Ludington's Improper and Clandestine Erection of a Pole Barn

[XLFD]

Back in 2021, Ludington city officials constructed a sizable pole barn warehouse in back of the City's remote DPW Building without first getting approval of the city council for either of the two contractors used, as required by law by the amount of the contracts.  One of those contractors, a crony outfit originally hired by the city outside of a recognized competitive bid process, was once again hired by the city outside of a recognized competitive bidding process.  

                   Joe Stickney's mysterious warehouse, normally hidden behind the trees in back of the DPW main building

Let's look at the facts and records behind this allegation and then consider the ramifications of having multiple city officials play loose with our money and the laws that bind them to their duties.  This episode started in earnest after the developer of Lofts on Rowe came back to the city for more money and your city council virtually voted on 10-12-2020 to have the community pay in $4.3 million rather than the $2.9 million they originally put forth on the backs of the taxpayers of Ludington and Mason County.  It was stated at the time that they would sell the property (valued at $220,000) to the developer and build a salt barn and warehouse to replace it for an estimated $349,000 and $311,000 respectively.  

Since this wasn't part of the $4.3 million of taxpayer money given through TIF, tack on $460,000 to the taxpayers as the city would sell the property for $200K on December 7th.  Shortly thereafter, the project went forth, part of which was to demolish the salt barn/warehouse that stood on the north side of the project.  At that same meeting, they passed a budget; in the 2021 City Budget (p 104) we find about $330,000 budgeted for the engineering and construction of a salt barn with no mention of any additional warehouse in the capital improvement program:  

From the March 25, 2021 PS/PU Committee meeting, the salt barn was once again mentioned by itself:

City Manager Mitch Foster does mention a warehouse would be built by July at the meeting.  The contract with Gerbers for the salt barn was approved at the next council meeting on April 12, 2021.  DPW Superintendent Joe Stickney reports that the replacement warehouse is mostly completed at the committee's July 15 meeting.  Foster would lastly mention the now-finished warehouse at the October 2021 Finance Committee, saying it escalated the city property section of the budget.  

The bidding of and building of this warehouse never reached the city council for approvals, the absence of any council action on it in their meetings and minutes between when the sale of the old salt barn was made and the warehouse's construction proves that assertion.  This was needed, for the city code emphasizes the power of the council granted in the city charter to approve contracts above a certain dollar amount and to conduct sealed competitive bidding processes for those contracts.

The councilors would not even see these bids come before them in their standing committees, they were completely performed by two who have been mentioned already:  Joe Stickney and Mitch Foster.   I could only find this information out through the FOIA process which gave me this packet.  This shows that the sizable 60' X 200' pole barn was bid out in two parts:  for the foundation and for the structure.  

The record (p. 10) shows the City advertised the pole barn part request for proposals out in January 2021.  Three hours after the bids were closed, Stickney made a final decision that wasn't his to give to the low bidder:

Somewhere along the way, the two other company's estimates, which became public records on their reception, have been lost, so there is no chance of auditing this unilateral decision spending over $100,000 by somebody incapable of making it.  It's sad, because he would make another unilateral decision on the concrete foundation under the pole barn.  For some reason the City would not post RFPs for the foundation until late April 2021, over three months after they sought bids for the pole barn to be put on it:

The packet shows that they had no bidders for that work, but it does show a "bid" from Ruggles & Son Masonry sent from Joe Stickney to himself in December 2020, five months earlier, quoting a $5 per square foot bid. 

Ruggles is the current sidewalk construction contractor in Ludington.  Our readers will remember them being given the sidewalk contract after their bid was much higher than Spuller's Concrete.  Stickney at the time badmouthed Spuller's company with claims that turned out to be trivial and overstated, making a complicit city council accept Ruggles even though they bid 20% more for their services.  

The foundation would cost $60,000 to install (60 X 200 X 5) making it a decision that the council would have needed to make, not a city department head who overstepped his authority and appears to have already made a decision back in December to throw it to his favorite overpriced concrete contractor.  The earlier email to himself indicates the decision was to be a fait accompli anyway; one may speculate that any other bids received went to the same place the other ones went in the pole barn decision.

So we have the DPW supervisor making decisions, apparently tainted ones due to the lack of following protocols, on two contractors for two contracts of around $200,000 total.  Is his supervisor concerned?  Nope, here's the absolution given by City Manager Foster of these code and charter violations given at the same time I received the packet:

Sorry, Mitch, this item was not in the 2021 Capital Improvement Program and unless it's very well hidden in the 2021 budget (like the costs of a charter revision was this last year) it's not there either.  Similarly, running things by "past practice" is not the way to go with a city that has been so heavily corrupted from following its own charter and the laws of this state in the past as a regular practice, as chronicled in these web pages. 

You have a duty to bring these projects and contracts before our elected city council for their approval; they hired you, not us.  Do your job and discipline your department head for overstepping his authority, but first discipline yourself for trying to justify his mistakes when you should be apologizing to the council for his unlawful acts instead.

[XLFD]

For additional reference, the 'secret' warehouse is in the orange box, the salt barn is in the blue box, both to the north of the DPW Building and the UPS Building off First Street.  The warehouse is barely visible through the trees from the road even now, and will be obscured during the middle of the year.

[Willy]

Thanks for the investigation into the "hidden pole barn". What you really wanted to put as the topic headline was "Ludington's Improper and Clandestine Erection" but you wanted this forum to remain family friendly. When one looks at the aerial photo, the building in question does resemble a 200ft phallus symbol. Just another way of showing how they stick it to the taxpayers.

Are the people who run Ludingtion stupid, ignorant, corrupt or just plain lazy or all of the aforementioned? It's hard to tell because around every corner of Ludington there are things happening that makes people want to slap their foreheads and say "what the h_ll is going on". Just think, folks used to believe  Ludington was just plain dull but we now know it's been a bed of corruption and incompetency for a long time and we really did not know about it until X came along.

[XLFD]

I did keep the title family-friendly, however, if you look closely I did sneak in the phrase 'erection of a pole' for subliminal effect on our readers with minds stuck in the gutter like last fall's leaves. 

In retrospect, I made a good choice in calling this online awareness effort The Ludington Torch back at its inception.  Ludington's government, and many other local governments, have been found to have a lot of dark areas that needed to be lit up with our light.  Additionally, torches symbolizes knowledge, learning, enlightenment, freedom, liberty, and many other positive things.  These have always been the objectives and goals here and it's always good to hear that we have had some success in achieving these over the years by shoving our torches into the nether regions of city hall.