If you have a habit of listening to WMOM radio in the morning, you may have noticed that the last couple Friday morns, the radio station has not had Community Development Director Heather Tykoski on.  Now, I'd much rather listen to the latest from 21 Pilots than hear the CDD drone on about what's happening downtown over the weekend-- or even the trite oldies of Taylor Swift, however, it bucked a tradition over several years.  

But this absence also corresponded with the appearance of her and the DDA Marketing and Communications Director Jen Tooman (the brunette in stripes) supplying their own YouTube channel available on various city Facebook sites coming out around the same time Friday morning.  Here was their effort earlier today (I apologize beforehand if for some reason they decide to block it and limit their exposure):

And here was their rookie effort last Friday, the one that left me initially curious as to why they were changing their modus operandi by avoiding the free radio exposure and becoming part of scroll-over country on your favorite social network: 

A fortuitous event happened that allowed me to put together the pieces of what happened.  On Wednesday morning, I appeared at court with my co-plaintiff to figure out how our Open Meetings Act (OMA) lawsuit with the City of Ludington would proceed.  A few city officials showed up, including the acting city manager, the mayor, and the owner of WMOM, Patrick Lopeman, who doubles as a news director when he's in town. 

Many of you may know that the mayor worked as a manager for WMOM who spoke often on the air particularly as a color commentator for sports, but resigned towards the beginning of the election cycle last year, probably because he couldn't be on the air (even in prerecorded commercials) without the station offering equal time to his mayoral opponent, Bill Dustman.  I am not aware of any bad blood betwixt the mayor and Mr. Lopeman, but they did sit away from each other.

Our conference ended, with the judge assigning a mid-April trial in order to figure out whether the City has been in violation of the OMA with their standing committees exercising the authority of the city council on multiple occasions.  While the evidence seems convincingly and overwhelmingly in that direction, the judge is giving the defendant a chance to actually prepare a viable defense and the complainants a chance to prove they can prosecute it home.  If we win, the City will have a much harder time keeping knowledge from the public through the use of executive actions and committees without repercussions.

Mr. Lopeman stopped us at the end of the meeting to catch up with a case that he had heard a little about, but was interested in.  As we explained the parameters of the case to him over a period of several minutes in the otherwise-empty courtroom, he mentioned he had an unusual interest in the case because it may have an impact on the Lake Jump for this year, where proceeds are set to go for the splash pad.  WMOM is no longer associated with the operations of the Lake Jump, but they do help advertise it and Patrick has a MOM's concern over the baby he brought into the world.  

Patrick Lopeman is a reasonable person bold enough to allow me a debate venue at his station in 2011, when the local paper wouldn't and I was a candidate for councilor-at-large.  He was intrigued enough by the difference between me and my opponent that he scheduled a second round the succeeding week.  He's an old school journalist who knows how to run a radio station in a small market successfully and one who doesn't run away from controversy as his first instinct. 

So I couldn't help but eventually weave in a question or two about the Heather issue Friday before, since my curiosity had been piqued, along with my colleague's, and I figured it was his turn to be on the answering side.  He was reluctant to say anything about it, as expected, so I asked him some leading questions and observed his body language, focusing more on what he didn't say than what he did say.  

I was able to infer that it wasn't Heather's decision to walk away from the free publicity that WMOM offered each Friday.  I was able to deduce that it was almost assuredly due in large part to the business name-dropping that she regularly does that seems to get out of hand and center on her preferred businesses.  I can recall her recently beatifying a local bar named after an item of winter hand wear to the point where it was almost absurd.  Why would any downtown business need to advertise on radio when they can get an infomercial each Friday morning?  

The reluctant witness asked me whether I was ever going to get my law degree, but I could only sigh and tell him that the City of Ludington is keeping me too busy rectifying their wrongs in court to pursue such a goal  Yet I hope to watch my share of Matlock and Perry Mason reruns before mid-April. 

He extended an offer to have a five minute stint on his station to explain the basics behind the  lawsuit to his listeners, and I agreed to do it as long as it was on Friday morning (they have a gap there for some reason) before Heather does her 'Coffee Talk' routine with Jen on the City-operated websites.  Give them a little extra to talk about.

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It could be my computer but I don't see any links to facebook, Just 2 blank spaces in this topic. Is it possible they have blocked access to those facebook pages for this forum. If so can she do that legally since it's not her private facebook page?  I'll reserve comments for a later post after the cause of the missing facebook pages has been resolved. Thanks X.

They are still coming up on my cheap computer, so I think it may be some security feature on yours that prohibits you from seeing such pablum-and-spam-filled content.  Your computer is trying to protect you.

On a serious note, if you have some filter on your computer that disallows Facebook, that may be the problem since they are embedded from that platform.

Drone accurately describes how their advertising sounds, and what's worse is that we employ two people to advertise businesses and Events when we have huge debt in this city? This task should be left to the Visitors Bureau. I'm glad they are off WMOM because now I can listen to WMOM without having to turn it off when they come on, it always was annoying, the deep-hoarse giggling just so into themselves, and games they played.

I commend Mr.Lopeman for his bravery to see and take action on what may have been just another ethical breach in the DDA/CDC.  One's sins will eventually find them out, especially in a small city.  Amen.

The Friday morning after we find out that our Community Development Director wasn't even close to finishing a grant application that the city council was giving their approval to submit, after hosting a public hearing where the public wasn't given any information about the grant application other than how much it would be for and what it would allegedly be for, we have the Downtown Duo at it again giving their most ambitious weekend presentation at just under 30 minutes.  

Heather promised us three weeks for viewing the application after the hearing and the vote made in ignorance thanks to her inability to write this grant in a timely manner, but she still prepares and presents a half hour video.  With all the material they covered, Heather probably took another couple of hours (at over $40 per hour) prepping this, taking that time away from her application prepping.  If Heather comes back to work and gets the application finished on 3-18, that leaves us with less than two weeks of viewing it.  But nobody cares, since the city council already voted to submit it sight unseen.

Mitch Foster has accomplished one big thing already.  He made dunce caps mandatory for those who deserve them at city hall.  Maybe by week 5 the genii will finally figure out how to orient the camera for recording:

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