Ludington Rental Inspection Meeting Attracts 100 Participants

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Introduction: Gremlins in the Gears

I will remember the June 4, 2015 meeting of the Ludington Building & Licenses Committee (LB&LC) as a large affair of direct democracy that had more than its share of glitches.  Ludington's Proposed Rental Inspection Ordinance: Rental Inspections This Year (PRIORITY, for short) has its share of glitches contained therein, as was pointed out by the two dozen speakers from the public that afternoon, but the glitches I had were technical. 

I planned on videotaping the affair, but my charging plug had been damaged by a gnawing domesticated pet, so that was unavailable.  I brought my camera, but for some reason, it wouldn't turn on.  I brought my pocket recorder, and learned I must have left it on because my memory was full, and  couldn't record without downloading files off of it. 

The city planners had their own glitches in setting up the basement level community room for the meeting.  They had enough chairs, but failed to install any microphone so it was difficult at times to hear the speakers, some of who were soft-spoken, and, of course, some of the older landlords had hearing issues. 

The LB&LC Chairman, Kathy Winczewski, led off the meeting by assuring the assemblage that contrary to belief, the PRIORITY was not a done deal.  "No decision have been made at all, absolutely nothing has been decided."  Of course, this seems to contradict what John Shay says in his cover letter for PRIORITY. 

I am no professor of semantics, but as there is no LB&LC meeting between now and June 22, and only one council meeting before that, where the issue does not appear to be on the agenda, the schedule as shown does not offer any sort of public forum to change what has been presented except through executive action by our city management and attorneys in the meantime.  City Manager Shay, Assistant Manager Steckel, and City Attorney Wilson all attended, spoke during the meeting portion, and gave no indication of any significant change from the two dozen comments all offering up good points. 

Shay himself followed Winczewski by explaining the ordinance, and explaining the $75 per unit cost, $30 registration fees, and other proposed fees were levied so that they would be able to break-even in the program, repeatedly telling us how the fee schedule was to be revenue neutral.  I couldn't help but notice that having no program at all would be the best way to remain revenue-neutral. 

If the city has its estimated 1500 rental units, and it receives $105 per unit for each three years, then if everyone passes their inspection, it will remove $150,000 from the pockets of Ludington landlords every three years.  You can buy a lot of smoke detector batteries and patch a lot of drywall with that kind of money, but the landlords will not be able to devote it towards that.  Instead it goes to the government unit that provides the service of rental inspections.

City Attorney Offers a Rebuttal of PRIORITY While Defending It

City Attorney Richard Wilson, who arrived late, would later echo this line of reasoning and tried to give the PRIORITY an air of legality by arguing that in the landmark Michigan case of Bolt v. Lansing, the Michigan Supreme Court said a municipality could avoid a vote of the people for raising revenue in creative ways like this if the fees generated by the government service is equal or less than the expenditures of providing the service. 

Probably unknowingly, Attorney Wilson exposed the Achilles heel of this ordinance by introducing that case as justification for not having a vote of the electorate for this 'fee'.  The Michigan Supreme Court established three criteria for distinguishing between a fee and a tax:

1) a user fee must serve a regulatory purpose rather than a revenue-raising purpose;

2) a user fee must be proportionate to the necessary costs of the service; and

3) a user fee must be voluntary—property owners must be able to refuse or limit their use of the commodity or service.

In the Bolt case, the City of Lansing lost because the first two criteria were not met.  In this immediate case with PRIORITY, those may be appropriate, however, the third criteria is not met:  property owners cannot refuse to have their property inspected without threat of fine and imprisonment.  This revenue is thus not a 'user fee' but is indeed a tax, and by the Headlee Amendment, must be voted on by the electorate.  If our City leaders followed the law, they would put this on the ballot at the next general election if they want to offer the 'service' that few want.

The People Speak

The majority of speakers were landlords, but there were a couple of apartment managers, renters and me who weren't specially invited by City Hall to attend this meeting.  The City of Ludington Daily News also attended in force and provided their side of the reporting, which may seem slanted coverage if you were in attendance.  In their internet article, they include one line from the twenty or so people who spoke out for their full three minutes (mostly) against the ordinance about passing the costs to tenants, then later a reply by one of the two pro-PRIORITY speakers saying it would only be $3 a month. 

Due to my technical glitches, I cannot reprint exactly what was said by any other speaker besides myself, but what I saw among the landlords was that they presented themselves as a caring group who wouldn't mind seeing the proverbial 'slumlord' get drummed out of business in Ludington, but that they did not want to be penalized for it themselves. 

Some of the landlords I know, and fully believe that their perception of themselves is true.  Many I didn't know, but you could tell from the way they expressed themselves and their pride in their own profession, that they want to provide this needed service to the community, and felt that the city was effectively punishing them with a redundant service of little use.   

Chuck Sobanski (pictured above), Linda O'Brien, Tom Tyron, Melissa Reed, Pat Patterson, Remington Greiner, Steve Mustaikis, were among the landlords that provided a wide range of reasons why the ordinance was insufficient or unnecessary.  Two renters spoke out.  The first, Jackie Steiger, spoke of her own difficulties in currently finding affordable housing and her fears that the ordinance will reduce the supply of rental units, increase their prices, and make living in the city near impossible for low-income individuals. 

The second provided a personal story about her own bad experiences with a landlord in the Fourth Ward.  Her story was compelling enough, and the attendant landlords seemed to share their sympathy, but she didn't offer any compelling argument as to how PRIORITY would fix the problems she mentioned which included a furnace which wasn't quickly repaired and windows that were painted shut. 

My Comment

I had a five minute speech prepared for the occasion, and was told that we would only have three minutes that day to accommodate all speakers.  So I mentally trimmed it down to the following:

"I cannot speak from the vantage point of a landlord, but my qualifications come from being a tenant and an apartment manager for thirteen years. 

Under the US and Michigan Constitutions, before police can get a warrant to search someone’s home, they need probable cause of unlawful activity.  But due to rental inspection ordinances already in place in Manistee and being considered here, we will permit government officials to barge into someone’s home without probable cause of a crime or even a code violation. Thanks to this rental inspection loophole, criminals who don't rent actually have more constitutional rights than law-abiding renters.

In the proposed ordinance, every rental unit needs a certificate of compliance issued by the city, which can come only after the rental unit is inspected.  If inspections are refused by either tenant or landlord, a municipal civil infraction will result, which could result in civil penalties up to $500 per day for continued violation, and imprisonment for three months, by section 1.7 of the city code.

For tenants, mandatory rental inspections clearly violate the Fourth Amendment. A short intrusion can reveal very personal information about one’s religion, political beliefs, emotional or mental state, hobbies, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. Needless to say, people shouldn’t lose their privacy rights just because they’re renters.  Most leases are mindful of the tenant's privacy, this ordinance has none of that.  If a landlord was to conduct such an intrusive search into their tenant's unit without exigent circumstances, they could easily find themselves criminally charged by the prosecutor and civilly charged by the renter. 

It should be noted that if the inspector finds evidence of unlawful activity being conducted by the tenant during a mandatory inspection, there is nothing in the ordinance that protects the tenant from the inspector notifying other agencies with such data.  It should be noted that the rental inspectors would not originally have had probable cause to search and enter the property for those crimes.  Owner occupied homes will not have to worry about such civil rights violations, making the proposed ordinance discriminatory and in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment also.

Offsetting any possible health or safety improvements that will come at a cost, other financial consequences to renters will be negative.  Increased rents and the possibility of losing the only places they can afford because a bedroom is too small, they refuse to be searched, or numerous other arbitrary conditions that exist in the ordinance."

The Advisory Committee Meets

With the public comments fresh in their minds, three possible amendments to the existing proposed ordinance were mulled over.  1)  Already-inspected HUD and MSHDA rental units may be exempted from the process.  2)  Waiving the registration fee beyond the initial registration if the unit doesn't change hands.  3)  Possibly extending the period for inspections if an initial inspection is passed without incident.  None of these significantly change the basic legislation, nothing more than lipstick on a pig even if all three are made.  Of my Constitutional concerns, the committee remained mute.

My instincts and prior knowledge suggest that our city attorney and city manager really want this ordinance, as does committee member Krauch, who devoted a fair amount of time with his opinions of rental inspections and curing blight in his interview for the Fourth Ward position, which intrigued Shay, Wilson, and others on that selection committee. 

Frankly, it doesn't seem odd to me that the people who ignored election laws clearly written in the city charter so that Krauch never got put on the November ballot, would now try to bypass the ballot box once again in passing this Tax On Landlords/Lessees (TOLL), and making it a PRIORITY when our streets are crumbling, our sewers are failing, and our water and wastewater treatment plants need millions to get themselves in compliance with the state after many years of neglect.

[XLFD]

Tonight's regularly scheduled meeting would be an extra good opportunity to get yourself on record as to how you feel about the rental inspection ordinance (PRIORITY), particularly if you're a tenant or are a non-landlord who objects to the unfair tax being levied on your landlord neighbors. 

If you are a landlord, you may want to speak again tonight since practically everything that was covered at this committee meeting will not go on official minutes or be otherwise transmitted to the general public as it is on Ludington TV for a general council meeting. 

[shinblind]

They did it in Port Huron

"Landlords and tenants in Port Huron, Michigan sued the city over a very expensive and onerous inspection ordinance. They spent more than twenty-five thousand dollars on lawyers and only won a few concessions in front of a judge who believed in government control of everything. Then they got smart. They put their money behind a new slate of candidates for city council. When they won, the city manager and city attorney were fired and the inspection law was changed.

The only way you can fight city hall and win is in the next election."

http://rentalinspections.com/

Maybe it is time for the Landlords of Ludington (LOL?) to band together and run their own candidates for City Council and put an end to this Cabal of Corruption  that  currently exists

[stump]

Now that's a good one