Ludington City Council April 13, 2026, Pt. 2: TNT and the Turf War

[XLFD]

In part one of our recap of this exciting April 13 meeting of the Ludington City Council we discussed what happened with the proposed PACE program and with a FOIA appeal that was never addressed.  As a follow-up, the local newspaper printed its own article the day after and chose to print most of this reporter's critiques of PACE in its piece, and reminded us that the city manager said the original request to adopt a district was inspired by "a private real estate transaction that is in progress and dependent on many factors".  

We were not told anything at the last meeting (review the minutes here) that PACER loans were primarily desired by those speculating in property development, likely looking for more public/private partnerships and grants to get as much money from the people as they could get for the purpose of making more money for themselves with a much smaller risk.  Current city administrators keep reminding us why the FOIA is a very important tool for people trying to actually find out what city hall is doing in the background, while misleading us serially.  This is why it means a lot when they destroy records and then try to cover up their crime by claiming exemptions that do not apply.

Penny Wise and Turf Careless

In this part two, we look first at the incredibly corrupted competitive bidding process that the city uses.  When used correctly, competitive bidding drives cost efficiency, ensures transparency, and fosters fair competition in public sector projects.  When true competitive bidding isn't used, you see inflated prices, lower quality work, increased potential for corruption, and lack of transparency. 

Fortunately, the city included their figures in the meeting packet and relevant parts of those graphics are shared here inside the comment I made at the meeting's end.  At that point, the council had approved each of the three bids for services made without any sort of deliberation, which was surprising due to the fact that neither followed the competitive bidding process.  This was summarized in this reporter's comment and will be analyzed further here.

XLFD:  (1:23:30 in)  "Ludington citizens couldn't help but notice that the council did competitive bidding separately for code enforcement mowing and city property mowing and voluntarily chose to not select the low bidder in each category, Motyka LLC, a Ludington lawn care company, and chose instead TNT Enterprize, an out-of-town company specializing in cleaning services.  Motyka offered enforcement mowing at 20% less per foot of frontage...

and property mowing more than 2% less than TNT. 

This is not competitive bidding, it is favoritism, and is a sign that your city is corrupt, if we didn't need any more signs than what we see happen here every other week.

Then we have this other bid for fertilization where competitive bidding was not even used, because let's face it, the owner of this company is career state congressman Curt VanderWall, and even though the state constitution explicitly prohibits his company from contracting with political subdivisions of the state without true competitive bidding taking place, this happens every three years.  If you wonder why other companies aren't bothering to bid Ludington for fertilizing contracts it's because they know the extent of the bullshit you pull every three years in order to curry favor with the "Honorable" Curt VanderWall.  Quit wasting our money and claiming indigence." [END comment]

ANALYSIS:  It was cathartic seeing the mayor and other city councilors being shocked immediately at my use of the term "bullshit" when the three contracts they approved wasting our money (the last one for spreading manure-based fertilizers) elicited no outrage from them. 

One can see code enforcement mowing, charged by the number of feet of street frontage on a property lot, will be charged $1.50 after the city chose TNT rather than the $1.25 Motyka offered.  This amounts to an extra $30 charge to a property owner with 120 feet of footage due to your council resorting to cronyism.  

Similarly, we see that TNT's quote of $57,100 for a year of city property mowing is nearly $1200 more than Motyka's $55,925.  No reason is given in the record or gave at the meeting to explain why a Ludington-based landscaping business who supplied the low bid in each category, one significantly lower, was overlooked and contracts were extended to a Scottville business specializing in cleaning.

As for Curt VanderWall's conflict of interest/violation of constitutional law, this topic came up back on March 13, 2023, an excerpt from the minutes of that meeting is shown, showing City Attorney Ross "Sewage" Hammersley's opinion at the time, an opinion at the time that we thought was mostly sound to suggest that 2023's bid was legal, but it did not explain why the 2020 bid met that level, as the city chose Turf Care over Tru-Green then, when the latter had significantly lower bids.  As there appears to be no effort to get competitive bids this year, this was just a rubber stamp no matter what VanderWall's company bid.

This year, there is nothing said at this meeting or in the record suggesting that the city went out looking for other agencies-- in reality, why would any other company offering those services waste their time submitting bids when the Mole Man's company is in the running and will win it no matter what?  Nevertheless, the city failed to offer any requests for proposals at their website or social media pages, the only one we could find was a posting on Starbridge AI, available for inspection for less than two weeks.  It's no wonder why they wouldn't receive any other proposals, if their past practice of choosing Turf Care over lower bids wasn't heard by prospective clients.

When a city chooses not to care about competitive bidding, goes three for three in violating the basic concepts, citizens need to step up and ask why.  Unfortunately, the Motyka clan cannot easily do so without the threat of becoming targets of the city and minions in the media that can be purchased.  

The Rest of the Meeting

What will be an irrelevant "first reading" of an ordinance for expanded rules was highlighted as important by the local paper, with them publishing an article for new rules on bicycle coaster toys.  Sharon Edgar, a member of the task force group that looked at how to approach the topic, offered a measured overview of the problem and the moderate means they tried to come up with to address it for public safety.  The ordinance itself (on p. 90 of the packet) has some rough edges, retaining some of the worst aspects of the 2005 revisions for bicycles and coaster toys and translating them to the popular electric versions making the rounds today. 

But the council indicated that they had some additional edits in the ordinance they wanted to introduce before the next meeting, and this presents a problem that even the last city attorney had to admit was the case.  Amending a first presentation of an ordinance in any way before it comes up for adoption necessitates another first reading, as it is a different ordinance at that point.  The council and new city attorney were under the impression that this could be passed with changes to it at the next meeting.  By law, it cannot.  The city did approve an ordinance adopting the HSI Learning Management System for staff training, without amendment from the first reading.

Council approval of Master and Commander event at the Lakeview Cemetery for June 11 was given, as was approval of two visits by American Cruise Lines early on August 7th and 14th, scheduled around the SS Badger's peregrinations.  They also approved closure of the 100 E Melendy block for a disc golf event on September 4th.  

Ray Karboske and Jeff Henry reintroduced the challenges posed by using the PM Lake effectively as a mixing pond and their continuing efforts at bringing awareness of the issue to the public at their Pere Marquette Lake Watershed Council page.  Check out their recent videos.

Alex Kazmarski introduced himself as a choice for the 2nd Ward, having handed in his petition.  Looking forward to hearing more from him, should he have an opponent for the open seat.  Beth Eliot also introduced herself as a mayor candidate in a fairly novel way; claiming she has no connection with the council or with the police.  Give it time; if you're like this reporter, you'll find yourself in a plaintiff/defendant relationship once you get to know them better.

[Golf~6~Romeo]

Material Impropriety is the potential challenge Motyka LLC has against COL, legally.