Ludington City Council, July 27, 2026: The Battle Against the Taxpayers

[XLFD]

The agenda packet for the July 27, 2026 meeting of the Ludington City Council had only a couple of action items on the agenda, both uncontroversial.  Citizen input was minimal accordingly, including this reporter's physical absence for a third consecutive time, with only Tom Sanders weighing in only during the first period, pointing out insufficiencies of city policy and police in regard to golf carts and downtown dumpsters, check it out at 8:00 into the meeting.

Despite this the meeting lasted around 90 minutes, and that length wasn't due to the previously mentioned action items.  The first of those was to approve of a contractor for street paving, and this was unsurprisingly awarded to Rieth Riley, but what was surprising was that they actually checked out other local sources for competitive bidding and showed that RR was the low bid by including the bids in the packet.  

The second action was to adopt a lead line replacement policy to partially reimburse those who would be changing out their own lead lines in the future rather than wait for the city and its contractor to do it.  Some have already performed such projects, and it was explained that since they did so before this policy was enacted (as it was this evening) they could not take advantage of it.  If you do plan to take such corrective action before the city contractor gets around to it, you may want to contact city hall to find out whether and what they can reimburse you for doing this.

There was also a first reading of the new golf cart and ATV ordinance expected to be passed at the next meeting.  Councilor Cheri Stibitz wondered whether the wording of this ordinance would prohibit her from driving her own golf cart in the outer drive of Stearns Park and she was told by Police Thief Jones that it wouldn't.  The problem is that the ordinance is worded such that it is illegal to do so.  When one responsibly passes a law, they must do so with the understanding that every law enforcement officer in the future will base their police actions on the wording of the law you just passed.

Nobody expects that Councilor (and potentially mayor) Stibitz will be fined for driving into and parking at Stearns as she regularly does, but that doesn't mean that some poorly trained beach patrol officer reading the law as worded might stop her or others and have to face a $500 fine for violating this ordinance as worded.   There are several other portions of the ordinance in reference to golf carts and ATVs that show similar acts of negligent crafting, some that test the statute that allows a city to create rules for such vehicles, but the city has chosen more control and less consistency.

You may wonder what took up the rest of the time; that turned out to be a presentation by Brian Camiller of Plante-Moran on "revenue opportunities".  When one listens to the presentation, it is obvious that Mr. Camiller has done quite a bit of research and consulting work for the City of Ludington, and when we look at the public record we find that Plante-Moran has been working on this project and reporting to the city on it since at least February.  

One would assume such a consulting contract would require council approval under our city charter.  Similar consultation projects have been in the range of $15,000- $30,000 and before our current city manager came in, they were approved by the council.  The record shows this wasn't approved, not even in committee (which would also be in violation of the Open Meetings Act).

Brian Camiller is the person who sold the Finance Committee on the Property Tax Administration Fee as a needed way to perk up the city's revenue, and we would find out during this presentation that he even suggested having citizens vote to raise tax rates (from 10.8 mills to 12 mills) and even selling Cartier Park as a potential way to offset potential revenue woes.  If that doesn't suggest that the advice he gives them is questionable, he starts off by confidently telling us that Ludington's problems are not due to paying out expenses, but in gathering more revenue.  It seems likely that he was a devout proponent of leasing city vehicles too, even when we had a full fleet.

Mr. Camiller also suggests the council look into a special assessment (aka a new tax) to help get them out of their alleged revenue crunch.  Public Act 33 of 1951 is a state law that allows cities with 15,500 people or less to fund police and fire protection, create special assessment districts, and collect emergency service fees. It does not have to go for a vote by the people, the only recourse they have is to speak up at a public hearing and potentially do a referendum under certain conditions.

The public (and presumably the council) is unable to gauge the wisdom of this contractor who appear to be hired illegally because his findings, research, and evaluations are not to be found anywhere in the council packet.  What we have here, presumably, is a contractor coming before a council who they have never formally hired and telling them all about their unsupported opinions without providing any data other than what they say.  

The Ludington Torch has sent out a FOIA request asking for public records showing how the Plante-Moran contract came into being w/o council approval and for all of the materials they have provided the city with, in response to the obligations under contract.  Plante-Moran has been advising city leaders to keep grabbing for more and more money from the people through taxes, "fees", and "special assessments", and doing it unlawfully and without seeking any input from the public. 

The public should be greatly upset that their leaders are doing it this highly unethical way, as they should be that the council has already hiked tax rates earlier this July and adopted that Property Tax Administrative Tax in June.  To our knowledge, nobody has gone to city hall during this time to demand more services from city officials, nor would they be successful in such an enterprise; so why the continuous raiding of our pockets?

[Freedom Seeker]

Is this Camilier advice another under-the-table deal by the city manager?

[XLFD]

I will let you know when my FOIA response is granted, provided the city manager doesn't assign a massive price for the records and effectively blocks it that way.  What bothers me is that nobody in the council is eer outwardly upset when she usurps their powers.