Ludington City Council, February 23, 2026: Paying the Pirate 131 Doll-arrrs

[XLFD]

The February 23, 2026 meeting of the Ludington City Council (agenda packet) had a deceivingly full bottom-heavy docket of 18 action items, but that was primarily because it involved the routine of approving annual events sponsored by the DDA, Jaycees, and the local chamber.  They were all approved unanimously without meaningful comment.  They would also adopt a resolution in support of a charitable gaming license for the Lakeshore Pyrate Heads.  

    Ludington Police Thief Christopher Jones, leader of the city's street pyrate fleet and public extortion ring, read on to find his latest plunder

They would also unanimously approve an ordinance raising certain parking violation fees and another increasing daily and yearly fees for parking at the boat launching ramps.  Councilor Tim Large noted that the city might be better off doing smaller incremental fees for the ramp parking and other fees previously brought to the council, City Manager Kaitlyn Aldrich agreed that they would in the future.

The two remaining action items were definitely the most controversial, but they were passed unanimously and with minimal discussion, that being to lessen the impact of this reporter's first public comment questioning the process which follows the video:

XLFD: (10:20 in) "When making a decision to convert a fleet of 41 vehicles from direct ownership to leasing, a public body needs to do more research than just inviting in a leasing company to market their product at one committee and council meeting and accept their numbers as incontrovertible fact.  The administration of this city is embarrassing when you propose a massive change like this without doing a shred of research on your own, at least none that you've wanted to share with the unwashed public.  

There is no indication that you have determined what the real cost to the people will be over the next decades with this switch, no indication that you've did a retrogressive cost analysis to compare would have been the actual costs of maintaining your fleet over the last X years and the adjusted costs of the proposed leasing arrangement over that same time period.  I am positive that if you would commit to researching this, rather than blindly accepting the merchandising efforts of Enterprise Mobility who achieved record financial results for fiscal year 2025 with over $39 billion in revenue and record profits, you would find that we would save the future taxpayers tons of money.

I understand how this is attractive for city leaders who want this arrangement to stabilize (not reduce) operating costs, improve replacement timing, and reduce administrative workload and city employees who want fresh vehicles every five years, but don't think this will come without upping the budget, when honest research would likely show this.  The last time I saw a city administrator search out unwarranted new expenditures and hire new full-time employees like our city manager is doing, was when Jimmy Newkirk was leading Scottville towards financial ruin and in that case, the city commission was acting as complicit enablers as you seem to be doing.  Save yourself tough choices in the future and send this back to committee for further research to find the true cost of this move."  [END comment]

This commonsense comment about actually being fiscally responsible with an action that would be hard to reverse was countered not by the usual avoidance, but by citing some false information just a few minutes later by the city council's usual spin doctor, Kathy Winczewski, who said:   

 "We've been talking about leasing for quite a few years, so it hasn't just been something sudden.  We do have financial comparisons which the city manager has come up with...  it will save us money in the long run."

The Finance Committee chair says leasing has been considered by the council for years, and yet if you look at the compiled minutes/notes of the council and the standing committees (the latter which go back to 2018), the mention of leasing the city's fleet before this year only happens once in April 2025, less than a year ago, when the city manager said she'd look into this option for 2026.  As a chronicler of city council meetings, I can affirm that there has not been any council discussion of leasing before this month. 

Saying it's been talked about by the council for years is a manufactured lie, followed by a couple more when you consider that the only analysis of this change was on p. 17 and 18 of the last meeting's packet, two Enterprise-created analyses which illustrate how lazy the city administrator is.  If this would save us $500,000 over the next ten years for our 41 vehicle fleet (over $12,000 of savings per vehicle!), as claimed by PrevariKaitlyn later on, they would lay out exactly how those cost savings are expected to occur rather than actuarial tables presented by the one trying to sell us the Emperor's new clothes.

The majority of the city's fleet do not get a lot of mileage, like my own personally owned vehicle, which I offer as an example.  My 2006 Ford Focus was paid for by 2011, so let's consider what would be the cost difference for me over the last 15 years. 

Google AI says the resale value of the car would have been around $5000 in 2011, and the cost of leasing a comparable car would have been $200 at that time ($296 in 2026 dollars, but we'll keep the $200 rate constant for 15 years, to show we got an amazing deal from the leasers back then).  The lease would cost $36,000 over that period, subtracting the $5000 and maintenance costs would make my savings over $28,000.  No money saved, by any means, Leasing is rarely or never a smart option when you have an existing fleet, but our city employees will surely be driving newer cars around and we will all be paying for it dearly, especially over the next five years while we drive our 20-year-old cars around.

The other act was to approve a quote from a company providing power pedestals for A dock at the Harbor View Marina for $52,000.  Like the contracting with Enterprise, there is no attempt by the COL to do competitive bidding, Marina Manager Jim Christensen justifying this by saying that the other marina has the same products, and this is the only company that provides this brand of power pedestals.  When public bodies indicate that they will bypass competitive bidding for everything, you can bet that there are kickbacks taking place.  This is not how our money should be spent, but the COL is only getting worse as people aren't getting on their case enough.

Public comment would feature only two people, me (as already seen) and legendary former Fifth Ward Councilor Angela Serna, with an appropriately legendary comment.  Serna (a nurse herself) took great offense at Councilor Winczewski's comparison of police officers with nurses and other licensed professions.  She reminded officials that police have great powers, but unlike these other jobs they cannot be decertified when they do something bad, they can just go to another place if they do something inexcusable in one jurisdiction.  Some of her best excerpts:

"Why is it that we require more consistent, transparent, and rigorous state-level licensing for the person who cuts your hair or fixes your pipes than we do for the person who carries a badge and a gun?... Accountability isn't an attack; it's a standard. And it’s a standard us tax paying citizen
should all be able to count the chief of police to be doing CORRECTLY. Unfortunately, it seems this is not happening as the most recent incident on Christmas eve morning over on Lakeshore Dr..."

Her comments at the beginning and end of the meeting show what the citizens of Ludington have lost, a voice that reflects the people rather than the hierarchs and puppet-masters that control the current council, unanimously.  Don't know what incident she is talking about?  Listen to my final comment for a clarifier:

XLFD: (50:20 in) "Last meeting, this disgusting, disreputable city clowncil validated an outrageous FOIA fee of $131.36 for the body cam footage of LPD Officer Trey Forfinski looking the other way just after JT Szoboszlay crashed into a utility pole after having too much to drink.  No exemptions were claimed in the record, as they must be by law, but you approved charging $131 for looking at what should be a totally non-exempt record-- unless your ultimate goal is to perform another cover-up by editing out JT Szoboszlay's slurred speech and shitfaced status.  [Mayor Marx Barnett would interrupt and chide my language at this point, I would remind him it's an adjective (used for alliteration purposes), and moved on rather than pointlessly ask him to restore my time]

The police report itself is comical, with your officer trying to justify throughout the form why he didn't conduct a sobriety test, when witnesses saw just how impaired he was.  He says that during interactions he "did not observe any signs of intoxication.  Jason had clear speech, was steady on his feet, and I did not detect any odor of intoxicants coming from his breath, I did not observe Jason's eyes to be glossy and I did not observe any intoxicants".  The accident is attributed to ice and a deer on the street, but an LFD photo of the incident shows no ice, and Forfinski doesn't even bother looking for deer tracks in the area.  The report doesn't suggest what would need to be removed under FOIA in any case.

I will give the city clerk $131.36 tonight and expect the body cam footage by the end of the week after four hours of redaction of absolutely nothing.  If the finished project does not suggest why it would take four hours of a trained FOIA exemption technician, I will take this to small claims court to address the public extortion involved."  [END comment]

The mayor would interrupt me once again during the middle of my last sentence, even though his script for public comment says that speakers can finish their sentence when time expires; maybe the police thief should conduct him out of the room one of these times for not following the rules.  Nevertheless, I walked over to the city clerk with my 131 dollar bills and 36 cents, giving it to her and asking for a receipt after the end of the meeting.

This is where it really got frustrating; after the meeting ended minutes later, the clerk went back into the city offices to get me a receipt, and after a few minutes, Treasurer Renee Caithamer came out and said she could not accept the payment.  I asked for a rule, some authority, that said that when the city clerk and/or treasurer is on the clock and at their office, that payments made to the city cannot be accepted.  She couldn't give any, but wouldn't take my money, telling me to come back the next day. 

I did that, and I caused quite a ruckus in doing so after she and her co-workers couldn't offer up any legal authorities of why I had to waste my time coming into city hall again to pay their public extortion.  I went immediately over to the LPD Station to find out when my FOIA request would be fulfilled; they told me that body worn camera footage of their crooked cop responding to an outdoor vehicle accident which has no exemptions claimed would take me over twelve and a half days to compile and get to me.   That corresponded to just long enough to go beyond the next meeting.  

What a f-arrr-ce, Mateys!