Ludington City Council Meeting, October 28, 2024: UDO You

[XLFD]

The Ludington Torch can't say it regrets not being able to attend this along with the Scottville Commission meeting, as it was nearly two hours of blather and introduction to the public of a leviathan Unified Development Ordinance (UDO).  Still there were items here that deserve some review, critiques, or airplay.

Before this spring, when new council policy disallowed a written public comment to be read aloud unless it was submitted before noon of the Friday before a council meeting-- that is, before the agenda packet is made public.  This policy was made to silence such correspondence as it relates to agenda items and significantly disenfranchises those who cannot physically make it to meetings either due to health or scheduling of more important public meetings.  The morning of October 28th the Ludington Torch composed an email and sent it to the city councilors:

When the Ludington City Council voted on a resolution changing the rules for submitting a written public comment introduced in April, they forbid the submission of a written public comment before noon on the Friday before a council meeting, effectively five hours before the city council and the public gets their agenda for the meeting.  If citizens learn about something on the agenda very important to them either through the media or through the city's document center, but they cannot attend the meeting, their voice may never be heard by the council and the rest of the public on that issue important to them. 

As a representative of the people, this vote by you shows them all how dismissive of their viewpoints you are-- if that already wasn't apparent when city administration shut off all city websites from public participation at around the same time.  While this may help your ability to take more and more rights from the people and more money from the people, as your actions since have shown is a big objective of the city corporation, it displays your failure as a public servant to be transparent, accountable, and working for the betterment of the people.  

So please don't read this letter to the council at tonight's meeting (I will be in Scottville to say goodbye to their outgoing commissioners) so as to violate your own policy meant to silence the voice of the people, just consider the city's past actions and your part in them.

The agenda packet was quite light for the October 28th meeting, and for once the council took my advice to not read my letter into the record.  Their main act was to approve an ordinance allowing for green burials and the revision of various cemetery rates and rules, this was unanimous and uncontroversial.

They would also approve a strategic plan proposed by Allyson Brunette, a mostly useless document that sets some goals and objectives for our city hall to consider in going on about their ways, but nothing that effectively limits or empowers them to do so.  Frankly, I think locals, even some of our densest city councilors, are best able to set such strategic plans rather than some Wisconsin friend of the former city manager who has no experience of living here.  Read the plan in the packet (p. 263+) and tell me whether this was a good use of $20,000 or just checking a box.  They approved the final allocations of the free money supplied by ARPA, making some small purchases (see packet, p. 29).

As usual, they made a mockery of the competitive bidding process by choosing the highest bid of two sought in order to replace the roof of the gazebo at Waterfront Park.  The two proposals seen above show that Bob's Roofing proposal is over $5000 less than that proposed by Visscher.  That's a significant difference of over 17% more, so why did the low bidder of two local companies lose out?

Well, according to Councilor John Bulger, who wasn't even on the Finance Committee that discussed the issue, it was because Visscher could do it sooner than Bob's.  There is nothing in the proposals suggesting truth behind this identical excuse that Councilor Kathy Winczewski used earlier this year to deny Larsen's Landscaping's low bid on Harbor View Marina landscaping, when an out-of-county, unproven company got the job with about a 30% higher.  Cronyism or stupidity, that job and this one was given out unanimously by a council that has no concern for frugal use of your tax money or following the city charter's dicta on bidding.

The time killer of this meeting was introducing the UDO to the council and public, which started a half-hour into the meeting and lasted just under an hour with a power point presentation by Councilor John Terzano.  Our city leaders have shown they think highly of 'unified development' and consider it an improvement on our local zoning laws, but in reality, it is zoning on steroids, central planning reminiscent of the USSR, where our unique city's features and potentials are largely overshadowed by giving it a code made to be more uniform to those of Detroit, Seattle, Hong Kong, and Mexico City. 

Speaking of checking boxes, this now allows Ludington to join the ranks of other Redevelopment Ready Communities more easily, allowing it to get grants from the state and qualify it for other rewards given by faceless bureaucrats who believe they are the best central planners for Ludington.  if you can sit through fifteen minutes of this without getting overwhelmed by the inanity of it all, you're better than what I can muster; I feel sorry for those in the council chamber that night who had to consume it all.

If anything saved this meeting from being forgettable, it was the public comments.  Sure, you had city hall stalwarts Jackie Steckel get up and give outgoing (and unlawful) Interim City Manager Jeanne Oakes many thanks at the beginning of the meeting and Heather Tykoski doing the same at the butt end.  But beyond this shameless genuflection, you had a couple of write-in candidates for the City Treasurer position announce that they were ready to serve in that role.

Renee Caithamer, wife of city employee Kirk Caithamer (Sexton), was the first to ask for votes for the position which has nobody's name on the ballot.  Joan Walton, wife of city employee Gary Walton (WWTP and LFD), was the second.  Two other people that have submitted letters of intent to run as a write-in candidate were not present.  Curtis Shields, a Californian who does not appear to have lived here at all, when the city charter says that all candidates for elective office must be Ludington citizens for a year, and Tom Rotta, who reportedly was in Scottville this very night and who has signed a letter of intent.

Tom Rotta will perform all the duties of the treasurer's office with diligence, transparency, and accountability, along with using the power of his office to keep other officials and the city council from breaking the law as seen in the two major prongs of policy that affect the city's financial lines.  You can vote for someone who regularly snuggles up to other city officials, or vote for some person that calls California home, but the best thing to do would be to vote for somebody who wants to discorrupt the system and make city officials obey the law, at least those laws in my purview.

On the critical side, James Kuszibuski (spelling?) led of both comment periods with a complaint about deer still walking around Ludington, then one about garbage and clutter being in other areas. He must be mistaken, as we just had a very successful deer cull (*wink*) and an unusually active bunch of code enforcers. 

Ray Karboske of Ray's Auto Marine and Jeff Henry who directs the Pere Marquette Lake Watershed Council would tag team their comments at the top of the meeting in order to highlight their recent legal efforts against the legitimacy of the Michigan Waterways Commission (MWC).  This public body was created in 1947, and it appears to have been repealed in 1959 and their promising efforts in the local circuit court are being weighed in the Court of Claims, as the jurisdiction had been determined to be there as the MWC is(was) a state agency.  

As the MWC has gifted the City of Ludington millions over the years to create, maintain, and improve their two public marinas, our city council probably would hate to see the legal effort succeed, even if the evidence turns out to be clear that the MWC was effectively repealed and the billions of dollars it has dispersed over the years is in question.  

So even though the UDO presentations took up half of the oxygen at this meeting, there was at least something that made the meeting less of a snorefest.

[Willy]

Thanks for posting this discussion X. Nothing seems to change with the Council, especially the corrupt bidding process that has been going on for years. Who would even take the time to get involved with the bidding process if the Council has already predetermined who they are going to choose? Congratulations on your choice to seek the Treasurers job. I can't think of anyone more qualified to step in and run the office. You would bring honesty, experience and integrity to City Hall. Good luck!

[XLFD]

The corruption of the COL bidding processes was recently supported by a resolution that effectively allows them to totally ignore competitive bidding, by using subjective metrics after the bids are opened.  The Requests for Proposals (RFPs) should tell each prospective bidder how their bid will be assessed fairly against others, but they are not.  If a company can meet minimal qualifications as stated for the proposal and has bid the lowest price, they should get the contract.  If not, the disqualifying factor should be entered into the record and validated explicitly.  

They don't want to do that, and the private sector knows this now, and so you have pointed out what the end result is.  Competent bidders will tend not to waste their time with proposals if they are not among the chosen cronies.  The cronies will be able to set their own price, and it won't be a good price.  City hall administrators are lifetime public sector employees for the most part, so they may not get this point, but generally elected representatives will get the point, except that for most of this year, the only councilor without a pedigree in public service for the rest of their lives was Wally Cain, who has nothing in his history that would show he would contract for goods or services in his career with Floracraft.

And that's why they pass a resolution to effectively rig the bidding system, so that when they pick the third lowest bid once again, they have cover.  That, the Trojan Horse UDO, and my announcement of candidacy is what prompted me to cover this meeting in absentia, because what is going on is too important to ignore.

That night, Scottville had the better story with their police department anyhow.  We're hoping to get Scottville back to their historical meeting schedule so that the public meetings of the most powerful bodies of the two biggest cities in Mason County don't fall on the same date.  With the advent of the mayor and vice-mayor moving on, that may be possible.