Ludington City Council May 18th, 2026: The Shaw Redemption

[XLFD]

When one previews the agenda packet for the May 18, 2026 meeting of the Ludington City Council, they see a modest list of action items, all outside the realm of the routine, all with the capability of being controversial.  The typical "rubber stamp" mentality of the city council hive mind would be mildly disrupted twice this night by a 6-1 vote with Fifth Ward Councilor Mike Shaw actively bucking away from poorly planned public policies that his peers embraced without a second thought.  

The five people who would speak during public comment would alternate between castigation and praise for city leadership.  Tom Sanders led off with a three-minute testimonial against the current state of golf cart traffic across the city and how the police cannot enforce the existing laws that are meant for safety.  He would offer anecdotes of near-misses he has seen with carts traveling in the downtown area traveling down James Street, parking in those areas where they are already prohibited from being at, as proscribed by laws on Ludington books since 2015.

Gene Kyle would give us a "senior moment" after that, making a case as to why county residents should approve senior center millages, making a very viable argument then and in the second comment period thereafter showing that similar population counties in Michigan have generally set aside a lot more for their senior populations.  This reporter would follow with a couple of criticisms on two agenda items, one of which may have led to their amending the agenda, the other asked a question that the council decided not to answer.

XLFD:  (16:10 in) "The Michigan Municipal League notes that an act which is a state civil infraction cannot be a municipal civil infraction. A municipal civil infraction is a civil infraction involving the violation of a municipal ordinance but NOT a violation of the Michigan Motor Vehicle code.  In section 657a of the Michigan vehicle code it lays down the rules that apply to the operation of golf carts in cities that vote to do so.  Violating these rules are specifically declared to be civil infractions by statute.  To portray these instead as municipal civil infractions is a violation of the law and deprives our libraries of the funding they would otherwise receive when such state civil infractions are violated.  By illegally declaring these municipal civil infractions, our city leaders seek to profit from policing and steal from our libraries, proving once again that we live under a kleptocracy in Ludington.  Reject the first reading of this ordinance again, let's work towards safety, not municipal greed for money and power.

For the first two years of his term, our sitting mayor wanted those who commented publicly to give out their home address as a prerequisite for speaking.  Over the last two years, he and the council have been regularly going into closed session under the purpose of consideration of purchase of real estate without ever giving the public information about the location of the real estate they are considering.  Closed sessions are held in such situations to avoid giving prospective sellers an unfair negotiating advantage, that's understandable, but withholding the address under consideration from the public serves no purpose other than maintaining your reputation for secrecy and unaccountability.   

The Michigan Court of Appeals and the Attorney General have consistently maintained that a public body must provide a clear, identifiable scope when entering a closed session. Simply stating the statutory number (such as "to purchase real property") without identifying the general subject matter (like the address or parcel name) fails to inform the public properly.  What disadvantage will there be for you if you reveal the address publicly rather than keeping it up your sleeve?"  [END comment]

Mary Lou Ohnsman of the Ludington Petunia Parade Board would follow by acknowledging the organizations that helped them in their annual efforts, Daniel Jensen would follow, urging the council to continue listening to the people and covering all of the bases in figuring out what to do with the city's First Street trailer parking site.  After this they voted to amend the agenda to take off all actions dealing with golf carts.  One can only hope that they came to understand that they can't make municipal civil infractions out of rule violations already classified as state civil infractions and come back with that misconception fixed at some point.

The mentality of the current city administration and council seems to believe that adding more sections of law and increasing penalties will fix any perceived problem.  The golf cart and ORV issue could easily be 'solved' without any tears being shed in the process with an approach that looks more towards education than enforcement.  The city requires registration of either when used in town.  For the registration process, have the applicant sign a sheet that describes all of the state rules and all of the local prohibitions.  Take a couple of minutes to completely explain those local rules before they sign.  Then have the LPD actually ticket those who they catch tooling down James Street, because either they have not registered, or they have and they are knowingly breaking the rules.

As for the closed session, the city officials would not budge in giving away their secret place and vote to go into closed session later in the meeting for 80 minutes to discuss some potential real estate purchase inviting additional personnel like the county treasurer, Andrew Kmetz in with them.  Kmetz is also the face of the Mason County Land Bank, so he may have been there in that capacity, but the MCLB does not ostensibly have any projects in Ludington on their recent agendas, just the old school buildings in Freesoil and Scottville. 

We have sent FOIA requests out to try and find out the mystery address and hopefully find a reason why they feel the need to not make it public.  Public bodies who operate under such degrees of secrecy are typically not acting in the public interest.  This may be the second iteration of the secret behind why they shuttered AndyS, finally revealed in their declaration that they wanted to extort Dr. Riemer into putting a protected bike lane on Rath Avenue.  People should have lost their job in that stop-work-order fiasco.  When these guys have secret motives they want to keep secret, it is precisely when they have terrible ideas behind them which would not pass public muster.

Our guess at this point is that the block and a half where Foster School is at is the property in question.  This property has been a thorn in the side of the city official's propriety since the local school district sold it for $25,000, with several back-room deals made between a fledgling limited liability company and city administrators being made to develop the area using public resources.  This also fits in with the local land bank's fixations on old schools in the county.  The taxpayers will take up the cost of all of this clandestine decision making and will likely never find out how bad the underlying corruption was to make it so.

The only redeeming part of the meeting was the refreshing bit of reasoned independence that Councilor Shaw would show by his vote and support of that vote voiced on two action items where councilors generally toe the line.  One wasn't a stretch; he voted against adding a business to the social district as he has before, making the case that the time for social districts have come and gone and that it's not a good look for Ludington to have people drinking out and about the downtown area.  Other city leaders disagree with this logic, being willful tools of influencers behind the scenes that make their living off keeping citizens interested in alcohol rather than local politics.

A more meaningful dissension was his words and vote in approving the contractor for paving the DPW Building's parking lot and driveway.  Once again, our city leaders avoided the competitive bidding process in giving Rieth-Riley the contract for $143K, six councilors voting for this with the additional stipulation that Rieth-Riley would be the city's single source for future paving projects.  The latter would provoke Shaw into a quandary, because it was a total refutation of the reasons why public bodies rely on competitive bids rather than risk the appearance of choosing political favorites.  The rest of the council has no such qualms, with Councilor John Terzano trying to legitimize the avoidance of competitive bidding as virtuous.  

Terzano:  (34:50 in)  "The charter says that the city can enter into contracts, without taking the low bid or whatever that process is, if it's advantageous to the city or in the best interest of the city.  There is no stronger argument can be made that this isn't in the best interest of the city, and it's advantageous to the city.  To go out for a wider bid process knowing that nobody is going to be local just to say that you did that bid process, wastes city time and wastes city resources.  When you have the wholesale contractor right across the street from the property that's going to be surfaced, I don't know how you get better than that."

Terzano misrepresents what the charter says in order to get his point across that the city can do whatever they want to approve contracts regardless of bids.  In relevant part section 13.2 says:  "Where required by ordinance, purchases shall be made from the lowest competent bidder meeting bid specifications unless the Council shall determine that the public interest will be better served by accepting a higher bid."  Section 2.4 of the city code explains what is meant by "where required by ordinance", indicating:  "Competitive bids for all purchases and public improvements shall be obtained where practicable and contracts awarded to the lowest responsible bidders."  

This is a public improvement where bidding is practicable, our city laws indicate competitive bidding should be used, and the lowest bid should only be ignored if there exists a reasonable argument as to why another bid is in the best interest of the city.  There is zero evidence that this project was bid out, plenty showing them that they are trying to avoid such a process.  Terzano, who we once saw as a paragon of virtue, has shown himself to be little more than a defender of city corruption and greed over the last four years. 

Mayor Barnett would also defend going against the charter, explaining an instance in the past that the city once faced a no-bid contract from the city manager and sent it back out for competitive bids, where the original price of the contract was raised by $30K by the bidding.  The Ludington Torch remembers this instance, back when garbage removal was given to their current contractor, and then-Councilor Pete Engblade (in the 5th Ward like Shaw) insisted they bid it out. 

This was back in 2002 when Jim Miller was still city manager.  In the 2002 Bidding on Waste Hauling one can easily speculate that Miller had some sort of vested interest in not changing the waste contractor at that time, and saw to it that the City Council, who went over his own plan of initial renewal request by insisting on competitive bids, would look foolish-- by making sure Republic (Shoreline at the time) sent back the only bid, and at a higher rate. 

His firing by a newly-elected Mayor Henderson-led Council shortly thereafter by the end of 2002, with no specific reason given, adds to the fact that this may have trashed that relationship.  Barnett would move from Pontiac to Ludington the next year to become police chief, so he wasn't an eyewitness to that ugly example of how government shouldn't work, but he heard the replacement City Manager John Shay mention this example ad nauseum whenever he violated the charter's competitive bidding mandates, so he has accepted it as proof to him that bidding is not ever needed for public projects and infected the minds of other officials with that nonsense.

Arguments by Terzano and others like DPW Director Andy Larr suggested that Rieth Riley was the only contractor nearby, and that again isn't true.  Wolfgang Paving LLC is just across the railroad tracks from the DPW and wasn't even mentioned as an alternative in any of the discussion, although a statement by City Manager Aldrich would suggest they have not the experience to do such work.  But 20 years ago, it appears that Rieth-Riley put in the original asphalt in at the DPW Building and it has deteriorated quite substantially and appears to be very thin in areas. 

Is this the type of job we will get this year?  If there is no incentive to do a great job, because they are guaranteed now to have the status as a single service provider for all paving projects in Ludington, will we get similar workmanship?  The asphalt appears to be only an inch thick in many areas where the underlying soil is visible; work like this should not be rewarded by what the council did with only one voice of dissent.  Even with heavier vehicles using the driveway, these projects can easily last 30 years in better condition than this, according to research performed.

The council's sole act of redemption this evening was to reject the bids for wastewater system improvements for the Gaylord/Ferry Street residents.  The two bids received were significantly over the budgeted amount, and for once city officials admitted that the bidding window was likely not adequate to get enough bids for the project. 

The underlying problem, however, is not just limited to this instance.  The competitive bidding process at Ludington City Hall has been broken for decades and rather than seeking ways to fix the issue, they continue to treat competitive bidding as optional, as a passive process, and when it's done and comes before council, the council is often actively encouraged to ignore the process and vote for cronies and favorites.  This is why the city is in a budget crunch; it's of their own creation.  Decades of ignoring competitive bids has led them here as contracts can be won by seeking favors from those who approve these public project handouts.  What could explain such behavior other than kickbacks and other corrupt practices?

Had this reporter decided to weather the 80 minutes of closed session folly, I would have delivered a comment that would have alerted the council to what many perceive of their actions.  Instead, they would finish off the meeting with the usual patting of themselves on their collarbones and the obnoxious recitation of one good thing to whitewash all of the bad things that the city is in the practice of doing at most every meeting.  The opportunity to play tennis presented itself, however, and so they lost the chance to hear one true thing:  my last comment:

XLFD:  "Firewatergate.  This is the LPD mega-scandal based on LPD officers Noah Noble and Trace Forfinski stopping two obviously drunk drivers on two different dates, not conducting any kind of sobriety tests on them, and facilitating their removal from the crime scene without issuing even a civil infraction because one of the drivers was a fellow officer, the other a close friend of the responding officer.  In contrast, this same police agency has authorized criminal charges against the person who points out these crimes for walking, standing, and simply existing on public property. 

This council is complicit with this criminal police department, as witnessed at the last meeting.  Rather than show emails between two of the city's attorneys, which automatically fail to have attorney-client privilege as there is no client seeking or receiving advice, they once again approved of a cover up.  Let's face it, this council or the two city administrators who have engaged in false pretense fraud, public extortion and illegally destroying public records, have the power to waive their alleged privilege at any time in order to show that the city is not acting against the interest of the people, but they won't, because the records they are covering up assuredly admit directly or indirectly their guilt and their racketeering.  

Ask yourself about why you decided to go into public service.  Was it to deny the public the records that belong to them?  Was it to become an accomplice to fraud and public extortion?  Was it to look the other way, as you all have, when the police under your supervision allow friendly drunk drivers to get off and charge your critics with baseless crimes?  Was it to sit idly by while your peers cripple businessmen by using your powers to stop them from operating or engaging in unfair competition with the private marinas?  Was it to live in your own echo chambers growing progressively deaf to the concerns of those you supposedly serve?"  [END comment]

[Golf~6~Romeo]

These humans are incapable of holding themselves to the letter of the law. The local judicial system supports this impropriety with vigor.

What is a citizen to do under such tyranny🤔

[XLFD]

Unfortunately, none of the people serving in elected positions have run on anything other than being the same person they replaced and staying the course-- even if that course is not representative of what works best for their constituents.  There are a couple of dark horse candidates this time around, but the city almost always tries to vilify those people.