Ludington City Council Meeting, December 10, 2018: Between Hey and Grass

The city council chambers of Ludington usually don't see a lot of people in the audience for a December meeting, but it was filling rather quickly this night for some reason that wasn't immediately clear.  The 2019 city budget was scheduled to be passed, but such meetings usually are avoided, even when there's plenty of salaries scheduled to jump.  

Only a couple of things were scheduled to be passed regarding cemetery rates, modestly going up.  Not a crowd-drawer.  Everything else was normal business, other than the first readings of the annual ordinances setting the clerk and treasurer wages.  And another first reading of a recreational marijuana ordinance where the city was planning to opt out, according to a one page memo from the interim city manager and a short ordinance effectively saying:  "The City hereby prohibits all marihuana establishments within the boundaries of the city" (see p. 135-137).

This explained the packed crowds.  If you never heard the city council talking about creating an opt-out ordinance at an open meeting, you would be right.  They did cover the topic at a committee meeting (Public Safety/Utilities) in November, but they recommended more research on the topic, not an opt-out ordinance.  

Thus the first the public hears about the opt-out ordinance is the weekend before it has been drafted (presuming they get their weekend COLDNews in the mail on Saturday) without public input from an open meeting or any kind of survey-- other than the state proposal passing with about a 55-45% vote in the City of Ludington, with 5 of 6 wards voting for recreational marijuana.

That's a disgraceful degree of transparency, and exactly how this city hall has acted over the last two decades when it comes to issues that should see a lot of input from the public.  Decisions are made at the administrative level or at the committee level (that meet at odd times in special meetings that don't have to follow the OMA-- in their estimation), and then released the weekend before the meeting, where  the ordinance or resolution has already been drafted outside of the public's ken.

That ordinance seemed to be the focus of the meeting, but I steered clear of the topic, for now.  Instead, I put my sights on the budget, and specifically the compensation study that I recently was fortunate to receive via a FOIA request.  So after the mayor welcomed the crowd and stated that there would be a special public comment during the reading of the opt-out ordinance for marihuana pros and cons, I got up at 3:10 in the meeting to speak:

December 10th, 2018 Ludington City Council meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

XLFD:  "The minutes of last meeting should be revised to reflect that for my second comment my use of the term "veracity" meaning 'accuracy' rather than the term "voracity" meaning 'marked by an insatiable appetite'. To use both in a sentence for further clarification: "The veracity of last meeting's minutes is in question if this is not corrected." and "The voracity of city hall to spend our tax dollars is appalling."
It's a shame that the City spent $17,000 on a classification and compensation study in order to have Mark Nottley of Municipal Services Consulting use falsified data and skewed statistics in order for our city leaders to justify gigantic increases in the salaries of their administrative staff. There are numerous examples of data that is ignored or definitely wrong in his study, I will highlight one as regards the City Manager position of Hudsonville, noting that I received the study by specifically asking for it through the Freedom of Information Act, urging the study to be also shared on the City's website for full public transparency. It wasn't, even though the City is using this study to justify pay raises to the public.
The study says on page 52

that the Hudsonville City Manager gets a salary of $110,905 per year, yet Hudsonville's current budget from their current city website says that their city manager is only being paid $68,424 in 2018.

That's a difference of $42,481 and begs the question of why is Nottley's figure so far off from reality. But like I said this whole study is a sham, just look at the city clerk position in this study.
Now every city the size of Ludington has a clerk, but the study only has five of the 21 cities 'studied' with wages shown for the clerk. Further study of the cities left out shows that many pay their city clerk a lot less than Ludington does. Alma's clerk $36,000 (2017)

Cadillac's 3.8 city clerks receive on average $37,105,

Hudsonville and Lapeer clerks both make a little over $54,000.

Yet the bogus study shows no clerk getting paid under $74,000 except for our poor Ludington clerk making $58,716, soon to be $8000 more when she gets her pay raised 13% next meeting.


If I rolled a die 21 times and took out the 16 lowest rolls that came out, I can bet you that instead of rolling on average a 3.5, that I would be averaging over 5.5. [This is when I was cut off, see the picture below to see how discarding low values of a set will skew the average when you only consider the high values.  This is what the study seems to have done without shame.]

[I would have finished with...] "Simple probability rules and that's exactly what this study does when it's not misstating salaries which are easily found by looking at the various city's budgets. Mark Nottley allowed you to defraud the taxpayer in satisfying the greed of the administrative officials of the city."

Lyla McClelland then seemed to thank me for maintaining the nativity scene, but she was actually thanking Tom Tyron who sat next to me.  Those who were unsure were notified by the mayor that it wasn't the 'pain in the ass' Tom sitting next to Tyron (though she would not use that term in this meeting).  While ICM Steve Brock had some issues with the audiovisual equipment for the second time in two meetings, the council approved Brrewfest's use of Rotary Park.  

This event, ran by the Ludington Convention & Visitor's Bureau, should have had two abstainers, but LCVB Executive Director Brandy (Henderson) Miller was absent.  Councilor David Bourgette is on the LCVB's board of directors, and should have formally abstained from voting after noting the conflict of interest he would have were he to vote.  This has been a recurring theme.

Steve Brock presented the budget once again (16:00 in), featuring some additional spending and the salary increases justified by the compensation study.  And as this was a public hearing on the budget, the people got a chance to speak, yet only one spoke out about the budget.  Guess who?

XLFD:  "I noticed some discrepancies in the budget, but I would like to first reiterate the discrepancies in the compensation study which has given massive raises to the city's administrative staff is highly unfair to all of the city workers who had no such study done for themselves and are only getting nominal raises rather than double digit raises based on the false or misleading statistics of Mark Nottley.

This unfairness will not lead to the suggested harmony the interim city manager believes will happen, quite the contrary, it will crush the morale of the men and women who actually provide the city services to the public that see others get over 20% raises while they are lucky to get a tenth of that, and make fair-minded citizens see the inequity and wonder why this is happening in their fair city.

On the second page of the budget showing expenditures from 2016 to 2018, the numbers just don't add up, nor do they match the figures expressed elsewhere in the budget. Consider the line for 'garbage and rubbish', this page suggests the city spent around $570,000 on garbage and rubbish over the years 2016, 2017, and projected to spend in 2018. If you compare this with the actual garbage and rubbish figures over the last budget and on page 23 of this budget, you will see figures at around $730,000. That's a difference around $160,000 for each of those years. This clearly signals there has been an error in calculation made somewhere, and since such a large figure is unaccounted for, it clearly signals that it wasn't caught by our new budget-producing personnel. Add up the columns on page 2 and you won't see harmony only discord.

And that includes the treasurer, whose salary also mysteriously inflated from a just a little over $50,000 to $80,000 without any justification from our budget committee to explain the difference. Steve Brock suggested that there was an additional full-time worker shifted over from another budget area, but he never points out in his message where this phantom comes from, when the city council justified the new addition, and why another corresponding line item hasn't went down significantly. Consider having this budget justified and corrected before next week's meeting rather than pass it tonight with the flaws it obviously has."

And even though I would like to think that I swayed the city council's minds in this matter, as no other city official getting slighted made their point known in public, Councilor Johnson made a motion just after my speech to make the pay raises even across the board at 3%.  The 'organic' move seemed to catch on immediately with other councilors, and the council ended up unanimously adopting the budget with the motion intact. 

So even though I think this move was planned by the councilors outside of this meeting, one could say I got in front of this and influenced the council into doing the right thing.  They would amend the ordinances affecting the clerk and treasurer salaries to reflect this change with figures reflecting the 3% change across the board filled-in; this suggests the council had conferred outside of the meeting to choreograph the change (an apparent violation of the Open Meetings Act).

Brock would try to explain away the clerk compensation problem by saying that the study only looked at clerks that had 'financial responsibilities' like our clerk does.  Those responsibilities amount to being the city's accountant, not unlike several other cities left off the list, including Cadillac

Few city clerks have exactly the same responsibilities across the board, so the study never actually compares apples to apples, just shows varieties of apples, some more appealing than others.  Another salient point, Brock never explained why the Hudsonville city manager information was so far off in his study, nor has he explained this since.

Besides, since Ludington's charter does appear to make the clerk the city accountant, then, since other cities that give that responsibility to the city manager or the treasurer, why doesn't the study suggest that Ludington should give the CM or treasurer less remuneration for not having that task?  Simply put, the study is not meant for lowering salaries only raising them by using fallacious data and ignoring general statistical methods.  

They then went to the recreational marijuana ordinance, first reading, having the city opt out of having marijuana retail establishments in the city.  There was a few good points made by the citizens and visitors who spoke up (starting around 46:00 in).  Dan Reynolds, CEO of Canna Care LLC and a resident, led off with an appeal for more public discussion and not to opt out.

Erica Karmeisool followed for two minutes with much the same sentiment, saying opting out would send a message for businesses to look elsewhere, after buttering the officials with praise.  Dave Golder followed by stressing the mandate from the ballot box, admitting to some past use, and urged the council to listen to the people and not opt out.  

Mike Shaw followed by stressing that the council were elected representatives and didn't need to follow such mandates, expressing his personal opinion that rec marijuana is a bad idea.  Carolyn Cater followed with an appeal to opt out stressing the dangerous enhanced marijuana coming out and noticing that the average age of users of medical is very low already.  

Councilor-elect Angela Serna spoke and could neither condone or support the ordinance but was surprised it had already come out before the council before they had even sought public input.  She urged the council to wait rather than have this issue pushed through with a lame duck council and an interim city manager prodding it forth.  She urged the councilors to consult their wards for guidance.  

Jason Miney, downtown business owner, made a good point about the council passing Brrewfest with glowing recommendations glorifying alcohol, and yet wanting to opt out at this point, urging them to wait.  Mark Curtis went next and wondered why the opt out is being considered when the few's views outweigh the many who voted for the proposal.  He reminded them of their duty to serve the public, and to follow Hamlin's direction of surveying.  

Henry MacDougall's father then spoke, his son having gotten into a fatal accident on Homecoming night back in 2017 due to marijuana unlawfully given to him, concentrating on showing the councilors how the City would not make much money from such businesses by showing a video.  

Eight people spoke, five wanted the council to wait or nix an opt out, three were for the ordinance.  It should be an interesting meeting on December 17.  The cemetery rates were passed without problem, and Brock trumpeted that the water treatment plant passed a PFOS and PFAS test administered by the DEQ without any detects.  Not surprising, since they get the water from way out in Lake Michigan where such chemicals have never been detected before.

Chuck Sobanski led off the second comments with his wish lists of having better sidewalks in the city and getting the fishing dock back in Copeyon Park, while complimenting them on having clean restrooms.  Erica Karmeisool rose again to compliment the mayor on her service and the councilors for their time out in.  Dave Golder added another couple points about Grand Rapids opting in and the problems with having people need to drive a distance away to get a legal substance, reminded them once again about the ballot box.  Shaw once again arose to refute Golder's points.  

John Terzano batted clean up by bringing up Ann Arbor's decriminalization of marijuana and how it hasn't negatively altered the community and how its police have dealt with it.  Mayor Holman then showcased the meeting next week to feature cake (you know who is paying for it).  Outgoing councilor Wallace Cain then continued his Grace Tour, talking about there being an electricity in the air when the recount affirmed the exact vote tally of the regular election.

Frankly, I was there, and I thought the only electricity in the air was coming from Wallace's circuits overheating in the final realization that he was not the winner of the election.  

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Thanks for the recap, X, with veracity as ever! I'm glad our newly elected Fifth Ward council saw through the lack of openness is planning the marijuana opt out ordinance.

With any luck, and continued vigilance, we may eventually see this practice come to an end.  I am currently involved with a legal maneuver engaged in making the city council and their standing committees act more transparently.  I have a great co-plaintiff helping with the effort. 

Good to hear that!

I think Kay wants your phone number.  lmao

Thanks again X for the study on the budget and compensation comparisons. And it's again shameful that our city has paid another outsider here $17,000 more in expenses to justify their actions of high wage increases for the few. And another ordinance for Mary Jane is discussed and justified behind closed doors again too, against OMA rules and law. If any given State Law is passed, as well as a majority of local voters, the council has the obligation to follow that ballot issue, yet, Ludington government always knows better, sad. If we have 1 full year to opt out, why push this issue so quickly and dishonestly? Again, it's a mute issue with these council members, who think they always know best for locals. Constituents should come first, not the personal opinions of councilors imho.

The Nottley guy is little more than a charlatan, a weaver promising new clothes for the City's administrative staff designed to make them look much more elegant and showing his final result to the council:  figures showing gross underpayment without showing much verification or statistical bases.  

What you get is $17,000 down the tubes and a non-administrative staff hot enough behind the scenes to quash the gargantuan raises of the administrators.  Unless you think those goofballs on the city council actually listened to my words during the public hearing and took heed to what should have been common sense in the first place.

The sexual tension was palpable, John Doe Jr, and soon to be released when she is finally released from her shackles of mayorhood.  

I may be leaving the next meeting early for my own safety.

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