Ludington City Council, January 10, 2022: Finger Pointing

[XLFD]

The agenda packet for the January 10, 2022 meeting of the Ludington City Council was not too surprising for those keeping track of Ludington's municipal affairs.  The business amounted to passing a couple of ordinances that already had their first reading and some discussion held at the prior meeting and doing a couple of routines that are typically done at the council's first meeting of the year.  

The latter routines, choosing a mayor pro-tem and designating depositories for city funds, probably should have been done at the last meeting of the council in 2021 since there was no change of personnel.  Had Mayor Steve Miller not been able to make this meeting, then there would have been a problem for parliamentarians, since there would have been no lawful successor.  Likewise, if councilors had decided on a different course for their depositories in 2022, they probably should have made that choice before the calendar year. 

Regardless, Les Johnson was reappointed as mayor pro-tem, while the depositories were passed as described in the packet.  The first ordinance passed this night unanimously would be one that reorganizes the DPW department to include the utility maintenance department within it.  This move was motivated by the retirement of the prior UM supervisor, Daryll Plamondon, and the prospect of saving money by replacing his workload with a non-supervisory utility worker.  Staff levels will reportedly remain constant. 

The other ordinance was to approve Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU) as a permitted purpose in residential areas.  It formally allows secondary habitable areas on a residential lot to be used without being in violation of zoning regulations.  At this meeting only one councilor would vote against the measure, Ted May, who was likely listening to his constituents in the First Ward who generally wouldn't think of renting out that space above their detached garage for fear of their neighbors thinking less of them. 

Citizen Mary Banholzer would argue for ADUs by telling the councilors how they would help her situation on her Loomis Street property during the public comment period.  She followed Annette Quillan who reminded the council of their duties to the electorate and how they should be making their decisions with them in mind as a matter of course.  What she said was remarkably similar to the last sentence of my second prepared comment, I almost thought of dropping it-- until I remembered that the council needed that advice to be repeated as often as possible for it's not sinking into their consciousness for some reason.

     Ted Pelkey of Westford, VT erected this salute to his city council in 2018 when they grossly interfered with other property developments

I followed Mary by bringing up a topic left over from last year along with a new observation of improper behavior by the Downtown Development crew.  Out with the old, in with the new.

XLFD (-38:50) in:  "At the last meeting, this council approved a $260,000 bid to reconstruct the finger pier at the end of Loomis Street.  For years, the pier was undermined throughout and the last section of it sunk into the harbor due inarguably to faulty engineering.  So what the City did was to retain those same engineers, Prein & Newhof, and allow them to conduct a closed bidding process to select a contractor to repair the recent project at a cost, adjusted for inflation, more than twice of what it cost to install the pier.  

This council rewards Prein & Newhof's engineering failure by rehiring them to do the repair at great cost to the locals.  Grants paid for this pier the first time; this time local citizens are given a much larger bill to subsidize the re-buttressing of a useless pier, redesigned by an engineering firm who couldn't do it right the first time.  Will we need to spend the better half of a million dollars to repair this non-functional pier ten years from now, using the same engineering firm with a firm record of failure and their hand-picked crony contractors? 

The DDA Operating fund has a troubling expense similar to the one I pointed out at the last meeting.  That time it was Heather Tykoski profiting from the public trough by utilizing her family's business, SafetyDecals, to make signs for the City without any of the necessary public declarations.  This time, it is DDA Marketing and Communication Manager Jen Tooman benefitting from her public service by having her company, Design Duck, get $337 for what is described as an Adobe Creative Suite split.  

One wonders what this money is being used for since the Adobe Creative Suite software was discontinued in 2013 according to Wikipedia.  Adobe announced then that it was retiring the "Creative Suite" branding in favor of "Creative Cloud" and making all future feature updates to its software available via the Creative Cloud subscription service.  One also wonders what rationale the city has to split the costs of ten-year's defunct software with a private business owned and operated by the DDA Marketing and Communications Manager.  It seems inappropriate on many levels. [END]"

Jen Tooman is handsomely rewarded for her contracted position with the City of Ludington, the latest budget has her position earning over $33,000 this year for operating effectively as a part-time contractor.  One wonders why the City needs to pay any portion of a fee for a software program that hasn't been supported for a decade.  The public would not be handsomely rewarded with any attempt of an answer tonight for this charge of impropriety by their public servants because they feel that such conflicts of interests inherent in Jen and Heather's private business ventures with their DDA Operating Fund can be ignored by an uncaring public.

Mitch Foster would address the finger pier controversy, noting that, contrary to his assertion at the last meeting, the project was not posted on the Builder's Exchange website, but shared with five companies that had experience in the field of making such marine repairs.  I acknowledged this correction but had to make what I thought was a new correction in my second public comment:

XLFD:  "I thank the city manager for admitting he was in error for saying that the finger pier project was not posted to the Builder's Exchange by Prein & Newhof, rather the process involved an invitation only overture by Prein & Newhof to three construction companies they hand-picked.  Such a process encourages cronyism and increased project costs.  Prein & Newhof has no interest in cutting costs when soliciting bids to their invitation-only business friends.  The more money their partners make, the more money Prein & Newhof will get as their percentage of construction costs. 

The city council needs to be ready to make tough decisions to get costs under control, let's not allow the contractors to set the price, let's not allow a state senator's business to corruptly get a contract with the City when his bid is 20% higher than another qualified contractor.  Be considerate of your duties to the people of this town, by doing your part as their representative [END}

At the end of the day, the document above which I received through a directed FOIA requestshows that five emails were contacted, but two were to the same company (Hardman).  I originally missed the last company on the list, as I didn't think it was an e-mail to a separate company, but he missed the duplication-- so we were both wrong, there was four businesses contacted by invitation only.  

The overall issue, however, is that it is not cost-effective to allow contracted engineers or architects to do the City's competitive bidding, for they have nothing to lose by favoring the companies that will do a project for a premium price, and plenty to gain for themselves and their buddies.  The fact that city officials do not acknowledge that fact or tell me why my reasoning is somehow erroneous is just evidence that they do not care about being fiscally prudent and conservative with the money we all work hard for (before we are forced to endow city hall with it).  

Before I made my comment, Ryan Roberts introduced himself as a candidate in the state representative race for Mason County.  Known to his followers as 'Logik Roberts', Ryan led the protests at the Mason County Courthouse this summer over the lack of appropriate bonding made by Magistrate Glenn Jackson III in the Gardenhire case, where a career criminal charged with CSC against a minor was let loose on society, where he allegedly engaged in more violent encounters, including the homicide of a young Mt. Pleasant girl.  

            Ryan 'Logik' Roberts sandwiched between County Sheriff Kim Cole and County Commissioner Jody Hartley (a former undersheriff)

Roberts led the crusade for a couple of weeks making his point for better accountability and bonding practices.  He's a very interesting character, with very conservative and Christian values; I couldn't help but mention that he's a good man before making my own comment because he is dedicated to making things right and won't just sit around and be a Republican-in-name-only (RINO) like our current representative, Jack O'Malley or our current state senator, Corrupt Curt VanderWall.

Being able to talk with Mr. Roberts before and after the meeting and hearing his desire to serve the public by bettering government was a welcome distraction from the malaise and apathy on the dais of the east side of the council chambers.  Maybe by the end of 2022 we'll lose some of that to people like Ryan Roberts replacing them.

[Willy]

Another excellent report X. Thanks