The Place Where Ludington Talks
Turf Care War
At the March 22, 2021 Finance Committee meeting, City Manager Mitch Foster had researched some of the 'allegations' I made at the beginning of the March 8th council meeting regarding the City's dealings with Turf Care/Mole Man, owned and operated by State Senator Curt VanderWall (below). I had prepared an article about the improprieties called Fertilizing Corruption with Senator VanderWall.
My two main points was that State Senator Curt VanderWall's contract with the City of Ludington was unconstitutional and that he was charging the City for services that had not yet been performed, in violation of the existing contract's terms. And they were substantial services amounting to over $6650, primarily for pest control.
Back on April 27, 2020, in the midst of the worst of the early pandemic, the city council voted in a virtual session to bypass the much lower bid of Tru-Green to contract with Senator VanderWall's company for fertilization/weed control services. Some of those differences were fairly significant, as in weed control, even though the comparison given to the councilors that night showed Tru-Green submitted no bid for it:
The records I received through FOIA shortly thereafter, however, indicated that Tru-Green initially figured in the weed control treatment with the other services, and when pressed they gave a much lower figure for spray treatments than Turf Care, ten days before the 'no pricing provided' document was given to each councilor
Turf Care is charging the City of Ludington nearly 20 times more than what TruGreen offered for that service, despite Turf Care's owner being Constitutionally prohibited from contracting with a political subdivision of his district, the city where he lives! The City of Ludington is definitely complicit in this illicit relationship.
Which leads me back to the Finance Committee meeting. They approved paying off these invoices of $6650 for jobs not performed yet on March 8th, so it should come as no surprise that they would be ignoring the bigger issues, but they even decided to minimize the smaller issues as far as price. Recall, at the council meeting, I noted: "In the last ten months, I have added up all of the bills paid to Turf Care and it has amounted to $22,476"
Somebody else at city hall has a much different calculator:
The City's claim is that for the 12 months of 2020, they paid $12,700 to Turf Care. I claim that from May 2020 to March 2021 (ten months) they paid $22,467. These are contractual terms for work performed between May 1 and October 31 each year of the 3 year contract, which means for each of our time ranges, they should include only charges made between May and October 2020, and nothing else, since that's the only time the contracted work is performed and billed no earlier than May 15, 2020 and no later than November 15, 2020.
That doesn't happen to be the case, but it still doesn't explain why Mr. Foster's and my figures are about $10,000 different. So I will itemize, using the City's own paying of the bills records:
Meeting Fund Amount
May 18, 2020: 594 $310.40
594 1600.50
595 426.80
595 1731.45
Subtotal: $4069.15
June 22, 2020: 265 690.00
265 310.00
595 110.00
595 595.00
Subtotal: $1705.00
July 13, 2020: 265 37.45
276 492.00
276 99.00
336 27.82
441 40.66
751 2039.33
211 10.70
556 167.31
592 39.06
594 174.23
Subtotal: $3127.56
August 10, 2020: 265 40.86
268 26.75
276 492.00
276 99.00
336 27.82
751 1544.33
211 10.70
591 39.06
556 167.31
592 39.06
594 174.23
Subtotal: $2661.10
September 14, 2020: 268 $877.50
October 26, 2020: 265 40.66
268 26.75
276 99.00
276 99.00
336 27.82
441 40.66
751 2039.33
751 531.00
211 10.70
492 10.70
591 39.06
556 167.31
592 39.06
594 174.23
Subtotal: $3385.28
Between May and October 2020, adding up the subtotals gets $15,825.59, much higher than Foster's tally for 2020, and that's not adding slightly less than $3000 charged total in February and March 2020, which fall outside the contract terms, just like the $6650 charged this March. Mitch Foster's calculation is actually about $6000 less than what was charged to the City by Senator VanderWall's company back in 2020, meaning he represented a figure that was about 2/3 of reality. That dramatic underreporting of spent funds should make everybody who lives in Ludington additionally concerned.
My calculations, if I did the math properly, add up to the over $22,000 charged in the last ten months I commented on. It's still inexplicable why Senator VanderWall would be charging the City for prospective services, in opposition to the contract he signed with the City of Ludington which only allowed him to charge for work actually performed. I guess it gets a lot easier when he totally ignores following the Michigan Constitution as a state senator.
Views: 546
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Freedom Seeker on
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I'm glad that Mitch Foster is looking into the matter. It's a lot better than being denied, defied and derided (as would most likely have been done in the previous CM administration). But it looks like more explaing needs to be done by the city and the senator.
Was there an attempt at an explanation of the "alleged" unconstitutionality of him making a contract with the city while in office?
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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Agreed that it is a better environment for these exposures. To answer your question, both city officials and the senator have not addressed the Constitutionality of this contract, both have been pressed on the issue and decided that their sworn oaths to support the Constitution means nothing. Senator VanderWall took the extra unconstitutional step of muting me at his official Facebook page.
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“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” - Plato
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Please elaborate on any mathematical errors and the new total. I did the math by hand, so I admit a potential fallibility in that regard, but I also did a mental estimation, which came out to just under $16,000 for May-October 2020.
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Permalink Reply by Willy on
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He may just be referring to the theory that whatever corruption is exposed, it can be subject to the corruption formula. That is, whatever the final tally of cost to the taxpayer, that figure should be squared to reveal the exact amount of stolen tax dollars.
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I'm still not there, I add the five subtotals and the one $877.50 charge in September and get the $15,825 sum.
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Hey, TheXFL2 we're waiting for your answer and while your at it explain your name. That alone deserves an explanation.
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Thanks for the explanation xfl2. Just wondering if you are referring to the women's xfl or the men's? As long as neither league kneels for the National Anthem I would watch them both, especially the ladies since they are attired in what mostly looks like underwear. By the way I'm still wondering how you came up with a different number than X?
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Waiting2.
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