City of Ludington Decides To Waste $22,100 on Elections in 2015

[XLFD]

In April of 2013, when I was lightly entertaining the idea of running for mayor (if the stars were in proper alignment) when I went to the City Clerk to get petitions for running for mayor, among other things she discussed with me the possibility of the City elections being moved to even years in order for the city to save money and increase participation. 

I expressed my approval of such an idea since the City currently has to have election workers available almost every three months for various purposes and primaries, which I believe actually lightens the turnout for most elections.  It would also give us Ludingtonians a break from all those yard signs and cheesy Daily News/Chamber of Commerce debates every odd year. 

 

The stars did not align, but I continued to be active at every Ludington City Council meeting on a variety of topics that needed to be covered.  But in all those city council meetings, there was never any talk of changing from odd year city elections to even years.  But then when I was researching another topic.  I found an interesting document (Feb 1 2013 COL Cooperative agreement. pdf) that had what Clerk Luskin was talking about, the part in question copied here:

Over twenty two thousand is a significant amount of money to be saving from the city budget in a year, roughly 0.4% of the years disbursements for the City of Ludington, and is about the same amount of money I received as a part-paid firefighter for Ludington in my eight years at the position (2001-2008).  Nowadays it could pay the annual salaries for at least five firefighters, which is definitely a good investment for our safety.   

It could pay for having three lifeguards at Stearn's Beach between Memorial and Labor Day weekends.  Another good investment for our safety, and a great job to keep the kids around our town.

It could fund the four Friday Night Lives the City sponsors through its DDA, and have money left over for Oktoberfest.

It could pay the yearly salaries of six city councilors; if the city councilors were actually following the Ludington City Charter it could pay the salaries for all seven councilors for over 63 years.

 

So why wasn't this resolution ever adopted this last year?  Let's take a look at the law that is applicable in our state's election law (MCL 168.642a), whose salient section is the fourth, reproduced here:

 

 

According to this section, and in coordination with the rest of the law, if the City of Ludington wanted to hold the local City elections for this year, 2014, they would have had to adopt the resolution before December 31, 2013.  Now they can't hold the city elections this year, and will be forced to pay $22,100 (plus costs associated with the expected increase of the inflation rate) in 2015, which wouldn't have been spent if they made a simple resolution before the New Year's Eve Ball dropped in the road at the intersection of James and Ludington Streets, one week ago. 

It looks as if our sitting councilors pocket vetoed this idea, likely because they approve of low turnouts at elections and approve of inefficiently spending our money. 

[Willy]

It seems that some of the Council would have benefited from switching from odd to even years because that would mean those in office who were up for reelection could stay 12 months longer if the election were to be put off another year.

[XLFD]

If the resolution was made, Councilors Richard Rathsack, Les Johnson, Nick Tykoski and Kaye Holman could have all served until the end 2016 without any election according to state law, instead of having their term end at the end of 2015.  So even that aspect is truly surprising.  The latter three at least I'm sure would have loved having an extra year to raise taxes and violate the OMA and FOIA.  

Just for the record, MCL 168.644g says that "A term of office shall not be shortened by the provisions of sections 641 to 644i.", meaning that the four councilors above, and the City Treasurer, would not come up for reelection in 2014 (all had terms starting n 2011), but in 2016. 

So the good side of the city council not making a resolution is that we will have one less year of at least Kaye Holman, who cannot run again due to term limits.  That's really nice, but is that worth $22,100?