Ludington City Council Meeting, June 9, 2025: Bad Faith and Worse Credit

[XLFD]

For the first meeting of the Ludington City Council in three weeks, this one had a relatively light agenda packet and a couple of notable absences.  Councilor John Kreinbrink, the promising freshman who has shown hints of individualism not seen on the council outside of the Fifth Ward this century, and Ken Berthiaume, who would give a presentation about the audit he recently conducted on the City of Ludington, but only by Zoom.  

It would be Berthiaume's second virtual presentation in as many years, after over a decade of coming to meetings in person (except during 2020 due to COVID) indicating that they don't want him to listen to the one public commenter that has had to tell city leaders since 2023 that they are illegally doing budget amendments after the budget year has ended.  As usual, Berthiaume gave the city the best possible opinion, with the only troubling issue being with small deficits in the motor pool and water fund due primarily to funding their pensions.  Assuredly, Ken has earned another 5-year contract extension for 2026 without having to worry about competitive bids again.  For why would a city as corrupt as Ludington is hire anybody else who might not overlook the obvious, as pointed out in the first part of my first comment that Berthiaume was unable to hear.

XLFD: (13:30 in) "Meeting minutes from the last couple of decades show that this is the first time the City will be audited in the middle of the year by perennial auditor Ken Berthiaume without the city passing budget amendments for the previous year up to five months after that budget year ended.  For the last couple of years, I have told city officials that this was against the law and indicative of a type of Ponzi Scheme involving the corrupt act of juggling budget numbers of the current year so that audits of the past year would always come out clean.  I hope the auditor can comment on why he never made any statement in the past about the illegal practice of amending budgets after the budget year's end."

Not surprisingly, no city official would question the auditor on this topic, because they know it is 100% accurate and something Berthiaume has failed to turn up in his flawed audits (flaudits?) over the last two decades.  The tainted people running our city will never admit their "mistake" which allowed them the ability to balance their books unlawfully for many years, but they will raise your taxes next month, just like they have the last couple of years through negating Headlee rollbacks.

Audits, good or bad, generally only interest accountants, but there wasn't much more on the agenda of the meeting that would hold much interest to citizens; citizen driven agendas would supply enough interest to fuel the cameras of this meeting, which led to an interesting retaliation by the city against a citizen, and for once it wasn't me.

We all heard an update of the Gus Macker Tournament from Chris Nicholas of Grand Rapid's based radio station WMOM where we heard a lot about the logistics of the 3-on-3 basketball tournament to be held this weekend at Stearns Beach, but did not hear anything about what's up with WMOM's future in Ludington and their tournament.  Other than that, their actions amounted to approving an August 5th LPD event to engage folks at the end of Loomis Street between 5-7 PM called the National Night Out/Prepare Fair and giving Nader's Motel city approval for a class C liquor license for what would be a swimming pool area Tiki-style bar for patrons and their guests.

In the first comment period, Annette Quillan would stress the importance of having the siren operational for use as emergency warning system.  The maligned litigation-silenced siren at Copeyon Park, inoperable for a few Saturdays, currently is the sole mechanism to do that.  Jeff Henry would appear next with a very civil update on his cause regarding city and state accountability as regards the issues of legitimacy of the Waterways Commission and how the city could help accountability.

After my preamble about the budget transcribed above, I continued with new corruption that the city has been involved with for at least a couple of decades:  violating the state's and their own credit card policy.  While I have touched upon this by pointing out such purchases in the past that violated the MI Constitution by using public credit for unwarranted buys, I would go further in reviewing their policy.

XLFD:  "I researched meeting minutes to find out what kind of credit card policy the city has, and I found one from the past millennium.  Figuring that there had been some new policy passed in the last 30 years, I did a FOIA to find out the current policy and the city clerk confirmed that there hadn't been.  The policy, mandated by state law to have various provisions is rather clear about the limited usage of any city credit card:  

"Credit cards may be used only by an officer or employee of the City for the purchase of goods or services for the official business of the City. Purchases shall be limited to those goods and services authorized by the City's reimbursement policy for reimbursement of expenses for meals, travel, lodging or similar expenses, as such policy is established from time to time or for goods and services authorized by city employment contracts."

Summarized, after reading the city's reimbursement policy, only two types of purchases of goods and services are allowed by credit card:  1) those authorized by city employment contracts, and those consistent with necessary travel by city officials outside of the county.  Nothing else-- that's what "shall be limited to" means.  To be continued." [END comment]

If you watch this meeting in full, pay attention.  The council will fail to address their own credit lawlessness in any way, but they roundly go after a businessman for using a city service just like anyone else can.  Daniel Jensen would finish off public comment nicely by showing concern for media coverage of our water quality and how our two 'local' newspapers have a common parent company based in New York City.  The latest COLDNews reporter Shawn Avery looked on stoically, perhaps daydreaming about doing interviews in Times Square instead of being in this burg.

After committee actions were taken care of, Councilor Cheri Stibitz read a statement at 49:45 into the video that she declared was her own but sounded derivative of statements made by Wally Cain last year about this reporter before he was voted out of office.  One knows they have peeled away too much of the scab of city deceit when they are targeted by these roughly ten-minute diatribes read by the city council current spokesperson for propaganda.  Kudos to Stibitz for providing me with her comment, after requested, by email. 

The first three pages nitpickingly critiques the resolution that Mr. Henry offered to the council at the prior meeting, all supporting the notion that the city has zero interest in getting to the truths the marina owners are seeking from the state and city.  The last two focuses on private marinas, especially Ray's Marina, using city facilities to dispose of fish guts.  One presumes this message has gotten approval from our corrupted City Attorney Ross "Sewage" Hammersley, because the speech seems prepared as a statement made not just by one councilor but by the city corporate, as seen in their last paragraph especially, a threat to violate the Constitutional rights of private marina owners:

The city's statement uses a couple of weak or flawed analogies involving out-of-city-limits chain stores to depict what monsters the marina owners are, let us use a stronger analogy to illustrate this unofficial edict backed by the city's threats of locking marina owners up.  Let's say we have a public pool operating in the City of Ludington that everyone is allowed to use freely.  Pressured by elites, city leaders decide that they don't want homeless people using the pool, so they create a policy making it criminal to use the pool if you can't provide an address that can be verified, or if your name shows up as recently using the services of a homeless shelter.  Sound far-fetched and wrong?  It was considered okay back around the time I was born (1964), but the target wasn't the homeless.

And that's not unlike what these lawless city leaders are doing here.  The general public is free to use the city's fish cleaning station and their fish gut freezers without limitations, but if they happen to identify you as a marina owner, you're a criminal, committing the illegal dumping statue which is a misdemeanor.  And they do this all without even trying to pass an ordinance; what a bunch of idiots who don't know what the Hell they are doing.

Not to mention that the two public marinas (handmaidens of the City) shut the general public off from the fish cleaning stations, when their contracts with the DNR state explicitly that the general public shall not be deprived of use of the public facilities in the marinas.  Rather than making constitutionally-unsound policy that exposes the city to major legal liability, why don't city leaders adopt policy that set user's fees on all of those who would use their marina and park services, supposedly available to all of the general public by established contracts? 

At 1:21:50 into the video Jeff Henry would dispute the general accuracy of the assertions made for a couple of minutes and the city's reluctance to go forward with conflict resolutions.  Two minutes later, I would finish off comments with my continuation about the city's use of credit cards.

XLFD:  "At the last meeting, this council illegally approved-- against their own credit card policy and against the clear language of the Michigan Constitution they swore to uphold and affirm-- a host of unlawful uses of their issued credit cards.  

City policy limits that use to charges authorized by employment contracts and travel-related  reimbursements.  Here are a small portion of unlawful credit card charges that your treasurer must have approved by policy, your Finance Committee approved, and you all officially approved just from the last meeting:

At least 15 purchases in the general fund, including a $2500 veterinary bill,

$500 of various supplies from Lowes by the Cartier Park fund,

An Intuit annual subscription for each public marina and a deadbolt,

Paying an EGLE environmental fee by the sewer department,

Six various buys by the Senior Center Fund, 

Eight equipment purchases by the Water Fund,

De-thatcher Tines and Flange Bearings for the motor pool.

In making this list, I assumed that training expenses would be covered in employment contracts, but it's still an impressive list of unlawful credit card charges that you all improved.  And when the city manager tries unsuccessfully to explain why corrupt acts are not corrupt acts, it only makes you look more corrupt with your unauthorized power.  Admit you are violating your own policy."  [END comment]

And they failed to address Henry's rebuttal or explain their credit card abuse, relying on Councilor Kathy Winczewski to tell us about one good thing, while the city blithely continues doing many bad things.  Focused retaliation on marina owners who are only trying to understand and hopefully change a chaotic system operating contrary to law and free market principles seems to be an admission that the city feels threatened by the possibility of reforms.  This only shows the city not only had bad credit, but bad faith as well.