Ludington City Council February 14, 2022: Spreading the Love

[XLFD]

All officials were present at the Valentine's Day meeting in 2022, perhaps because they also had a committee of the whole meeting 90 minutes before this one was convened.  On the agenda was nine action items, but they scratched a contract amendment for work on the wastewater treatment plant due to its readiness.  

One of the action items was to award the sidewalk replacement contract to Ruggles and Son, the city's current contractor over the last three years.  The councilor's packet showed the rates they would be charging over the next year (renewable at the same rate for two more years if both parties are willing) without comparison to the prior amount.  The small increase over the prior rate was fairly modest given the recent rates of inflation, but this wasn't among the data given to the councilors.  Ruggles originally got the contract because they had a falling out with the previous contractor, Kevin Spuller, whose bid was significantly less than the Ruggles' offer.

During the first comment period, I spoke of this:

XLFD:  "On p. 106 of your packets you have a memorandum from DPW Supervisor Joe Stickney regarding the sidewalk replacement contract.  Three years ago, I came before this council multiple times to inform the City that they were violating the city charter by performing sham competitive bidding processes.  They had four contractors bid on this contract, the low bid was 16% below Ruggles offer, and yet the council chose Ruggles & Sons because they had a hunch that they might do better, and offered no proof of that whim.  

If we assume eighty sidewalks are repaired or constructed every year and that sidewalk expenditures remain constant each year, that 16% equates to 40 lots unrepaired or not constructed during the last three years solely due to the council's violation of their city charter.  This time around, Joe Stickney doesn't provide the council with a choice of four contractors, he provides only one:  Ruggles & Sons.  There is no indication he has bothered to use the competitive bidding process in his memo.  The city website has the notice for bidding on the sidewalk construction contract in 2019, but not for this time around.  

The City's Facebook page did have a post on January 25th advertising for bids on sidewalk construction and two other service contracts.  Yet if you look at p. 108 of your packets you see that Ruggles & Sons had already submitted their proposed bid one day before that.  Obviously, they had an insider advantage to be able to supply a bid before any other contractors knew about it.  Not to mention few contractors would be looking on social media for potential contracts with the City, figuring those would be offered on their official website as they have been.

I have to say it one more time.  Competitive bidding is not that difficult.  You put out a request for proposals with specifications of what's needed on your website or other media that will attract the notice of the contractors you're after.  The more contractors, the better.  You then select the lowest qualified bid.  The only reason you wouldn't select the lowest qualified bid is that you have specific criteria in your RFPs that give weight to other considerations.  

When you don't choose the low bid, as you did in 2019, and when you don't look for competing bids, like you are doing here in 2022, the City is violating their covenant with the people of this town, and the city charter.  I don't care if you want to kiss up to State Senator VanderWall by hiring his fertilizing company when the other companies bid lower  Do your job, save the people's money, follow the law, show your integrity.  Thank you. [END]"

Typically, the officials present would ignore the facts of the matter I present, either that or wait until after the second public comment period to share their own set of 'facts' that would be indisputable at that point.  Mayor Steve Miller made the mistake to address the facts during the time they were discussing the issue, leaving me the opportunity to refute him later in the meeting:

Mayor Miller (1:14:15): (to City Manager Foster):  "The bid process was not changed between this and any other year? (No, I don't believe so).  The year before that? (Previous bidding process. No, not that I'm aware of).  So it's the same process. We had one bidder this year and for those who... I'll explain this the best I can. The bid process goes to the lowest qualified bidder, and when the change was made from the previous sidewalk company to Ruggles & Son, there was a quality and timing issue that they could not guarantee was not going to happen again and that alone left them less than qualified.  So the city moved on, there was no secret process, there was no state senator involved, there was nothing of the kind. Everything was done above board, any further questioning, my door is always open."

It wasn't the same process, and that can be verified by looking at the City website.  As noted, there was no notice or bid packet on that site this time around, three years ago, however, that 2019 bid packet is still there as seen above.  As noted previously, Ruggles work on new construction can be about 40% higher than Spuller Concrete, but they were overlooked for reasons that didn't pan out.  As noted here, I did a FOIA request in 2019 to check on Spuller's work the prior two years.  The complaints were minor, the sidewalks I checked out were done professionally.  At least a majority of the councilors saw no evidence of problems and voted on the DPW superintendent's general recommendation in 2019 to ignore the low bid.

I reminded them at the beginning of my comment at the end of the meeting about Senator VanderWall and their complicity in a very corrupt act:  "State Senator Curt Vanderwall's contract was for weed control and fertilization and this council voted totally for him when he had a much higher contract bid than a qualified bidder who had bid better than him."

Senator VanderWall swore an oath to support and defend the Michigan Constitution, his company's contract with the City of Ludington violated that Constitution Article IV, Section 10:  No member of the legislature nor any state officer shall be interested directly or indirectly in any contract with the state or any political subdivision thereof which shall cause a substantial conflict of interest.  That he received the contract without the low bid shows an incredible amount of corruption was involved.  In both the Ruggles and VanderWall case, the taxpayers were screwed over by the actions of Ludington City Hall voting against the competitive bidding process and for cronyism.

One feature of the night's meeting was Sharon Bradley-Johnson of the Tree Advisory Board giving their annual report for 2021.  Before she would leave the podium, the council would root for her telling them about Ludington's Tree City status and why they weren't planting any more maple trees.

The committees themselves had three action items, one effectively authorizing signatories for street reconstructions on Washington and Water Streets, another approving the upgrading of the fire station's floor by the contractors who installed it, and the last approving a lot split at 215 S James Street.  These had little controversy about them at the meeting, more about them is in the packet.

City Manager Mitch Foster spoke of a recent meeting where the public came in to give input on how to spend ARPA funds totaling around $850K.    A 'mayor-and council' exchange set for some time this summer was planned with the City of Holland, basically an excuse for each to vacation in the other city. 

An item that evoked some discussion was two lots on Monona Street given to the City by the Cartier family with a restricted deed to set up a playground there.  Despite having a lot of playground equipment coming to them from the school sales, the City hasn't developed the lots and were hoping to get a less restrictive deed that might allow for some development.  Reportedly, this hasn't been approved, and if the City does want to do something other than what's on the deed, the property would revert back to the Cartiers.  City Attorney Ross Hammersley spoke of options, the council was a bit unsure of how to proceed.  In the final comment period, the only other speaker this night, Annette Quillan, would give them the best counsel:  let the two lots revert back to the Cartiers, let them maintain and pay taxes on the lots until they decide to sell them.

The council then approved a resolution to redraw the ward boundaries to reflect the findings of the 2020 census, which indicates the city population has reduced by about 5%, losing 421 from its 8081 totals in 2010.  Frankly, I think the person who was the census crew leader in Ludington for 2010 did a much better job in getting the heads counted (disclosure:  yours truly was that person).

They awarded bids for sidewalks to the lone bidder who submitted their bid before the notice was put up on social media only before they approved many of the 2022 events including:  the 4th annual Blessing of the Boats, the Petunia Parade, and the host of annual DDA-sponsored events. 

After correcting the mayor on why our state senator is relevant in showing that the city council is not interested in true competitive bidding of contracts, in my second public comment, I reiterated a concern, a concern that remained unaddressed by the end of the night.

XLFD:  "I asked for an explanation at the last city council meeting as to the hiring of a firefighter who had an extensive felony record, one who had lied by omission on his application, and one who never had a formal interview conducted with him, according to the records.  This twentysomething firefighter had multiple property crimes and crimes of violence on his life resume that he failed to disclose on his application, but by the City's deafening silence over the last three weeks, they show that they would rather have me continue to bring up the issue meeting after meeting showing that city officials are apathetic about realistic concerns the public has with the City hiring a career felon who lied on his application about his felonious past involving theft, violence and drug use.  Thank you."

I was also going to add another paragraph of comment in regard to another bad actor among our city officials, but I decided to wait until a later date where I might have a better confirmation of their misdeeds.  One doesn't want to spread the love around too thinly on Valentine's Day.

[Willy]

Thanks for the information X. You always do a great job of reporting on City Council meetings. It seems that the  current Council, just like past Councils has a hard time doing the right thing. If ever there was a  barometer type of situation that reveals cronyism and corruption by a public body it will always be revealed in the contractor bidding process. This is the one area that is hard for corruption to hide as long as the record keeping is honest. The silence of the City regarding it's  newly hired firefighter says volumes about the character of those that run the fire department. The firefighter did some bad things and will have to live with the consequences of his actions, but he's not the problem here. He asked for a job and was given one. The real problem is with the Fire Dept. bosses who ignored the basic standards of honesty, transparency and integrity. Maybe they should come forward and ask the public to forgive them for acting in a totally unprofessional manner. Maybe the City should create a citizens panel to help the Fire and Police departments  adhere to a strict set of guidelines regarding the employment of emergency personnel. 

[XLFD]

I must commend Mayor Miller for doing something at this meeting that nobody on the council ever bothers to do: defend their own cronyism.  At the meeting they chose Ruggles over Spuller, I chastised them for considering what they were planning but all they came out with was unproved generalities about Spuller.  Any specific instance of Spuller overcharging, doing bad work, or being difficult to work with was totally absent even after a couple of FOIAs.  DPW Supervisor Joe Stickney's main beef, it seemed, was that Spuller fell behind in billing the City and did not allow them to spend all the City's sidewalk money one year (coinciding with the year that Kevin Spuller's brother died).  Had he charged what Ruggles charges, he would have easily went through all of that money and accomplished less.

In our early years, the LT actually lambasted the City for hiring Spuller every time, absent a competitive bidding process; they are now doing that with Ruggles.  The collective hive mind of our elected city leaders seems to believe that buying the more expensive thing is going to deliver you a better product.  We probably all know that type of person who reflexively buy an inferior product at a higher price and cannot be convinced that a less expensive one can possibly be better. 

[XLFD]

Unfortunately, a citizen's panel would be about as useful to the City of Ludington as their Board of Ethics currently is.  Two years of forced compliance by government agencies at all levels should have taught all of us that our self-government experiment has gone awry; our governments would rather enslave than empower us and we need to invoke the inner revolutionary in all of us to reset the government to the proper level.  That's exactly why we should be voting against the city charter committee forming, because the goal of it (mark my words) will be to give less accountability to city hall.

[Willy]

Your right LL. This originated with Agenda 21 and has since spread like a cancer.

[XLFD]

Interesting, I've been naturally suspicious of this city official-initiated attempt to adapt the charter with just a few generalities of 'clarifying' the charter.  I will be urging the folks to vote 'no' on creating the charter committee, but I have also picked up the paperwork for being a write-in candidate for the Charter Committee, just in case my efforts fail.  

Lady, please craft an article showing your assertions so that those who think your fears are unfounded will be able to better see your point.