Scottville City Clowncil Special Meeting, August 29,2022: Conspicuous Absences

A special meeting of the Scottville City Clowncil was held at 5:30 PM on Monday August 29th, but it wasn't very special.  The meeting had a couple of action items on the agenda, but only one showed up-- and that likely could have been saved for the next regular meeting in two weeks.  Notably absent was Clowncilor Ryan Graham and outgoing Police Chief Matt Murphy and outgoing City Attorney Carlos Alvarado, whose resignation had spurred this special meeting to appoint an interim city attorney and put out a request for proposals (RFP) to find his successor.

Also noticeably absent was anyone from the COLDNews, who usually sends Riley Kelley to cover the bimonthly meetings and anybody else of note in the audience, which consisted of two young women attending their first ever clowncil meeting and nobody else other than myself.  

It was revealed that Alvarado would effectively serve as the interim city attorney for Scottville until the end of the year, relaxing his terms of resignation out of the prospect that he could still live up to his name as the Chilean fee-chaser.  Clowncilor Rob Alway moved to table the appointment of the interim city attorney and the rest agreed that having Alvarado serve until they appoint another attorney later this year would be the way to go.

The clowncil then agreed to the RFP used two years ago to find Alvarado, changing merely the date as to when to apply by (in this case October 10, 2022).  After voting unanimously to use the old RFP, the meeting had public comment.  I began by hammering away at their continued violation of the Scottville City Charter, effectively the Constitution of Scottville, by placing the comment period out of order in the meeting procedure, before reminding them how easy it is for their resigning officers to disobey the law and how easy it is for them to permit and defend such violations.  As a visual aid, I brought my chart which summarized section 7.6 of the charter:

XLFD:  "My chart is back and hopefully your next city attorney will understand that the city charter is a blueprint for city officers to follow, not to ignore.  Once you ignore one part of the charter, it becomes a lot easier for you to violate the rest of the charter with impunity.  The charter lays out a procedure for regular and special meetings that NEEDS to be obeyed if you wish to remain true to your oaths of office.  Hearing of the citizens comes before new and old business, reports, and even reading of correspondence. 

The only, ONLY way you can change this is through suspending it at a meeting in accordance with parliamentary procedures.  For those of you officials from Scottville, that means at the top of the meeting you must have a commissioner make a motion to suspend regular procedures to move the comment period, then have it seconded and then have a majority of those present vote to do so.  As representatives of the people-- supposedly-- any commissioner voting to mute the people's voice before the meeting's business should show the people that the clowncil would rather act on their behalf before they actually listen to the people, a totally ridiculous concept in a republic.  

It's not surprising that this corrupt policy you have taken for the last year and a half comes at the same time you are taking legal advice from a guy who received his juris doctor degree at Santiago, Chile during the peak of the autocratic reign of the military dictator Pinochet.  This was the same legal genius that thought it was alright to form an impromptu investigation committee on July 27 made up of himself, the mayor, and the city manager to interview Chief Murphy to better understand controversies that came to a head on July 25. Section 7.8 of the charter says:

"The Commission, or any person or committee authorized by it for the purpose, shall have power to inquire into the conduct of any department, office or officer and to make investigations..."

This commission failed to authorize such a committee at their July 25th meeting, the committee was formed in violation of the city charter, the unofficial committee acting with full commission powers met in violation of the Open Meetings Act.  In such a scofflaw environment, is it any surprise that Chief Murphy, who is currently being sued for destroying public records showing evidence of a crime, wiped all of the public records from his official computer and other devices?  And is it any surprise that Mr. Alvarado would twice withhold public records associated with commissioners reading a written statement made during regular commission meetings?  Thank you."  {END}

Frankly, Mayor Marcy Spencer, as chairman of the meeting should have made a motion to suspend the standard meeting procedure because no less than six of the normal routines were not performed in this non-regular session.  

I brought up Alvarado's educational history not out of some sort of bias against Chilean attorneys, but because of a bias against what they would have been teaching him about law at the Universidad de Chile where he graduated in October 1980 with a juris doctor degree.  General Augusto Pinochet led a coup against the democratically elected government in 1973 and remained in power until 1990.  His reign is remembered for human rights violations and for overturning the Chilean constitution for his own ends. 

Assuming Alvarado took four years to get his law degree in Chile's capitol, he learned the law at the same time and the same place that Pinochet was making his own laws that needed to be followed after executing thousands of his countrymen and torturing tens of thousands.  In Alvarado's credit, he was able to come to America sometime after 1984 and get further law and business administration degrees from Michigan universities, but the Chilean laws that allow what Americans call public meetings and public records to be kept secret from the public still seem to have a home inside his mind.

Alvarado has shown that he is willing to impose his own flawed laws by assuring the council that they can ignore the city charter and he can ignore the FOIA and OMA at will.  It will be a great day for the citizens of Scottville when Alvarado is officially gone, because he is an opportunist who has earned more in his two years than prior City Attorney Tracy Thompson earned in his last six years, while doing much less and getting the City into a lot of legal trouble.  

Lastly, when Riley Kelley received a recording of the July 27th meeting, it showed quite plainly that Alvarado, Spencer, and City Manager Jimmy Newkirk conducted an investigation of a city official, asking Chief Matt Murphy multiple questions about his official conduct.  As noted, officials can only be investigated by the city commission or a person or committee they have empowered to conduct such investigation.  A committee using governmental authority for a government function needs to follow the Open Meetings Act by publishing notice of the meeting, inviting the public, etc.

The investigation looked at the erasure and/or concealment of (potentially) a lot of public records by Matt Murphy in a rather considerable breach of the public trust.  This was covered up by these meeting participants for the two regular August meetings held on the 8th and 22nd.  At those meetings, Commissioners Yeomans and Graham and the rest of the public were apparently left out of the loop of knowing this criminal activity, even after their staunch defense of the chief. 

Mayor Spencer has known this fact for over a month and has said nothing to her constituents in the city who voted her in, even when her fellow councilors were advocating on behalf of their criminal chief of police.  She and others in the know remained mute.  Their priority should be to find an interim police chief and put out an RFP for that position in order to find somebody who can at least give the appearance that they are following the law.

But stuff like that didn't bother to be placed on this special meeting, which is why Scottville government will remain dysfunctional and a liability to the good folks of the city.

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Ouch! Yeow! Or maybe in Chilean "ay dios mio" ... you summed it up with more than usual frankness, X. The part that sticks out with me is that Alvarado made more taxpayer money in two years than Tracy Thompson did IN SIX YEARS -- with confusion and wrong advice. I will have a little mercy that Alvarado studied during Pinochet's reign and maybe that added to his desire to flee but I've heard him in recent past in Ludington waffle and complicate matters and strain to make a wrong point so I can believe that his fees have been tripled by that accent that seems to take on an air of pretending to understand or not understand as it meets his purpose.

If Attorney Alvarado had been a freedom fighter, or even just a freedom seeker, back when he was in Chile, I think he would have stayed and fought for his oppressed countrymen using his law degree for improving the lot of the people.  He got out though, came to Michigan, and started plying his trade.  I could give him the benefit of the doubt that he migrated due to reasonable circumstances if he came here to use his skills for the oppressed here or abroad, but I don't see a lot of proof of that.  In his last seven years as FOIA Coordinator for the City of Ludington, he has argued (usually unconvincingly) that true public records are exempt for disclosure, even when the rationale is very suspect. 

As the Scottville City Attorney, he has toyed with both the FOIA and the OMA, helping the oppressive government from coming clean with the people while making quite a nest egg for himself.  Tracy Thompson, the prior CA for Scottville, was flawless in keeping the COS in line with these laws and others for all of the ten years I was keeping track of Scottville.  Neither he nor former City Manager Amy Williams ever tried to shield records or meetings from the public, at least to my knowledge, and that's why it wasn't a clowncil during their time, but a commission.

Very good article and information X. Actions of the Governing body of Scottville along with questionable advice from their attorney is sticking it to the citizens.

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