but true, what spews forth is a revealing book of what has gone on.  I see your point, X. 

[Freedom Seeker]

The stupidity of the comment is that Kaye probably doesn't even know how stupid "... If someone wants to know what is going in, just ask" sounds, and how counter to her attacks on you for asking (through FOIA requests) it is.  By the way, X, if you don't like the answer you get in FOIA response, do you get to ask another FOIA?  Kaye says you can.  Just ask.  This is a "just ask, we'll tell" type of government.

[AQUAMAN]

If all this "just ask" comments are true, how come Attorney Alvarez is the FOIA coordinator since the last 3-4 years? And it was Shyster Shay before that! The COL doesn't really want anyone to see thru their crooked wheeling and dealings at all, and are going to keep it that way as long as the back-door councilors & City Attorney want it that way, and get away with it, with the help of the LDN and other media sources that hide the truth. Kaye Holman, stay seated, or just away all together, you are a fool for the last 20+ years, and still are today! You have kept all this non-transparency going and promoted it to a new higher level, and for what? To keep your power and ego up to a warped and twisted level imho. SHUT UP!

[Freedom Seeker]

Good point, Aquaman, about the need for a FOIA director if all we had to do is ask.  About Kaye Holman's staying seated, good luck with that!  X might be right, she has a right to say what she wants and knows. It may be quite revealing, especially if she is pissed off!