Ludington City Council, September 12, 2022: Casting Starfish onto the Wastewater

The meeting agenda for September 12th had fourteen action items, including a couple of very contentious items, like using the City as a fiduciary for a gun buyback program and considering the complete banning of all farm animals in the city limits.  But if you've been paying attention to city council meetings over the last dozen years, this two hour regular in-person meeting lacked a regular participant for only the second time since 2011, municipal accountability expert to some, negative hall-storming troll to others, your humble author of this recap.  

This weekend, a temporary health issue arose that greatly restricted my ability to prepare for and get to the meeting, otherwise I would have made it and commented; fortunately, I was able to catch it remotely and offer this recap with my usual municipal accountability expertise with a specialty for the City of Ludington.  It also kept me from attending Scottville's meeting too, which acknowledged former Mayor Joe Baxter, recently deceased, by resolving to commend Howard Vanderlaan for his services to the community.

Somebody on North Main Street in Clowntown botched name-changing the template, and perhaps it may be fitting since Baxter's otherwise impressive legacy was marred appreciably when he was very drunk and drove his car around Scottville and into the gulley at around the same time kids were going to school.

Ludington was more serious this evening.  Seven people would speak up during public comment, and even though the gun buyback program was not the main issue commented on, Mayor Miller would elevate it to the front of everything else under consideration, effectively so most of his progressive friends wouldn't have to sit through other city business. 

Deb Del Zoppo would offer her unqualified support of buyback, chickens and the deer cull, the only voice against the buyback was a letter written by George Peterson, read by Councilor Cheri Stibitz, expressing that the money used for gun buyback could be better used in programs for at-risk individuals. 

Stibitz has made it known that she wasn't a fan of the program.  Councilor John Terzano suggested that if the City was to be the fiduciary of the program (effectively allowing grants to filter to the program through the City), they would require 10% of the $5750 originally budgeted to make up for the time spent by officers at city hall and the LPD to operate the program.  Technically this wasn't voted on tonight, but the group present indicated that would be fine.  Stibitz noted this $575 wouldn't pay for the city resources used and would impede progress on other projects requiring their attention.

Councilor Kathy Winczewski would speak highly of the program highlighting the starfish parable it takes its name from and John Bulger would caution that these programs have questionable efficacy yet noted that it was clear that any assault weapons turned in and disposed of would not ever be used in a crime again.  Only Stibitz would vote against the program, which was the proper thing to do.  

Now that the City of Ludington is the Starfish Gun Buyback Program's fiduciary, they now can qualify for using government funding, which the program backers touted in committee.  When the Starfish group first came to the council on June 13th, they implied public funding would not be used for the program.  

The issue that garnered interest of the public was the first reading of an ordinance addressing deer feeding that had an added section that would ban everyone from keeping all farm animals, including chickens.  Jason Adam asked the council whether they would actually discuss that issue rather than bring it up as they did without any discussion, not even in committee.  Evan Hourihan followed, making what I thought was the point of the night (in my absence).

Hourihan spoke of his own personal experiences where he lived next door to someone with four chickens with no problems, and yet he regularly has had issues with neighbors' dogs barking and running loose on his property.  Chickens don't bark and if they do ever get loose, they leave your yard cleaner for it.  He noted that Manistee, Traverse City, and others had created rules for keeping chickens that have worked out well.  It appears that Ludington wants to ban them as an afterthought of dealing with those who feed deer.

Greg Prafke and Mary June Robertson would argue in favor of the City helping out financially inthey  fixing a sewer line behind the 300 block of North Gaylord, a line without a clear indication of whether it was a private or public sewer line serving the dozen houses on that block.  Mike Krenich would wonder if the new police chief would have to live within 25 miles of the city, since he didn't see that in the ad/RFP for the position (it would be later noted that he would need to be within 20 mph).

The council would unanimously decide to spend about $130,000 in order to take out what was there and put in a new sewer main that the houses would need to connect to.  Councilor Terzano noting that it was the City's responsibility to provide such services according to the city charter and code.

Six ordinances had their first reading this evening.  Besides the deer-feeding/farm animal ban ordinance, which Councilor Bulger noted had a variety of bad definitions that would need to be amended, they read these:

= Lead service line replacement (replacement of about 100 residential lead lines, awarding contract to Gustafson's at $388,150) Bulger would also note that the draft ordinance should be changed to reduce the burden for the City to prove it needs to go onto private property.

= Mobile Food Vending Ordinance (text changes to prior ordinance)

= Signage Ordinance (text changes)

= Fence Ordinance (text changes) allowing for longer privacy fences on corner lots

= Rezoning 504 & 507 Foster (Foster School Property) to multifamily residential

They would pass an ordinance in order to contract with Moss for five years with an upfront cost of $14,500 and a monthly cost of about $1270 for replacing and providing telephone service for city buildings.  They would approve a contractor, Spectrum Enterprises, for similar services temporarily at the WWTP. 

The council would approve using ARPA money to purchase two generators for lift stations and a trailer-mounted trash pump.  They would approve setting about $7000 aside to seed a future Senior Center, hoping someday for a substantial grant endowment from the state to cover the rest.  They would also approve about a third of a million to put in floating docks on the City Marina's E pier, hiring Meeco Sullivan to do so.

I definitely would have noted in any comment I made that the City was opting to enter into a program that would give area owners of 'assault weapons' the choice of whether their arms were worth a $500 food card generously supplied by the taxpayers, if the Starfishers get their grants.  Neither they nor the police could offer one example of any local crime where an assault weapon was used in the commission of same, so maybe this would better be called a Unicorn Buyback Program.  

I would have also blasted the council for once again violating the competitive bidding process when choosing the contractor who would review our water and sewer rates and how to best raise them up in the future.  The council would unanimously pick Utility Financial Services to do this but look at the facts:

The low bidder by about 10% of the final cost, a significant margin, Raftelis was completely ignored even though they are a reputable company without anything said in the memo to otherwise disqualify them from the service.  If City leaders are not willing to save you money by following bidding practices, you can guarantee that they believe UFS will get them more money by raising rates more aggressively than Raftelis.  

For the last twelve years, the city council has unanimously voted to opt out of PA 152 of 2011, a statute enacted to address the dramatic increases in health care costs that were blowing up local government budgets.  Rather than try to live within the state's caps, the city continues to offer health care packages that always eclipse them, and plenty of other benefits.  The fringe benefit rates of Ludington City workers approach 80% of their salary, for example:

City councilors, and frankly many of our citizens, do not recognize that those fringe benefits are paid off by people throughout the city, many of whom receive less than half of that rate, if any, in their own job(s).  

But it should come as no surprise that a city that would so easily buy into a Starfish Buyback Program to buy still-undefined 'assault weapons' from their owners who have the choice to gauge whether their weapon is worth a $500 food card or not, would waste money to endow their own or to hike water and sewer rates up.  Keep on throwing them starfishes into the wastewater ponds.

Views: 461

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Excellent thoughts and recap, X. It seems that the city is getting way too liberal, taking away citizen freedoms and liberties. What or whom are driving this liberalism in Ludington. I cannot figure it out. If taxpayers don't get mad at the money they are paying for city employee health benefits as described, they might as well just takeoff their pants and shake upside down every cent left in their pockets and bend over and kiss their arses goodbye.

I sense that the same small group of progressives pushing this idealistic program will be coming back fairly soon with a more ambitious project, using their close ties with the noticeably-left mayor and Councilor Moonbeam as a tool.  That will happen even if the buyback program is a failure or not, because of the lack of any serious resistance in this case to their folly.  Look for one more substantial pay raise this year to city workers in the budget, made without any concern for where the money for that raise will come from, because that's how their minds work.

Well done X. Thanks for the report. I hope you're feeling better. Regarding the "assault weapons", who is going to define such weapons. I doubt anyone in Ludington has an assault weapon or what can be truly defined as one. Then again any knife or baseball bat can be considered an assault weapon if it is used to assault someone. These silly leftists are dumb as rocks. I think you are correct. This buy back idiocy will be a launching point for other empty headed ideas that will only help to weaken our rights.  These lefties never do these types of actions in a vacuum.  My guess is that there will be some sort of National buy back program and the word has gone out in Lefty World to test the local waters to see how successful this kind of program will be.

Better but not whole yet, thanks for the concern.

The LPD has the ultimate task of defining what an assault weapon is, it was indicated at this meeting that the definition will likely look similar to the definition used in the 1994 AW Ban, which lists several specific models and any semiautomatic gun, rifle, or shotgun with two or more specific features.  

This should have been an important consideration made before this ever came to a vote, but I have a feeling that this is just a symbolic move without substance, an incremental step towards something bigger.  If they're lucky and have someone who actually turns in an AW, it will cost at least $3750 in running the program at least, but I'm sure Whitmer's violence prevention grant will cover it and more. 

Ironically, during the height of the 2020 insanity, Whitmer was marching in step with those who organized some of those violent riots in southern Michigan cities which led to the burning or destruction of a lot of municipal property in commemoration of George Floyd.  

I'm having my research elves look for the Riemer story, if you can share that it would be appreciated.  As for city direction, you leave the outside influencers out, along with a certain grant writer that lacks a moral compass. 

I've been willing to give Mark Barnett a shot for the mayor spot, but he's been very disappointing.  His campaign literature is needlessly vague and uninspiring to me.  Steve Miller could have put out the same flyer I received, if it wasn't mentioning his police chief experience.  Barnett would likely bring back invocations to council meetings and not lead the City as far to the left as Miller.  That may be enough for some, but Barnett will come with some nasty side-effects which might be good for someone who writes critical articles on Ludington, but not for Ludington.

RSS

© 2024   Created by XLFD.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service