Ludington City Council April 26th, 2021: Cockroach spirit gods

[XLFD]

A moderate amount of items were on the agenda of the 4-26-2021 Ludington City Council meeting, held virtually, but if I were able to have hung around the virtual council chambers afterwards, like one can do at a regular meeting, I would have asked a couple questions. 

Where was City Manager Mitch Foster?  Everybody's entitled to miss a meeting here or there, and Foster has had a good attendance record, but there was a couple actions that made one wonder why he wasn't present.  They voted without discussion to give another person the title of 'acting city manager' in a motion, with limited powers to sign documents during the absence of Foster, and during the motion they gave no indication who this replacement was to be (or why was it necessary).  Councilor Cain finally asked that question, and it was the assistant city manager, Jackie Steckel.  

Through the discussion we learned that Foster was out of town, but no mention of him being on vacation was heard.  We also didn't learn why he could not sign the necessary documents that may come up regarding building projects from whatever remote location he was at through the use of technology.  A review of his social media accounts shows that he hasn't added any content since April 22, nor has he replied to an email and Facebook message in his usually prompt manner.

Nobody would blame him for going on a rustic vacation where he could ditch tech for a week or so and enjoy himself.  His position has a lot of pressure coming from a variety of different areas of the community and state.  But why would the rest of the council dance around the various questions his absence raises, as if it was some secret only they were in on?

Who actually attended this meeting?  Ludington seems to be wanting to go down the same path Scottville is going in their virtual meetings.  This meeting they tried a totally new way of doing things to make these virtual outings less interesting to the public.  The council fully enjoyed this new anti-participation format, praising its mother, Heather Tykoski. 

The public notice tells us ""Gallery view” tiles all of the meeting participants."   The definition of "participant" is a person who takes part in something.  At least two city officials participating in this meeting were not represented by tiles, for that matter, other than the councilors, the city attorney and city clerk, nobody was represented by a tile, even though the 'facilitator' Heather Tykoski indicated she was aware of at least one non-official participating.  Tykoski and LPD's Steve Wietrzykowski were those officials adding content to the meeting, but participating off-camera, in violation of the public notice's stated policy.  

At the last meeting, the council adopted a resolution (not supplied with the agenda) adopting the County's local state of emergency) explaining their rules for remote meetings.  Among the rules was that if the councilors were participating remotely, they had to indicate where they were participating from (rule C4).  This is also the law under the Michigan Open Meetings Act.  None of the councilors indicated their location, it appeared Councilor Stibitz may be in Scottville.  

If the City of Ludington is going to perpetuate a 'local state of emergency' just so they can hold these public meetings remotely and fritter away accessibility to the citizens, they should at least make these meetings comply with the rules and spirit of the OMA.  Citizen participants want to see who attends these meetings and who doesn't.  They don't want their councilor on a month long vacation at Florida or Abu Dhabi checking in on these meetings and making policy without telling us their conflict.   They don't want their councilor engaging in risky behavior during their life, then vote for remote meetings when regular meetings are comparatively safer.  This was part of my second comment, made just after the council voted unanimously to extend their emergency meetings to the next council meeting

XLFD:  (55:00 in)  "The City has been conducting virtual meetings for the better part of a year and I've yet to hear one councilor show any concern that about 30% of their constituents cannot attend such meetings, nor that they would work to improve that statistic.  They would rather dwell on the much smaller subset of people that are homebound or in another geographic location that can now participate in council meetings because of this format.  In the three times that the city council has met in person since last April, they have yet to develop a hybrid meeting that could allow both groups to participate in these meetings.

You people are supposed to be leaders of the community, but you people are just cowards.  You cancel in-person meetings due to a local state of emergency whose only basis is that public meetings are too big of a risk for spreading covid, yet nothing else is deemed to be risky in this so-called state of emergency.  That's why we see you unmasked and shoulder to shoulder with people not in your household conducting macrobiotic studies.  That's why we see you in Meijer's and Walmart amongst hundreds of people rather than the 15 you might see at a council meeting, masked and sitting separately.  That's why we see you unmasked and giving radio interviews in a cramped studio. 

We fully understand that you are brave enough to do all these things and a lot more things that are a lot more dangerous than going to a meeting chamber and just doing the job you were elected to do.  That's because we fully understand reprehensible hypocrisy when we see it and representative democracy when we don't see it."

It was amusing seeing Councilor Winczewski, the biggest proponent of virtual meetings lead off their own discussion with trepidations that would make Dr. Fauci proud, be reminded that she had been taking part in risky behavior, intentionally misrepresenting her study into 'macrobiotics'.

When battling against corruption and hypocrisy in government, you gotta have some fun at times. 

Most of the business this evening wasn't that controversial, and mostly beneficial in the long term to Ludington if you are on the belief that there is a housing problem.  They had a public hearing regarding the vacation of the Laura Street easement between George and James Street in order to facilitate parking for a proposed development.  Nobody had problems with it, much like they didn't back a dozen years ago when another development was slated in that general area.  They later did another easement issue at the Lofts-on-Rowe development to facilitate that project.

The only controversy of the night came when Councilor Les Johnson voted against the City authorizing officials to apply for MDOT right-of-way permits for the newly adopted social districts in Ludington, he did the same when social districts first came before the council.  

A few licensing update issues came up regarding building issues, basically updating the Ludington building codes to current standards rather than 20 year old dicta.  The mayor made an Arbor Day proclamation and an annual shout out to the Tree Advisory Council. 

The only other issue that made the rounds was the traffic control order for the two on-street parking lots to the east and west of the courthouse.  As I have noticed here over the weekend, the TCO is not compatible with ADA guidelines as pertains to parking lots and handicapped spaces.   Despite this educational primer and the encouragement I gave the council to amend this TCO to cover the outstanding issues, they passed the TCO unchanged, and with out meaningful discussion other than to point out that the south lot (which is in compliance) is the county's property.

Perhaps they were smarting from my acknowledging that I had spent quite a lot of time preparing my main brief for the court of appeals with Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act repercussions, and told them about the progress, including the two councilors mentioned by name in the lawsuit, David Bourgette and Cheri Stibitz (Rozelle), for intentional violations:

XLFD:  (3:10 in)  "Earlier today, I filed my appellant brief with the Michigan Appeals Court in order to inspect the minutes of two unlawfully-held closed sessions that took place in late 2019.  I am hopeful that the court will also remand the case back to our local court so that discovery and trial can be held to determine whether injunctive relief should be given and whether additional punitive measures are due to three councilors who took part in both illegal meetings. 

This council had total control over whether to disclose those non-exempt minutes last year and avoid these court procedures, which will be very expensive for the taxpayers, but you chose to be furtive, filthy, and fetid, true to your cockroach spirit God. 

I appreciate the police chief's recognition that the courthouse parking lots need to be upgraded to better meet ADA standards, but the proposed traffic control order does not go far enough.  Both the east and west lot should have two spaces each for handicapped parking, paint needs to be put on the pavement for those spaces, and the existing signage needs to be elevated at least a couple feet to meet those standards. 

Three years ago I helped prosecute a case at that same courthouse where similar ADA access issues came up concerning Copeyon Park.  When one sees the ADA issues existing then and now at the courthouse, you may get some idea of how we fared in that part of the case.  Please amend this traffic control order to correct all of the shortcomings currently existing there, they can be easily fixed at little cost. [END comment]"

Our city council is so short-sighted (particularly without Mitch Foster's participation) that they will do things improperly the first time, maybe even the second time, so that they make you pay for their easily spotted mistakes when they are forced to do it properly.  This is what is going to cost them at the appeals court as well as the parking lot of our local court.

[Willy]

Nice job on the milk carton X. Mitch looks almost like he could be on one of those cartons for real. He seems like a nice person who got involved with the wrong crowd [Ludington City Council]. The Left is milking the Covid situation for all it's worth. They are going to squeeze out every drop of politics they can muster. There should be no good reason not to explain why the City Manager was not in attendance. Mabye he is on Vacation or there's a family illness, he could be visiting Granholm or buying a vacation home in Detroit or who knows he could be having affairs with every woman who works at City Hall and just needs a break or he could be applying for the assistant City Manager's job in Scottville. Who knows. Without verification from the Council it's all up for speculation. 

[Freedom Seeker]

Good speech and points, X. Such hypocrisy in these virtual meetings. It is strange that the necessity of an appointment of an "acting city manager" doesn't give a necessity of a reasonable explanation for the absence of the city manager. Why the secrecy? Why no dates of absence given? For how long? Maybe HIPPA protects revelation of a hospital stay? Maybe Mitch has had enough of Ludington and is looking for a new job? I find Willy's speculations very amusing. Lack of straight and reasonable explanations tend to create wild speculations.