Ludington City Council Meeting, November 11, 2019: Burritos and Bureaucracy

[XLFD]

After last meeting's dust up over whether to opt-in to allow marijuana retail facilities in the city limits (it failed with a 6-1 vote to remain opted out), the meeting of the Ludington City Council on November 11, 2019 looked to be a bit less controversial, especially with the absence of Councilor Angela Serna, who had been the one lonely 'no' vote.

Ironically, the most contentious vote of the night would be the council considering whether to accept her proposed change to the previous meeting's minutes.  Just after the first public comment period, they looked over her request to change the proposed minutes to more adequately reflect what she said.  The six councilors present mulled over a memo, eventually coming to a consensus that the change she wanted was equivalent to what was in the minutes, just in different words, and that the city clerk, Deb Luskin, takes great notes.

Through the magic of the internet, anybody can access the minutes of that meeting and the video of that meeting and compare for themselves.  One inaccuracy that clearly comes out is that Serna used the word "psych" rather than "site" to refer to placement of 15 patients that Sheriff Cole implied were suffering from reefer madness or other drug addictions.  At the minimum, this should have been changed to make the minutes accurately portray what was said, I am sure Councilor Serna will make her case at the next meeting if there's more to it than that.

The blustery blizzardy conditions outside seemed to keep some of the regular attendees away, but a large contingency of non-regulars showed up and sat together which confused me until I reviewed the agenda and saw that a food truck update would be given.  I surmised they would be speaking against that topic, at least for certain areas of the city.  I wasn't let down.  

Annette Quillan spoke first (2:00 in), who said such trucks should be equivalent to "transient merchants" (a notion that wasn't clarified by the city attorney).  Marie Leigh spoke for a combined condo group  (the ones surrounding Waterfront Park) saying that having food trucks in the area would be an abuse and lead to a carnival atmosphere.  Marie Quillan (Q Smokehouse) went the full three minutes plus, and consistently made the point that food trucks are attracted to large groups of people, large groups of people are not attracted by food trucks.  

I would turn out to be the last speaker in the initial period.   Chief Barnett failed to address veterans in his original invocation, so I wanted to make sure they were not forgotten at the top of my speech, I then offered a suggestion and then went into a topic that will likely come before council at the next meeting that is important to consider.  I would continue on that topic later as well.  Since the only mention of this topic was by the city manager saying that the council may see a proposed contract with the state as early as the next meeting in two weeks, I offer a transcript of the second comment, given over an hour later, right afterwards.  

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

XLFD: (8:45 in) "As merely a veteran of a few city hall skirmishes, I want to acknowledge and thank our area's real veterans that served their country with honor and distinction. I also wish to suggest that the city manager rethink having two budget meeting with the public and call them both "tacos and taxes"; that would be repetitive. Why not vary the menu a bit and call the second one "Fajitas and Fees" or if you don't only want to focus just on city revenues, call the second one "Enchiladas and Expenditures"? I haven't copyrighted either, so you don't have to pay me any royalties for using these titles.

Moving to a more serious topic, I wish to register some displeasure with the way the state has handled the transition of Harbor View Marina management from a private company to the public corporation known as the City of Ludington. The State Waterways Commission has had about six meetings since the DNR announced last year that they planned to have the City take over Harbor View, they have not sought input from the half dozen Ludington private marina owners and have addressed the topic obliquely once in a public meeting this June where the approved minutes reflect an inaccuracy, namely:

"Ron Olson informed the Commission that there is a plan moving along for the agreement for Harbor View Marina of Ludington, to enter a lease with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). It is anticipated this agreement will be set before the end of this year. "

There has been no talks between an entity called Harbor View Marina with the state to lease Harbor View Marina, the only entity in the record is the City of Ludington. The state DNR has been totally tone deaf as to how having two public marinas, cooperating fully with each other, harboring commercial charter boats, and sharing their facilities freely with each other will affect those private marinas who are already having all of the disadvantages of having to compete with one marina that has received millions of dollars in state subsidizations over the years.

Having reviewed the communications between the city and the state, it's readily apparent that the state looks forward to being able to pump even more taxpayer funds into maintaining and improving both facilities while ignoring the private marinas, small family businesses whose large tax rates go towards bolstering their competition. It's an incredibly corrupt and sick system in our state that would allow the DNR to disrupt the free market of marinas in Ludington that served the city well and was expanding to meet needs before the municipal marina was even an idea in some state official's head. Thank you. [END]

XLFD:  [1:24:50 in] "Despite the state's resistance to make its negotiations with the City over Harbor View Marina transparent and considerate of our negatively-affected businesses in Ludington, I must acknowledge the City's efforts. City Manager Mitch Foster invited private marina owners and other interested parties to meet with him and the marina manager to discuss Harborview issues this summer. They have also professionally complied with a FOIA request asking for records regarding the negotiations between the city and state over the state-owned marina.

It is unfortunate that the contract likely to be brought up at next week's meeting between the city and state will appear to disregard the concerns that were raised at the marina meeting. The two public marinas will be allowed to contain 15 slips for charter boat use. The city marina was built under the guise that it would be strictly a recreational boating facility which precludes boats used for a commercial purpose. Records show that city marina managers of the 80s and 90s dishonorably reneged on that covenant, even though it was essential for them to not have commercial establishments within them when they got a variety of grants for improvements, dredging, and maintenance from the state.

The state admits it has a backup plan to run Harborview next year with a managing firm if the City declines their offer, and they have also admitted they would rather have the City run it so that they can funnel more money through grants to maintain both it and the city marina. Can we have state DNR representatives present their plans frankly out in the open before the citizens of Ludington that will be most affected? Thank you." [END]

I offer these statements now at face value, and will expand on them with documents that I have received through FOIA and other research.  Marie Quillan preceded me with another comment in the second comment period with caveats to the city of how the food trucks had an unfair advantage over brick and mortar establishments and of how some downtown restaurants will suffer and move out, like Cops & Doughnuts.  I would hope that Marie and other businesses that are scared of this unfair advantage making their business less profitable can empathize with the even more unfair advantage the tax-free city marina receiving millions from the state that the other marinas cannot get, has over the private marinas.

Five of the six action items would be under the finance committee's purview.  They raised the rates slightly for the city marina, the first raise in seven years.  Election workers had the wages for their very-temporary jobs raised, up to $10.50/hour for the inspectors and $12 for the chairperson.

They approved a one time payment to the city's 13 non-union employees to offset paying them a smaller stipend each month.  In the long run, the move is expected to save $50,000, according to the city clerk.  They approved a $4500 contract with Prein & Neuhoff for engineering services to repair and fix the erosion problem along the shores directly west of the Coast Guard station (Maritime Heritage Park).  The actual cost of the project when they get a contractor to do the work will likely fall in the $45K to 90K range.

Off-agenda, Councilor Lenius introduced a motion to authorize the expenses of Mitch Foster's Tennessee trip amounting to about $1500.  As noted here the city council needed to approve expenses for out-of-state conferences that the city manager attended, by terms of his contract.  

I inquired further of the city manager as to the specifics behind this late-addition to the agenda and to the city's expenses via E-mail he replied this morning:

"When I discovered the language in my contract (through your blog), I had Debbie reduce my payroll amount to cover the expenses that the City had paid for (Airfare and Hotel). All meals and transportation on site were on my card which would have been reimbursed in a normal circumstance, and the conference registration had been comped through a scholarship. I had informed City Councilors of this situation and that ethically I did not feel comfortable asking for the reimbursement, but they decided not to listen to me on this, and as I am sure you could tell last night, I was uncomfortable with the attention like that."

As noted at 32:00 in, the council knew that he was going to this conference in advance and the members of the Finance/Personnel Committee and the city attorney should have known of this stipulation in the contract, because it was specifically changed from the previous contract. 

I am further vext by the council for not doing their job at this meeting, sneaking this issue in without amending the agenda earlier, and in not telling the public exactly why the city manager attending this conference was worth using $1500 of public funds.  This justification was optional if it was done beforehand, but when it's done after the fact, contrary to contract terms, the case should be laid out explicitly.  

Ruggles & Sons were rewarded with another year of sidewalk installation.  The three year contract they won without the low bid last year had a stipulation for the City to review their work each year.  The company was given high praise for the quality and timeliness of their work.  It was also noted that the deer cull was put on the shelf for now, the committee found it difficult to justify spending $15K to get 15 deer from the north and south of town.  

Only updates were given on the food trucks and short term rentals (STR) by the Buildings & Licenses Committee.  Whereas, the DDA has recommended not having food trucks in the downtown, the committee looks as if it is poised to allow it in other places.  Perhaps the most interesting bit of patter was made by Councilor Les Johnson who admitted he sat in with the committee and would have liked to comment about the issue but didn't for fear of being in violation of the law.

Having four of seven councilors present at a committee meeting where public policy is being discussed is arguably in violation of the Open Meetings Act (OMA) according to attorney general opinions, even if one remains silent or does not vote.  It is one of the three ways the committees had been violating the OMA before they recently have taken steps to fix it (with some urging by a still-pending lawsuit).   The STR ordinance in progress looks as if the City is looking to profit quite a bit by requiring rather high fees to the City just to have the chance to win the lottery of being one of the 50 properties able to have STRs.

Dr. Daniel King was hoping to rezone his property at 102 S Washington from multifamily residential to limited commercial, Councilor Winczewski presented the outlay.  I have never been impressed by the mathematics or logic behind some of these zoning issues, but if you are it starts at about 55:00 into the video.

The city manager reported about meeting with strategic planning professionals occurring on December 5th.  The Tacos and Taxes (and maybe an alternate) informal meetings to talk budget were going to be scheduled with the public.  He noted Harborview may be in front of them next meeting.  He got the council's approval to spend more time and money to consider planning to have cruise ships visiting Ludington in the future, the city attorney said they have had success with such ships in Manistee.

The city manager went over the possibility of regular monthly meetings of standing committees, and the council was receptive to that.  He then had the council consider and pass moving the first December meeting from December 2 to the ninth in order to make sure the budget is at its best.  The mayor followed and called on citizens to send him a line if they wanted to serve on a city committee, and listed several boards currently needing some extra people; he asked the councilors to give him their preference for serving on standing committees.  

Marie Quillan and I gave our second public comments whose contents were noted before.  The police chief reminded everybody about the Shop with a Cop pie auction being held just before Thanksgiving, and the gavel came down shortly thereafter.

[Willy]

Thanks for the discussion X. Nowhere else can a concerned citizen get such a detailed analysis of a Ludington City Council meeting. I've always felt that the marinas are deals made with the devil. Not only do they compete against private marinas but they extract tax dollars from citizens who have no interest in Ludington or fish. What happens when the State cannot spoon feed these marinas with tax dollars to keep them afloat? Enter Ludington residents! I can see some day in the near future a huge expense required to keep the marinas in business and the State's well will be dry. A bad deal all around. The shore line at the boat ramp parking lot is going to need a lot of fixing and I'm sure the price is going to be much higher than most expect. Thanks again

[stump]

   Whats the scoop on the city cashing in on the  STR ?   Are they proposing a certain dollar amount deposit even to be  considered in having one ? Lottery? does the city think there will be that many signing up?

[XLFD]

What they reported at this meeting seems to be consistent with the last committee meeting:

As you would expect, there is no justification for these $500 application fees and $500 approval fees (per unit).  It's just the City of Ludington getting its greed on, cashing in because they want to see some of that big money from STRs which should be available by right of your residential home ownership without having to pay off your local robber barons for licensing.  They also have decided to forego looking at 'home-sharing' altogether for now, where the property owner lives separately on the same property.

Why are we paying property taxes when the tin Gods of the local city hall can tell you what you can and can't do with your property?