The Mystery of the Pigweed Predicament

[XLFD]

I had originally prepped my camera for a brief photo essay on the City of Ludington being a bit neglectful of minding their lawn on the property of 428 E Dowland, a property they acquired in November of 2007 with the intention of making this four lot property the next Ludington Fire Station.  As I went there with my camera and my ruler, I started taking pictures with my 12 inch ruler showing that the pigweeds, that had somehow inundated themselves on Dowland following the streetwork done there this summer, were quite a bit taller than weeds are supposed to be until the City of Ludington considers a nuisance, whuch happens to be 10".  The city may serve written notice that the condition shall be abate...

As the City of Ludington's code enforcement team love to serve these on the people of Ludington (amazingly, I have been spared this indignity) I figured they could use a dose of their own medicine.  These lazy deadbeats let their pigweeds grow over two feet (that's over 24" for those who work at City Hall).  Here's some of the stuff in the right-of-way:

Tall Weed    Tall Weeds    One Really Big Weed

But then I noticed that the lot had a lot more bigger weeds in its interior, partially blocked by some sumac bushes, earth mounds, and vines.  Right near the "For Sale" sign the goldenrod is as big as the pigweed, and other weeds surpass the four feet mark (48"+  for those who work at 400 S. Harrison)

More Gigantic Internal Weeds     Even more Megaweeds

But it was when I took this picture of an oversized pigweed field further in this lot that something dawned on me.

Almost the whole lot in back of the sumacs and mounds was completely denuded of vegetation, as if someone had come and took out the topsoil of this lot and took it somewhere recently.  And it was rather recent, because the pictures of the lot in the realtors guide shows a regular lawn just earlier this year:

Which then turned into this:

And the sleuth in me said, 1) missing topsoil at 428 E Dowland  2) pigweed is prevalent on that lot  3)  a bit of topsoil was used in front of many E Dowland properties (like where I live) that lost sections of sidewalk or had some soil removed.  4)  pigweed is growing in front of all those properties.

I could be wrong without further proof either way, but I have to presume that the new topsoil in front of our houses/businesses on Dowland has been transplanted from this property, 428 E Dowland.  Usually, that shouldn't be a problem, but the history of this property was that it used to belong to Padnos and Brody and used as a place where scrap metal was salvaged (metal with various chemicals/paints on them), was considered as a Brownfield property in 2005, had an underground 500 gallon diesel tank until recent, and went directly from these private hands to public hands.   DEED 428 E Dowland.pdf    428 E Dowland (Future Fire Station) description

Were the environmental factors mitigated?  Is the possibly tainted soil from that lot replacing the topsoil of several Dowland properties going to present a hazard to the people who live at those properties?   If any of the people who worked at City Hall lived on Dowland Street, would they be happy with getting a bunch of soil definitely filled with pigweed seeds and possibly contaminated with metal residue, hydrocarbon residues, lead paints, and various other hazardous materials dumped in their front yard?

[Eye On Ludington]

XlfD, I read every reply. John is not wanting to cost the taxpayers any more money on this than absolutely necessary. That is why he is charging you the fee for the public employee's time. If anything, it is your own refusal to pay the legally established fees surrounding this particular FOIA request coupled with your threat to take it to court that is costing the taxpayers more money.

The people of Ludington expect the rules to be followed. John says that the city's FOIA policy will not permit him to allow you to view the original documents without supervision. That means that you have two choices. You can pay for copies or you can pay for supervision. Either way it appears to be about the same cost. The fee is totally legal and justified. Why do you want Shay to ignore the rules in this case? Why do you expect the taxpayers of Ludington to continue to pay for your own reluctance to pay legally established fees?

Pay the fee X and move forward! Stop wasting taxpayer money for something that you should be responsible for.

[XLFD]

Without even considering any other of your posts instead of the one above you made, EyE, her's what I see.  You offer a choice, which Shay does not, of paying for copies I never asked for, or for paying someone to supervise my inspection.  I choose the latter of your two choices. 

Anybody can do the action of supervising the inspection; the City Manager is obligated by the FOIA to choose the lowest paid employee to do so.  Any of the many part-paid volunteers of the LFD who are about the 'lowest paid employees' you can find, work 24/7 for the year and get under $4000 for doing so.  If we annualize this for a 40 hour week, that works out to under $2 per hour.  being that Shay cannot start charging me for labor to compile the request (and security is not part of that anyway) until the $50 mark is reached, I could spend 25 hours looking at the records without charge.  For free. 

But, as stated, security measures that a public body wishes to invoke, are not part of the lawful fees they can charge.  So I could spend 26 hours with the firefighter, and still not have to worry about charges.  But, I don't have such time to waste, give me one hour with a camera trained on me, and I will cost the City nothing, other than the effort of pulling a file or two.  

[Eye On Ludington]

XLFD, the $26 fee is legal and justifiable.  

You have already cost the city a lot more money than that on this one FOIA request because they had to consult the city attorney because you said you were going to fight it.

 

What are the job duties of a part-paid volunteer of the LFD? Does it include supervising original public documents? I don't think so. It would have to be the lowest paid employee who actually works with or oversees those original records as one of their normal job duties. Otherwise why not just hire the part-paid volunteers of the LFD to mop floors at the courthouse? Why are you dragging the part-paid volunteers of the LFD into this anyway?

 

I think you are deliberately wrong about not having to pay anything under $50 too. But I will give you the opportunity to prove me wrong about it. Please show me the rule of law that establishes for an undisputable fact that the local FOIAC cannot legally charge for any FOIA requests unless it totals over $50.

 

[XLFD]

Here's the City of Ludington's current FOIA policy, check out the $50 figure explicitly stated in section 5b.  QED.

Not so explicit is the fact that all members of the public body have a duty to abide by the FOIA.  If I sent a FOIA request to the Fire Chief for LFD records, he must pass that along to the FOIA Coordinator, who will then likely inform the Chief what records to compile.   This is explicit, read the last sentence of section 3 (1): "An employee of a public body who receives a request for a public record shall promptly forward that request to the freedom of information act coordinator."

When I was on the LFD, I actually would enter the fire incident reports on the NFIRS (Nat'l Fire Incident Reporting System), and was called on to furnish hard copy of such reports to insurance agencies, etc. by the Chief. 

Lastly, we need not have wasted the City Attorney's time (even though he is on a set retainer) if Shay would not have violated FOIA law, and figured a comment from this attorney would somehow make it legally binding, even though once again, Dick has got it wrong.  One doesn't have to make $185 an hour to figure that out! 

[Willy]

Eye

Your words "the FOIAC needs to make copies anyway because he cannot allow the citizen to view 500 original documents without supervision." Then why doesn't FOIAC provide supervision so that X can inspect the documents as X requested? And no, the City does not have to make copies of records just so citizens can inspect them. I have dealt with an untold number of Government agencies and I have never had to pay for copies of documents just so I could see them. I have always inspected the original documents that were on file. This is a policy unique to Ludington. Your just not going to admit that Shay, the City Council and Mayor are a bunch of petty and vindictive bullies. Don't forget, what they are doing to X can be done to all the citizens of Ludington. Right now, you are defending corrupt behavior by Government officials and unless you open your eyes, Eye, X's plight could very well be in your own future.

[XLFD]

This is unique to Ludington, and once I get a judgment on my FOIA case, I will try to get the City FOIA Policy back to the realm of legitimate policy, and away from being the litigation magnet that our City Attorneys made it to be, in the appellate courts.    

[Eye On Ludington]

Willy, your opinion of Shay, the City Council and Mayor are irrelevant to the FOIA issue presented in this discussion. And I am NOT defending corrupt behavior.

I have posted a link in this discussion that shows the fee for supervision is not unique to Ludington.

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dleg/DLEG_FOIA_302190_7.pdf

 

I have referred X to my Eye On Ludington website where I explain the FOIA regulations that allow it.

http://eyeonludington.ning.com/forum/topics/jane-or-cheeta

 

The fee for X's FOIA request are legal and justified, so please stop misleading the general taxpaying public with untrue and biased rhetoric. The failure of X to admit it is legal is what will cost the taxpayers of Ludington more money than is necessary through extra labor hours and legal fees.

[Willy]

Eye

What you need to do is post a link to the actual FOIA. The link that you provided explains what the DLEG's procedures are on how their employees should handle FOIA requests.

[XLFD]

EyE, you are defending corrupt behavior when you say the public body can charge a citizen for arbitrary security-related charges, and the DLEG link you feature even disputes your claim that it does.  No matter how often you call for me to pay $26, how often you claim the charge is legal, and how often you say the charge is justified, it just does not make it so.  And I'm sure I know seven Ludington City councilors will agree with you, because they care little for the laws of the land (look up the Workplace Safety Policy, the Medicinal Marijuana ordinance, the Cross-Connected pipes ordinance, etc).

You can spin it anyway you like back on your own Ning site, but it won't get uncontested here, because we don't allow dis-Tortch-ions of the truth remain unchallenged here, LOL. 

[Eye On Ludington]

XLFD, If you are so sure about being right then go ahead and take it to court. You will lose!

[Willy]

Eye

I'm still waiting for you to post a link to the FOIA so we can carry on this discussion.

[Eye On Ludington]

Willy, There is a link to the Michigan FOIA on my website. The link to my website that I provided to you in this discussion will take you directly to the page.

It tells me something about you though that you need a link to the FOIA. Because if you do not know what what the FOIA says then how is it that you are trying to tell me I am wrong about it?