Ludington City Council Meeting, January 28, 2019: At Opposite Polls

The clock finally ran out on Steve Brock at this meeting that lasted a little over an hour.  But before the usual gifts, proclamations and other send-offs were allotted to the now-former, interim city manager at the end of the meeting, there were some noteworthy controversies.  The first controversy began during the first public comment period when new Mayor Steve Miller limited those commenting to speak only about agenda items, precisely what he said at the previous regular meeting.

Just after Fourth Ward Councilor Krauch left for Missouri, the June 25, 2018 LCC meeting had an interesting unanimous vote whereby they allowed the first comment to cover any topic:  "Moved by Councilor Winczewski, seconded by Councilor Cain, to drop the requirement that the 3-minute public comment period at the beginning of the council meeting be on an agenda item... Motion carried."   Public bodies like the city council, by the Open Meetings Act sec. 3(1), are the ones who establish rules and regulations for their own meetings, not a mayor who touts communication in rhetoric while trying to limit it in practice. Mayor Candidate Steve Miller was at this June meeting, but apparently not paying attention.

I didn't touch on that in my comment, I had too many other things to cover starting at 2:40 in, I have included links and errata to illustrate my points, and finished the last sentence that was clipped by the Mayor calling time while I was in the midst of putting our lost public dollars in a national perspective.

January 28th, 2019 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.


XLFD:  Briefly stated, the movement of the polling location of Fifth Ward to the new fire station should be looked at with more deference to the self-evident problems existing for such a move, dealing with parking, traffic interaction, safety, and ADA compliance.
Beyond that, I have a FOIA appeal you received dealing with the applicants for the city manager job and any requests for confidentiality made by those candidates. I received the cover letters and resumes of the three finalists, and among those records, only Mitch Foster explicitly requested confidentiality. This effectively mirrors Jeff Mueller's assertion in a memo that wasn't supplied in my FOIA request but responsive to it, that some of the candidates requested confidentiality.


When some of the candidates explicitly request confidentiality, the city council may view those applications in closed session, when they don't request confidentiality, you violate the Open Meetings Act by discussing their application in closed session. So if you stand by your FOIA response, you are ultimately admitting that both Van Ess and Reagan never expressed to this council in their paperwork that they wanted confidentiality.
I don't know whether this council reviewed 10 or 37 resumes and cover letters in their secret process, but if they didn't review the exact same number of requests for confidentiality, they were reckless in the realm of transparency in violating the Open Meetings Act. Those applicants without confidentiality clauses should have been put aside and discussed in open session, their applications should have been available through my FOIA request.


This ain't a good way to start out a new year. Contrary to the statements made at the end of the last meeting, there is no deputy treasurer serving during 2019, Steve Brock was mistaken. In the budget it is claimed that the part-time assistant to the treasurer has had more hours added with no justification given. But there is no part time assistant as of September, this position is a full-time assistant treasurer, and this move, which costs the city around $33,000 additional dollars, mostly in fringe benefits, was made unilaterally by Steve Brock without any council oversight or approval. That seems to be clearly against the city charter, chapter 10.
In perspective, the $4.4 trillion federal budget was held in limbo for $5.7 billion in dispute for wall funding, this increase of local spending for this assistant treasurer would have been the equivalent of four times that wall funding. This needs to fall under purview of the council and the mayor when the process is abused by somebody like Brock who should know better. [End Comment]

Three topics, the first of which I touched lightly upon because I had noticed that Fifth Ward Councilor Angela Serna had expressed some strong reservations about the polling location on social media, and I didn't want to have it appear that she was carrying water for me when it was her own independent belief that the site was just bad and hazardous. 

Normal people see this, but the rest of the officials who have all drank the same Kool Aid, defended the location, alternating between Donald Trump's go-to line ("Let's see what happens.") and Nancy Pelosi's:  "You have to pass it, to find what's in it."  When Councilor Serna put up a spirited defense of her points, including two alternate sites to look at and consider, they marched the fire chief up to the podium to ask him his thoughts, and gave the police chief's unqualified approval a lot of weight.  The council eventually passes this 6-1, with Serna voting an emphatic "no".  This was worth the price of admission, a councilor actually caring for the welfare and convenience of their constituents.  Check out the debate starting at 19:40 into the video with Clerk Luskin defending her choice, and Serna giving a well-reasoned rebuttal that falls mainly on deaf official ears.   

My second topic dealt with a FOIA appeal that officially was received by the council at this meeting, to be decided at the next meeting.  You will note there is nothing in the councilor packet introducing this formally to the council, as they will note later, their FOIA Coordinator, who is a local attorney, will draft an opinion (being paid $125/hr. or more by the City) trying to justify their untenable denial.  Their inability to admit their mistake will likely launch a FOIA/OMA lawsuit in order to get the non-exempt records they are keeping from the public and to penalize them for violating the OMA so brazenly.  

The last topic is rather important, which is why I keep bringing it up, but I have learned that Brock unilaterally okayed the creation of the full-time assistant treasurer position adding over $30,000 to the budget without a council vote.  The proper mechanism is to bring such a move in front of the council where they vote on it at a public meeting.  Not even Brock touched this subject, but the council, by ignoring the problem, effectively are allowing the city manager and future city managers the ability to create and define positions outside the purview of the council and add tens of thousands to the budget without any kind of oversight.  

The committee reports only had a couple of rather routine acts (beyond paying the bills and getting the police activity report), where they rezoned 106 E. Foster into effectively a parking lot and approved/formalized adaptive reuses of existing buildings in various zones.  These have a little more explanation in the council packet.  

The main things happened after the committee reports, which is a good sign since the standing committees have come under some well-deserved negative attention in a lawsuit initiated by a couple of citizens who claim they are doing things inappropriately.  For a long time, the committee reports have had the effect of introducing topics to the full council and public during the weekend before the meeting action is to be taking place on it.  If public policy is not already decided in these committees before that, with no input from the full council or public.

After deciding on the new fire station as the new polling place, they selected Jackie Steckel as the 'acting' city manager between Brock's departure, which happened yesterday, and the new city manager is approved, which would be Mitchell Foster.  Provided he passes the background check and provided nobody files an OMA violation lawsuit versus the City for their illegal acts at the January 10 closed session.  

Steckel's acceptance of the position at this point and her unwillingness to accept the title back in July, have many critical thinkers believing that the hiring of the interim city manager was to allow for the raiding of the treasury by city officials, aided by their expensive 'compensation study' (since discredited) which surprisingly said most everybody was underpaid or at the low end of their pay range.  Whether he resisted the urge to raid or not, Brock will go to Florida with a healthy dose of that money for his time and a couple of well deserved nicknames that he didn't get from his Farmingham Mills days.  

The next item was setting up a Recreational Marijuana (RM) Ad Hoc Committee, and it seemed that Mayor Miller was channeling some RM in getting through this portion of the meeting.  This is set up to be a committee to research, review and report back to council its findings.  Numbers of members, selections of citizens and scope seemed a little hazy, even after a few minutes of discussion.  Three councilors volunteered for the committee Kathy Winczewski, Dave Bourgette, and Angela Serna.  Some interested citizens will meeting in some future meeting and decide on their representatives, a couple of more city officials will round off the panel (see p 42).  This was a first presentation, hopefully it will be better presented at the next meeting.

After acknowledging the FOIA appeal, Ludington Planning Commissioner John Terzano rose during public comment to thank Brock for his service and for his help with the LPC.  The meeting then devolved into a Brock love-in, as he received a proclamation (Brock-lamation) from the mayor and accolades from a couple of councilors.  Councilor Winczewski gave a PSA on running water during the cold spell to save pipes (no credit with the city) and Mayor Miller thanked all who made it through the terrible weather to show up.

Views: 791

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

I agree Aquaman that the Interim manager position seems to have been a ploy to continue Shay's recommendations to boost salaries, already highest in the region with unrivaled pensions and benefits. These debts are going to bring Ludington to bankruptcy if we keep going like this. The last six months has been a ploy to raise employees salaries, increase the spending budget and put us deeper in debt. When will the council work for the people and the city on a whole? They act more like union representatives to increase salaries of city employees than concern for city infrastructure. Yes, many city employees work hard, but they are also paid more than anyone else around here. Those who don't like their salaries could go find other jobs. I'm sure there will be at least 37 people drooling in line to fill any city job vacancy.
True, X. There's a lot in your statement, but let's talk about the added assistant Treasurer position. Truly, Steve Brock should have known better about an appointment of a new position going through the council. Linda Roger's did both positions for less money than they gave Tom E. to start. Linda was efficient, helpful and one of the most friendly in the office and she instituted auto tax pay system. Something must be going on in that we have to pay two full time people more. Maybe this new assistant is a wizard at getting us out of debt! Ha ha! Meanwhile we pay another person unsustainable wages, pensions and benefits unless we neglect the citizens and the primary need for water, sewer and services.
Hate to say that maybe a multiple count OMA violation should be filed .. for lack of transparency in hiring assistant treasurer and lack of transparency in closed sessions for those who did not ask for confidentiality in city manager position.
The problem is MCP talked about it, but they'll probably sit in the background and let you fight the fight, X.
Add the Austin Morris contract to the list to be fought. Angela Serna showed courage objecting to this perhaps from an inherent sense of right and wrong, but did not object by overall principle of State Constitution, Article VII, Sec. 26 which says, "No city or village shall have the power to loan it's credit for any private purposes except as provided by law, for any public purposes.".

I'd like to understand how Richard Wilson justified this more than "We've done this before.". Even though it sounds like a noble function, Austin Morris loan does not benefit the entire public, nor can the entire public benefit.

Now if Chief Barnett wanted to take $8000 of his personal money and loan it to Morris, that would be a contract between Morris and Barnett and would be OK. But the chief may be probably too smart to take the risk.

There is not enough detail given to justify the public benefit of the loan. Definitely a lack of transparency and information.

Very good comments and posts FS, and I believe in this too.

Freedom Seeker, 

I recently received a FOIA response dealing with this loan, and you're right, there are two sections of the Michigan Constitution that disallow general loans made from local government treasuries.  Councilor Serna, like some of the public, didn't see this loan agreement until the weekend before the meeting, she caught a poorly crafted agreement and suggested helpful edits, but did not have enough time to figure out whether it actually was proper.

Wilson may have done this before for other public bodies he has served but I can't find a similar 'student loan' made out by the City of Ludington before.  They have discussed this sort of gift-giving as a form of policy in a Personnel Committee meeting, but as you may know they can't legislate public policy in 'advisory' committees-- that would be against the law.  

Illegal loans, more violations of OMA, Mayor Miller is really proving himself to be an ambitious person in taking Ludington government down the wrong path.  He should disavow this inheritance of unlawfulness, rather than permitting it in his administration.  Your points are spot on. 

I can't blame Steve Miller for this illegal loan as much as it probably originated from the Chief of police.  I think the blame should fall upon legal Council behind the shady glasses.   Miller can't vote on the matter nor can he twist the arms of the city council members.  He could, however, have asked for and promoted good legal council, but maybe he is ignorant and like many things it seems legal council finds a way to justify the wrong or is also ignorant.  It's a noble idea by the chief, like shop with a cop, just not properly contracted and negotiated.  Both functions could legally be run with some creativity by one of our charitable bodies operating in the new building that sits in front of the fire department.

What a difference between the common sense of Councilor Angela Serna and the others who voted for the fire station as a voting location. The station is a long ride or walk for older folks such as those who live at LongfellowTowers. The Fire Chief should have no say in this decision. He should be only concerned with the FIre station use as a fire station. It's obvious there is still a problem with many of those in charge of Ludington's Govnermnent. I hate to say this but these people don't have the combined brain power of a single person. Of course there is more involved here than common sense. This entire move of the fire station to that location has been questionable since it's inception. It's like dealing with a bunch of stubborn dementia patients. Thank you Angela for bringing well thought out reasoning and logic to City Council.

RSS

© 2024   Created by XLFD.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service