Aug 2009
Public Hearing on New Master Plan
August/29/2009 09:41
As you may have seen on the Shores Web Site, the city has scheduled a public meeting for comments on the new master plan for Tuesday morning September 1st, at 8 AM. While our city government professes that they want to be more open and transparent, one has to question why they would schedule an important meeting at a time most working residents of the Shores would have a conflict attending. In addition, the last week before Labor Day is one of the most popular summer vacation weeks, and I suspect many members of our community will be away. The timing of this meeting sends a strong message - that city hall really has no genuine interest in soliciting the opinions of Shores citizens. I call upon Mayor Cooper to reschedule this important meeting at a time and a place more conducive to engaging public input. Failure to do so will provide but another clear indication that the rhetoric about better engaging Shores citizens is just that.
I would encourage all Shores residents to review the Master Plan, which you can download from the Shores web site via this hyperlink. To raise just one issue, you can see by looking at page 82 of the document, the idea of a Shores Community Center is being resurrected. If you look at the results of the city resident survey starting on page 39 of the Master Plan, only about 600 responses were received, and of these only 93(or about 15% of respondents) felt the city should provide a community building.
Don’t our city fathers recall what happened the last time this issue was raised? Nearly 700 Shores voters signed a petition to have the issue of a community building placed on the ballot. 1274 voters turned out for that election, and the building was soundly defeated by a 61% to 39% margin. For those who want to refresh their memory on this matter, I refer you to an old web page that still stands on Shores issues on John Rickel’s web site. I think the fiscal issues raised by Mr. Rickel back then are even more relevant today in this era of declining property values and tax revenues. I thank John for leaving his web page still posted as a memento in cyberspace to power of the Shores residents to engage in the political process, and change the direction of our government.
In view of this past history and the current situation in the Shores with rising taxes, pension fund deficits, and rising bond payments from a renovated harbor that I do not believe is self-supporting from boating revenues, do we really need to revisit the community building issue again? Shouldn’t the council be keeping their focus on more crucial issues?
For another resident’s perspective, copy of a letter that Dr. Janice Pemberton sent in to the planning commission with her comments on the master plan can be reviewed in the most recent Guest Posting. As always Jan’s comments are most incisive, and I appreciate her willingness to share them with the entire community.
Shores Open Meeting Act Violation ?
August/22/2009 13:20
The most notable occurrence at the August Shores council meeting was a 6:15 PM gathering of the entire council with consultants from Hubbell, Roth and Clark to discuss the various options for our city water supply. As far as I can tell, it appears this special meeting was a violation of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. Proper public notice was not given in advance of this congregation of the full city council. The options presented for the most cost effective city water supply are of extreme interest to all, but particularly to those residents living adjacent to the municipal property that would be most directly affected by the construction of a proposed water tower.
The failure of the city to provide proper notice of the meeting came out at the end of the regular council meeting, during a new part of the agenda where council members finally have the liberty to offer their thoughts on non-agenda items. Councilman Dan Schulte commented on what an informative presentation was given on the water options, and noted that there were very few residents in attendance. He asked City Manager Vick what had been done to publicize the special meeting. When a satisfactory answer was not forthcoming, it raised the question of whether the Shores properly fulfilled the requirements of the Open Meetings Act.
The Michigan Open Meetings Act (OMA) was passed to strengthen the right of all citizens to know what goes on by requiring public bodies to conduct nearly all of their business at open meetings. Since your right to attend a meeting is meaningless without knowledge of the proper time and place, the OMA denotes what constitutes adequate meeting notice. For special or irregular meetings like the one in question, the OMA mandates public bodies must post a notice indicating the date, time and place at least 18 hours before the meeting.
Having checked on the Shores web site both the day prior to and the day of the meeting, I saw no item on the Shores web calendar announcing the special session. Nor was the special meeting listed on the formal agenda for the council meeting. I saw no notice of the special meeting on the Shores cable channel 12. I also spoke with a reliable source that had business at city hall on the day of the meeting, and who noted no posting there. I also found it embarrassing that the city did not have the courtesy to inform either of the two newspaper reporters who regularly cover our council meetings. When the two reporters came in to council chambers shortly in advance of the announced 7PM meeting time, they were clearly surprised to see a meeting already in session.
After the meeting on Tuesday night, I used the contact form on the Shores web site to inquire of Mr. Vick what measures the Shores used to inform citizens of the special meeting. On Friday afternoon I received the following reply from Mr. Vick via email:
“As you likely noticed on the city web site, the city council agenda was posted twice. Our intention was to post the regular council meeting agenda and a separate notice which indicated that the city engineering consultant would be making a presentation at 6:15 pm. Unfortunately, these things happen when one staff person is on vacation and another staff person is trying to “pinch hit”. Rest assured, our small staff will continue to cross-train so that these rare situations are prevented.”
While I personally did not see a duplicate notice of the regular meeting agenda on the web site, we are all human and mistakes do happen. I do find Mr. Vick’s explanation inadequate in the sense that the special meeting notice should not have been left for chance discovery by someone delving down into the agenda document level on the web site. Such critical information should have been disseminated in other more visible ways, like updating the web calendar, on city cable TV channel 12 and perhaps in the local newspapers as well. In this electronic age, important and fast breaking changes like this could have been easily be transmitted via email to Shores residents.
Regardless of the excuse proffered, this disturbing episode raises some other serious issues. Why just several months after a special closed council session was held on the OMA with the city attorney, can’t the powers at city hall even follow step one of the process and provide acceptable notice of a meeting to Shores residents? How much money was spent paying consultants to come to a meeting that only a few residents were able to hear? What was so urgent about this meeting that it had to proceed without due notice both to the public and the press? Is holding a special meeting with scant notice during the dinner hour the best time to encourage resident attendance?
Look ahead at the city calendar and you will see that on Tuesday, September 1st at 8AM a public hearing on the new Master Plan is scheduled. Are we really trying to encourage public participation by holding an important meeting during the normal workday, or during one of the prime summer vacation weeks preceding Labor Day? Such continued behavior on the part of Shores officials only contradicts their recent promises of more transparency in our civic affairs.
The most distasteful aspect of this episode is recalling how several months ago Mayor Cooper delivered an uncalled for and very public browbeating to Councilman Schulte, using the Open Meetings Act to try to threaten and scare an elected official from exercising his right to further educate himself by attending the city finance committee meeting in advance of the council vote on raising taxes. Should Shores citizens tolerate a governmental authority that uses a law passed to protect transparency in order to bully and intimidate citizens from exercising their legal rights? Isn’t it hypocritical when that authority then fails to follow the spirit and the letter of the same law?
As time passes, I see even more reasons why Shores residents need to prepare for a recall effort as permitted by law when the time comes this October.
Campaign Interference
August/13/2009 13:46
Brad Lindberg in this week’s Grosse Pointe News again addressed the issue of the involvement of Shores officials in the February 2009 council election. In an article entitled “Campaign Interference”, he points out that candidate Jan Pemberton was also not satisfied with the explanation proffered by Mr. Vick and Mr. McInerney of why her campaign literature was sent in for legal scrutiny.
With explanations like “Schulte's flier got caught up in the transfer”, it is easy to see why the affected candidates are not satisfied with what they have been told. Those involved in the activity under question are the ones doing the explaining! To claim that a highly compensated municipal attorney is a “neutral source” defies logic.
I think that the concerns raised by the involved candidates could have been dealt with in a better and more conclusive fashion if the Shores council would have insisted on an outside, unbiased investigation of what really happened and why. It is not too late for them to do this. If council fails to clear this cloud of suspicion, then Shores voters can only hope that the attorney general, or whatever civil authority is appropriate, will take an independent look into the electoral concerns brought forth by Dan Schulte and Jan Pemberton.
I have added a web page called Source Documents, where I plan to post items of interest that may help clarify some of the facts related to Grosse Pointe Shores issues. For the first document posted, thanks to Mr. Henry Woloson. His FOIA request related to Shores salaries demonstrates the claims of transparency made by our officials of providing citizens with requested information in timely fashion ring quite hollow.
After reviewing the Woloson documents, it is obvious certain people at village hall felt it was worth spending a good sum of Shore’s taxpayer’s dollars to have Mr. McInerney try and forestall release of what should be public information until after the vote on the charter and the new council. In my opinion, this is yet another episode that does not pass the “sniff test”. I wonder just how different the outcomes of the recent elections would have been if Shores voters had access to the financial information that is now coming to light.
"This smells bad and it looks bad"
August/02/2009 13:18
The use of taxpayer dollars to have the Shores village attorney scrutinize the campaign material of two challengers made headlines in several local newspapers this past week. In the Grosse Pointe News article entitled Due process vowed in complaint, reporter Brad Lindberg notes that the explanation offered by Attorney McInerney and new City Manager Brian Vick failed to satisfy Dan Schulte, one of the two non-incumbent candidates whose literature was sent in for legal review. Having been at the meeting, I can see why Councilman Schulte found the explanation offered to him to be less than satisfactory.
When the attorney involved is billing the city over $200 an hour for the work he does, I too find it hard to believe that Mr. Vick inadvertently included Dan’s campaign literature in the materials sent out to him. The explanation given was that Dan’s information just happened to be attached to the literature of Jan Pemberton that was dropped off to Mr. Vick by an unnamed Shores citizen. I also find it incredulous that Mr. Vick would feel that Mr. McInerney was a safe harbor, “someone outside the political realm”. When village legal expenses were in the range of $170,000 last year, and when the attorney making this money is basically employed at the will of the mayor and the other incumbent council members, it would be very hard for me to consider Mr. McInerney an independent or apolitical source of advice. I find the course of action Mr. Vick took particularly egregious, since as chair of the Shores election commission, he should possess the foresight to avoid putting himself in any position where a conflict of interest could even be perceived!
The most incisive comments on this situation came from Shores resident Dr. Raymond Rahi who was quoted in Michele Moran’s article in the Grosse Pointe Times entitled: Alleged campaign investigation divides Shores. Dr. Rahi spoke during the final citizen’s comment part of the last council meeting, stating: " I don't know the legality of it… But I know as a taxpayer and a neighbor in the community, this smells bad and it looks bad.” Dr. Rahi noted the incident set "a very unfortunate" precedent.”
Our American democracy is built on the foundation that our elections should be free and unencumbered by government interference. Insuring unbiased and fair elections is of tantamount importance. This is particularly true in a small city like ours, where less than a handful of votes can and did make a difference in the outcome of the last election. For the sake of propriety, our city manager should avoid involvement in trying to explain or clarify any candidate’s literature to any voter, no matter how controversial that material may be.
As Councilman Schulte pointed out, there were other appropriate venues where a concerned citizen or candidate could have been directed without using local tax dollars or involving Shores personnel. In view of the hollow explanations offered to him by those involved, Dan is right to demand that an outside and independent third party like the state attorney general look into this sorry episode further. Only then can the voter’s trust can be restored in the impartiality and fairness of the electoral process here in Grosse Pointe Shores.