Ludington City Council /Scottville City Clowncil, July 25, 2022: Midsummer Doubleheader

[XLFD]

When the Ludington City Council announced that they would meet a half hour earlier for their bimonthly meetings starting July 25th, I saw the opportunity to do something I haven't ever done before:  attend the meeting and make a comment, then travel to Scottville to comment at their city commission meeting, which they moved to the same time as Ludington's last year after being mercilessly excoriated for their corruption for nearly a year by my comments at their meetings. 

 

Unfortunately, to make that dream logistically possible I would have to be the first to comment at the Ludington meeting, dash to my car, then travel to Scottville.  I figured that the Ludington meeting would convene at 6:00 or shortly thereafter, I would comment at about 6:05, finish and leave at 6:08, get to my car by 6:12, take 10-12 minutes to arrive in Scottville, and by 6:27 enter the Scottville City Hall just in time to enjoy their meeting-- which was a memorable one.

The plan worked even better than expected as I was in my seat at Scottville City Hall by 6:25, but it wasn't easy.  When I got to Ludington's City Hall they had a packed house with a large congregation of folks that were there to speak out for gun control at an earlier meeting.  It seemed that there might be a last-minute agenda change as they originally placed a presentation at the front of the meeting by the Michigan Association of Police Chiefs giving formal accreditation to the LPD, and an audible may have been in order to shield the police and presenters from those espousing revocation of gun rights.

Fortunately, that never happened and I was able to take the podium first and rattle off a comment that was exactly three minutes.  I think city leaders were prepared to hear about the Parker Flip Scandal and rebut it at the end of the meeting when their defense couldn't be refuted on camera.  There was enough in the agenda to be critical of anyway, as the council was to consider giving a no-interest loan of $400,000 to help build bathrooms/showers at the city's campground costing nearly three times that much.  They also planned to spend $54,000 on consultants to create an ordinance that sounds great but has the effect of taking zoning to an even more controlling level.

XLFD:  (video unavailable):   "The Michigan Municipal League defines "enterprise fund" as "A fund established to finance and account for the acquisition, operation and maintenance of governmental facilities and services which are entirely or predominantly self-supporting by user charges."  Ludington's two public marinas and the Cartier Park Campgrounds are supposedly enterprise fund facilities.  Under normal operations, they regularly earn more than they spend.

One wonders why the state regularly subsidizes millions of dollars to improve the public marinas and why the city can afford to offer substantial no-interest loans to improve the marinas and the public campground.  The public marinas and campground compete with our area's private marinas and campgrounds, but I don't see the state, the county, or the city offering to help these individuals-- nor should they.  But they should have a level playing field and not directly compete with public entities that have unlimited resources to prop up enterprise funds that are anything but engaging in free enterprise.  

In allowing the city and state to pay millions to replace docks at the city marina, some exclusively used by private entities, and put in $1.2 million bathhouses at our city's campground, our government illustrates that they care very little about preserving the free markets that helped keep this country overperforming when compared with government-controlled businesses in socialist countries. 

The central planning associated with such countries is not much unlike the idea behind the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO).  The city is poised to spend $54,000 on big city consultants to develop an UDO for our area.  After the UDO is wrote and you pass it, we are poised to go from conventional zoning regulations to a form-based code.

A form-based code is a land development regulation that uses physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code. A form-based code is a regulation, not a mere guideline.  The UDO will supplant our existing zoning and planning, which mostly observes the property rights of individuals, and replace it with strict regulation   The UDO will certainly address development at all scales of design, from regional planning on down to the building signage., leading to full scale "Smart Growth", leading to that socialist Utopia they promise but never realize.

Why would your constituents want you to spend $54,000 in order to hire elite consultants with designs to take our remaining property rights from us?  Thanks for any answer." {END comment]

Without attending, seeing the video, or reading the minutes, I can guarantee that the council passed both the bathhouse loan and hired the UDO consultants without any serious concerns from the councilors or any quelling of my criticisms.  We now see why they raised your taxes by $140,000 per year earlier this summer, they have a wish list that includes creating a fancy $1.2 million bathhouse strictly for tourists in town wanting to camp out and 'rough it'.  They then want to create uberzoning that puts the government in control of what you can and can't do with your own property-- property that they just raised taxes on because they needed your money more than you.

After nearly bowling over a couple of LPD officers lurking outside the door (likely for the accreditation ritual), I had fairly good luck with summer traffic and the traffic lights on my way to Scottville, arriving with five minutes to spare without speeding.  This gave me time to notice who was and wasn't there.  Noticeably absent was City Attorney Carlos Alvarado and Police Chief Matt Murphy, whose absence was magnified by the fact that no other SPD officers were there either.  

The agenda packet had intrigued me enough to write an article on a proposed Food Truck Permit Resolution, contact those who might be negatively affected by that resolution, and make it a large part of my comment.  The resolution effectively jumped a street vendor permit from a reasonable $100 annually to a wholly unreasonable $100 daily, offering a modest discount for weekly and off-season permitting but still costing around $18,500 a year for any who wanted to sell their products all year, and about $11,000 if they set up May through September inclusive.

Everything interesting in this meeting went beyond the agenda.  They would pass the Food Truck Ordinance which offered small change from the prior code.  They would add two members (outside of the city) to the Brownfield Authority they recently created, allied with the City of Ludington and PM Twp.  Off the agenda, it was revealed that PM Twp's Board had rejected the new body, so the new Brownfield Authority will be for Mason County's two cities only.  

They considered establishing a Community Development Director position ostensibly in order to write grant applications and assist the office, where City Manager Jimmy Newkirk seemed to be the biggest advocate.  Due to the cost of such a position, the more fiscally-minded members of the commission voted to send it to the finance committee.   The last item was the fee resolution for food trucks.  

Newkirk would preface the discussion by saying there was a 'typo' in the resolution and that the fee should be '$500/month" and '$250/month' rather than per week as printed.  A typo is a mistake (such as a spelling mistake) made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material.  "Week' is printed out on the resolution; one has to note that a typist who hits w-e-e-k keys rather than m-o-n-t-h keys has made at least 5 typos and you can't get much farther away than the 'w' and 'm' keys. 

There was no typo.  The discount you receive from having three 1-day permits to one 3-day permit is a little over 16%, thus one would expect the discount of going from 2 1/3 3-day permits to a 1-week permit you'd expect saving around 16%.  The amount $500 saves a little over 14%.   Whoever thought this resolution up meant to have it as $500 per week, despite Newkirk saying in the packet:  "These fees are consistent with other entities with similar circumstances".  Newkirk is lying about the typo and he's lying about the fee's consistency with other entities.  

Newkirk's stewardship would come under fire three times before this meeting adjourned.  First, it was the Scottville Optimist Board accusing city leaders of inappropriate undermining and corrupt acts in regard to the Optimist Hall Park Project.  No sooner had the smoke cleared from that cannon, I fired another salvo:

XLFD:  "I can't help notice that this useless city clowncil is still violating the city charter by not following the procedures for conducting meetings by allowing the public to comment before the clowncil's business comes up.  Violating the law so brazenly does not set a good example to the good people of Scottville saddled with such a useless city clowncil, but last year we saw the police chief, city clerk and treasurer all stealing from the city coffers without any sort of accountability from this embezzlement-enabling city clowncil, so what can the good people expect.   

Some of you may be wondering why I'm here rather than at the Ludington City Council meeting.  Last year, this coward-crowded clowncil changed its century old practice of holding meetings on the 1st and third Mondays of each month, moving to the same date and time of Ludington's city council meeting, which I attend religiously.  Ludington, starting today, moved their meetings to 6 PM, so now I can attend both meetings and make comments about the way their business is not in the public interest. Ludington's council is not much better, but they at least do not allow blatant embezzlement from city officers like this useless public body does.

Scottville city officials are all greedy profiteers without a concern for the growth of businesses in Scottville, tonight's agenda shows that plainly.  In August 2017, after the commission then passed a revised street vending ordinance they set the fee by resolution at $100 for an annual permit.  Tonight, a mere 5 years later, you avaricious pigs have made the fee $100 per day, $500 per week or-- oops-- $500 per month due to a 'typo' (*sarcasm*).  If you were to have a permit for the full year paying daily rates, it would cost over $20,000 rather than the $100 it did before and it's all due to punitive greed because the majority of these vendors do not employ any additional city services justifying the colossal increase.  Thanks for continuing to ruin my hometown, useless city clowncil."  [END Comment].

Rob and Tammy Ringler were at this meeting and the latter spoke very favorably about this resolution that took immediate effect and would cost them $500 in permits to finish off this month, then $500 for the next two months.  She admitted they had worked closely with the City on the food truck legislation, not mentioning when or how.  The minutes of the prior meeting shows they were in favor of the ordinance, I had some exchanges with Rob where he indicates that he's content with a resolution that negates his existing $100 permit and replaces it with an additional $2250 to city hall for the rest of the year out of his pockets even if the word 'week' is replaced with 'month'.  

One can only explain such crazy behaviors only if a corrupted city manager is granting them special favors, and the Ludington Torch will be investigating that hunch in the coming months.  This still-onerous policy basically ensures that no other food truck will buy into Scottville, allowing the Ringlers to have a monopoly in that area, and offers no further inconvenient competition to existing brick-and-mortar restaurants.  

The third salvo struck Newkirk from within.  After the public's comments, Commissioner Nathan Yeomans read a letter into the record effectively touting Police Chief Murphy and cryptically saying that he was ousted unfairly and indirectly seemed to be blaming the one person who could fire the chief (Newkirk) for the issue.  

In a period of roughly 15 minutes, City Manager Newkirk would be caught in a lie about a typo and the consistency of his food truck fees, then be accused by the Optimists and DDA of secretly meeting and establishing public policies with two city clowncilors outside of an open meeting and potentially hindering the Optimist Park project.  He would be accused of profiteering by raising an annual permit from $100 to $18,500 (about $5000 with the 'typo' corrected), before a food truck vendor would indicate that they were able to unfairly create policy with what seems to be more secret policy-setting meetings with him.

Finally, he was chided by one of his employers, Commissioner Yeomans, for firing the police chief and rather than defend his position at the meeting or thereafter, he ducked the issue and left the public in the dark once again as to his public policies.  Prior City Manager Courtney Magaluk was fired for much lesser transgressions, real and imagined.

[Willy]

Congratulations X, on your successful completion of the Scottville/Ludington meeting marathon. The political maneuvering and corruption by the officials in both towns would make Mafia leaders green with envy. Ludington's money grab for frivolous projects  and it's corrupt policies is only exceeded by Scottvilles own corruption and infighting.

I'm having trouble understanding the new fee schedule change for street vendors. If the $500 fee has been changed from a weekly charge to a monthly charge, are the 3 day weekend and 1 day fees going to remain the same? None of this makes sense. So are they saying that the charge for an entire month  is now $500 but if a vendor sets up on weekends only then the charge will be $1000 per month for 4 weekends Fri - Sun [May thru Sept.]? Work your math magic X, and please explain what the heck these foolish officials are trying to do here.