Ludington City Council August 23, 2021: Playgrounds of Vice

The Ludington City Council took an awful lot of time, 140 minutes, between the gavel strikes which opened and closed the meeting on the evening of August 23, and yet the amount of output was rather minimal in comparison to similar recent meetings lasting 1/4 of that time.  In the private sector, this comparison would be seen as an inefficient use of time, but this is actually a good sign that the council is doing their job better, which is to debate and decided public policy at these open meetings.  

The original agenda changed over the weekend.  Gone was the LPD asking to approve the purchase and support of police body and dash cameras in a ten year contract with Axon, added was the council's approval of Melissa Boggs to join the Planning Commission, following the resignation of Roger Starr.  Another topic added was to approve the cost ($286,000) for the replacement at the city marina of the charter boat docks with a new floating dock system.  The additions were approved without issue, there was no update on why the camera contract was taken off the agenda.

Two other agenda items also passed with council approval with little or no discussion.  A mutual aid agreement was approved between the Ludington and Pere Marquette Fire Departments.  LFD is much closer for a quick response to Epworth Heights than PMFD, while the same is true in reverse for those properties currently served on the Buttersville Peninsula by the LFD.  The change will allow both areas to have better ISO insurance ratings because the response times will decrease significantly when LFD is toned and dispatched to Epworth and the PMFD is sent to Buttersville.

The other item was to distribute proposed changes to the Comprehensive Master Plan to the townships of PM and Hamlin, and the county government.  These units will be able to review the plan and receive comments from their citizens; this will eventually come back to Ludington which will at least have a public hearing on the plan by November.  The CMP is a resource that the planning commission and the city council can look to in the next five years for guidance on what direction they take, using it to support or dispute actions or policies that those agencies might pursue.  It would be worthwhile to look over as it is likely to retain an inordinate amount of 'climate change' language left over from the prior manifestation of the CMP crafted primarily by LIAA.

The two remaining topics took over the majority of the meeting.  The first regarding proposed park rules taking about 63 minutes to flesh out and reach some consensus on, before they sent the rules back to the committee and the city attorney to reflect the council's findings this night.  The second regarded a FOIA appeal which took 33 minutes before coming to a compromise of disclosing the record but upholding the FOIA Coordinator's decision to exempt it in the first place.   

The long discussions, a rarity since Angela Serna lost a close election, illustrated that this isn't a monolithic, rubber-stamping council.  This perception is enhanced when you see that they deadlocked three to three on three different votes (Councilor Cheri Stibitz was absent), allowing Mayor Steve Miller to cast three tie-breaking votes.  

Before sending the park rules ordinance back to committee, the city council figured out a few changes in their general direction.  The committee had decided that a tobacco and alcohol ban would be in the proposal, the council chose instead to ban those only from all city playgrounds-- necessitating the proposal to define exactly what a playground is in legal terms.  The two committee members present-- Councilors Winczewski and Cain-- had totally opposite views on the proposals, with Cain generally against them. 

The council also voted to retain the existing noise ordinance rather than extend the 'allowable' noise radius from 10' to 50', something I had advised in my comment.   Amongst all of the bargaining and compromising between councilors, the two newest councilors, John Terzano and John Bulger, showed promise as civil libertarians, and as two who would consider the impacts of bans not only on the City of Ludington, but its people. 

Annette Quillan led off the initial public comment expressing disappointment in the new rules seeming to lean against the homeless population and the lower class who are likely more prevalent at Waterfront Park due to the low-income housing project recently erected nearby.  Terzano tapped into that impression explicitly and expressed some disappointment that the proposed rules seemed to do just that.  This led to a 3-3 vote on whether to allow alcohol in playground areas, nixed by the mayor's vote.

My first comment actually gave my own impressions on these rules, as you will hear; surprisingly, the council ultimately chose my direction for the most part, even considering the use of a 'reasonable person' standard for noise levels, before deciding to leave it alone (as I had also advised as an alternative).  

August 23rd, 2021 Ludington City Council meeting pt 1 from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

XLFD:  (4:35 in)  "The parks committee wants to doctor parts of the existing code that pertains to city parks by offering up some changes.  When doctoring legislation, one should reflect on why the original law was written and passed in the form it was and abide by the main tenet of the Hippocratic Oath and do no harm.  

It's been forty years since the dangers of secondhand smoke have been known, so why haven't all of those city councilors that have served before you, including all those in Manistee and Scottville, not create a tobacco ban in any city park?  Is it their laziness, or is it that the exposure to non-smokers in an outdoor park is so small, dissipated, and transitory so as to be of any concern to public health?  If a smoking ban is not for the public health or any other legitimate public purpose, why consider it?  One could say this may negatively impact the children of smoking parents who will be less likely to take their children out to their favorite park to be active and socialize.  

I don't smoke, I've spent a lot of energy trying to get smokers to quit their bad habit, but even though I would never defend anyone's act of smoking, I would vigorously defend their right to smoke when it harms nobody else, like when they are outside, in a park.  Do no harm.

In similar manner, the council is looking to ban drinking alcohol at Waterfront Park.  Excuse me, isn't this the same council that passed social district legislation scant months ago openly endorsing and sanctioning outdoor drinking in public spaces in the downtown area?  Now you want to go into puritan mode when it comes to the nearby park?  Choose a side, be consistent, and do no harm.

Lastly, the noise ordinance for parks and beaches is proposed to switch the 10 foot distance to a 50 foot distance between the noise source and where it can be heard.  Those familiar with sound intensity should know of the inverse square law, which says that a noise barely heard fifty feet away would have to be 25 times more intense than a noise barely heard ten feet away.  The proposed change allows for this 25-fold increase in sound intensity limits by quintupling the distance.

Existing noise law was created to allow people to quietly enjoy their parks and beaches without having to worry about those rude folks who want to blare their transistorized radios and boom boxes in such settings.  If one goes to a crowded beach using the proposed standard, they could be forcing dozens of others to endure their choice of entertainment without having any recourse.  Why reward the rude and punish those that are there to enjoy the beach?  Either keep the 10 foot distance, or change the noise law to one with a 'reasonable person' standard as many other places do.  Do no harm.  Thanks." (END)

August 23rd, 2021 Ludington City Council meeting pt 2 from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

The 33 minutes of discussion over the FOIA appeal was mostly handled by assembled attorneys:  City Attorney Ross Hammersley, FOIA Coordinator Carlos Alvarado, and Councilors Terzano and Bulger, all with a lot of legal experience behind them.  Unfortunately, a lot of misinformation was passed along regarding the appeal, most supplied by Alvarado, who edited a "Let me breathe" plea from one of the two videos, a plea made before the pleader went unconscious with three LPD officers atop him.  The remaining ten minutes of audio from both body cams featured primarily an unconscious person supposedly uttering information of a personal nature of the victim.

Alvarado indicated that the guy on the ground uttered the adult woman "victim's" name, however, when one reads the report what we find is that the adult woman was the aggressor in what happened physically between the two:

Skiba's report:  "...she reacted by pushing Devon; Devon in turn grabbed her by the right arm."

When one hears her in the body cam and reads this in the police report, the grab appears to be more of a defensive move to an offensive push rather than an act of violence.  It was a completely one-sided investigation, as the body cams revealed.  Nevertheless the adult woman's name is on the report, which made Councilor Terzano and Bulger suspicious as to why it wasn't released without redaction.  Alvarado had no good answer, only his recommendation to uphold his denial but allow for the audio to be released.  

After a lot of rabbit holes were investigated, a vote saw Terzano, Bulger and Johnson vote to release the records, the other three (Winczewski, Cain, and May) advised to not disclose it.  Mayor Miller decided to listen to the lawyers and share it.  That vote saved the City of Ludington a lot of money in defending their unlawful exemption in court and losing.  I shall be receiving the missing audio portions from both videos shortly according to the police chief.

By the time the second public comment came around, everybody was pretty much mentally exhausted so I bypassed my short comment thanking the council for disclosing the audio, and nobody else commented.  I wasn't much in the thanking mood anyway because of the misrepresentations made in the appeal about the facts.  This will unlikely be my last FOIA appeal, so I will be trying to see whether a FOIA appellant can provide input at these appeals in the future.  These are effectively hearings/trials that are ultimately trying to figure out how to legitimately continue, so one would think that a 'plaintiff' would have more input than to say "I appeal for these reasons"-- and then see those reasons ignored in the process.

The stuff accomplished in 82 minutes was fairly insignificant, the ability to discuss public policy by the council amongst themselves for two hours was impressive and worthy of repetition in the future.

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It's good to know there are some sensible members serving on the City Council. It would be nice to have all of the Council making decisions based on public input and open discussion about the issues. One thing I do know is that there would never have been any change without your involvement in local politics. Good job X.

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