Time to Step Up for Scottville

[XLFD]

By this time, citizens of Scottville are getting numbed by the instability at city hall, with their city officials playing musical chairs over the last few years and may expect the worst now that the dust has cleared, a budget shortfall of about half a million has appeared and the former mayor and mayor pro tem has quietly galloped away into the sunset.  

At the November 11, 2024 commission meeting, many of these realities were focused on, but coming off a meeting where about a dozen citizens excoriated the commission for eliminating what remains of the Scottville Police Department, the issues of how to reach solvency was postponed for perhaps the better since the commission was down to five people, with no clear idea who would take over as mayor and pro tem.  With that and two regular vacancies unfilled, it was clear there would be no tough decisions on this night other than what was already on the agenda.  

The meeting started with the commissioners voting on mayor and their successor to what limited power they have (the city charter has a 'weak' mayor system form of government).  The five remaining commissioners, perhaps in a show of unity, chose both spots uncontested and unanimously from amongst them.  Dixie Spore would be the new mayor, with Randy Wyman as her second.

In an audience of at least three dozen people, I politely asked the new mayor to restore the right of the people to be able to speak openly during the first public comment period rather than having the arbitrary restriction to speak only on agenda items (as seen on agendas over the last year).  This is a very good test to determine whether this new administration's ethos is to serve the people or not; if they decide not to change the policy, then they consider their business as more important than yours.  Even Ludington decided to scrap their experiment into content restrictions of first comments, so hopefully for Scottville citizens, they will allow an open forum.

I would put a similar bug in the ear for another change in policy to Commissioner Eric Thue after the meeting, to move the commissioner meetings back to the first and third Monday nights.  For time before the city charter was created, Scottville held their meetings on those evenings, and the reason they were moved to the same time as Ludington's city council meetings by former Mayor Marcy Spencer was to avoid having a certain person come in from Ludington and tell her how badly she was busting the Scottville charter, and how the city was violating other laws. 

With Mason County's two cities holding their council meetings on the same night at the same time and 8 miles apart, it prohibits them from a host of collaborative efforts and stimies people, officials, and businesses who have interests in both.  This should be an easy decision to make for the coming calendar year and will be another test to see whether Mayor Spore has the best interests of the city in her heart.

The first new business actions that night would be to declare vacancies of the two commissioner spots unfilled by election.  This declaration was already decided by charter when those vacancies actually started the prior night at 7:30 PM, when the old terms ended and the new terms began.  Either way, the city commission will need to fill those vacancies by their regular meeting on December 9th.  

For those citizens of Scottville who thought they were too opinionated and politically incorrect to be elected as a commissioner, this is your chance to show us what you would do to get Scottville back on track.  All you need to do is go to city hall, apply, bring in another like-minded firebrand if you wish, and your chance to serve the community with the common sense you haven't seen a lot of will be yours for the taking.  Do it only for the betterment of the community you love, because you won't earn much, and you'll likely come under fire when you have to make the cuts and/or raise the fees.

Interim City Manager Clarence Goodlein would lead by example this evening, taking a pay/benefit cut of $18,000 by having the city's 457 contribution to his account suspended.  Sacrifices like this are what the city will need in order to succeed.  What won't help is having outdated beliefs and stricter-than-needed zoning get in the way of progress in Scottville.  I ran into County Commissioner Lew Squires, serving the Scottville area, at the gas station on my way home from the meeting, and we had a discussion of how these aspects were affecting businesses trying to move into Scottville, despite the internal instability. 

On the other hand, after the meeting I chatted with business immigrants from Ludington, Garth and Sandy Lemire, who have found a new home for their new business and a less obnoxious police force in Scottville.  With dispensaries and the Stallion Mill in the future, Scottville could find themselves in a wholly new position in the future if it all works out, but it's definitely not a given, and it will be only more difficult if the city commission doesn't work more for the better good, rather than become a continuing uncertainty that scares prospective businesses away and makes citizens move away due to rising fees, water and sewer rates, and dysfunction at city hall.  Those W&S rates are likely to go up once the study they authorized at this meeting is finished, just like they are in the W&S source (Ludington) so buckle up.

Citizens showed during the second comment period that they still don't want to eliminate the SPD, one even making claims against Wyman for having his mind already made up about the issue, which he stridently denied at the end of the meeting.  One hopes that with the larger crowds that the Scottville Commission meetings, there will be a pool of reasonable candidates for the commission to choose from, and that they will be able to apply by either going to the Scottville City Hall and formally applying or sending an email to the city clerk with your intentions and either a resume or a brief bio explaining why you want to be a commissioner. 

Scottville's future could very well be in your hands. 

[Willy]

What? How on Earth can a small burg like Scottville be $500,000 in the hole. That poor town needs to do some soul searching and then hire an auditor to figure out what went wrong. This would be the equivalent of Grand Rapids coming up short $73,000,000 or Detroit digging for $235,000,000 to cover expenses. What happened here? Are ex city officials sunning themselves on a tropical beach somewhere living off absconded funds or is this just some monumental screw up? Either way this is going to cost the citizens of Scottiville a bundle to clear up this mess. There might be one way to solve this problem.

[XLFD]

If one looks at why Scottville got so deep into the hole, you need to go back to the forcing out of former city manager Courtney Magaluk during the pandemic.  I still haven't figured out why they went after her, because an investigation shown at worse, she procrastinated on a couple of issues.  Mark it up to office politics.  This ushered in a disastrous half year with Police Chief Matt Murphy stepping in, and then the hiring of someone with no municipal experience at all, Jimmy Newkirk, who probably discovered some of Murphy's own excesses, which was one reason why there wasn't a big hue and cry when Murphy moved on.

Under Newkirk, the excess spending started to happen, including but not limited to:  hiring a very expensive city attorney, starting up building and rental inspection services and expecting it to be funded by fees.  He is alleged to have fronted $50,000 to the Stallion Mill for a grant of the same amount that never got approved.