Clarkston Secrets

Our city government has been doing so many stupid things lately, it’s really hard to keep up. Whether the city council is entertaining spending $90,000 to force us to buy water filters for each other; spending $3,500 of our money on the permanent installation of a silly-looking Pony Cycle that will honor a family that didn’t act honorably toward Clarkston residents; or inexplicably claiming they lack the ability to evaluate the city manager and want to compel taxpayers to pay for a professional evaluation service  (they can fire him, but I guess they’re incapable of having a discussion about his performance without wasting our tax dollars), the level of moron-osity (new word!) is getting hard to follow.

I don’t mean to suggest all our council members are behaving stupidly. Mayor Sue Wylie and council member Peg Roth don’t seem to be infected with the incompetence virus, and I haven’t yet formed an opinion about council member Mark Lamphier. (Maybe the uninfected members of the city council should “mask up” to stay safe from the others. 😷)

There are two things going on right now that have been conflated by city attorney Tom Ryan. Both relate to the city’s desire to fine the snot out of you if you don’t follow the dictates of the Historic District Commission (HDC) and/or contract code enforcement officers (including one who should be fired for refusing to come to work).

If you watched or read the informal transcript for the April 8, 2024, city council meeting and were confused, I’m not surprised. The city is trying to set up a fining system – up to $5,000 for each violation with no standard schedule of fines, putting you at the mercy of the person writing the ticket – and it wasn’t made clear from the discussion if that would be for building code violations, make-the-city-pretty violations (that include trash can issues, lawn cutting, snow shoveling, etc.), and/or for refusing to follow the orders of the too-big-for-its-britches HDC.

Let’s start with building code and make-the-city-pretty violations. Remember the people who will claim you’ve violated a city code ordinance are contract employees from out of town, not city employees. They don’t care about you, have no connection with you, and have no personal investment in the city. Their purpose is to force people to follow the rules – as they interpret them, of course.

The contract for make-the-city-pretty code enforcement was part of the 7/12/21 city council packet. City manager Jonathan Smith delivered one of his typical gosh golly gee whiz performances to convince the city council to go along with this contract, saying while the city needed to enforce its ordinances, he didn’t want to unnecessarily anger residents. At that meeting, Smith spoke glowingly about the particular code enforcement officer he wanted to bring on board. (Smith previously identified this person as Stacey Kingsbury at the November 9, 2020, city council meeting.) Smith wanted to hire Kingsbury to work for Clarkston through an Ann Arbor company named Code Enforcement Services, a Division of Carlisle Wortman Associates, Inc. (the city’s contract planners) and enforce the make-the-city-pretty ordinances. Smith gave Kingsbury a full-throated endorsement, asserting the reason taxpayers should be forced to pay her $45.00 an hour was so she could talk to people about options, explain what the code is, and help people understand why we have our make-the-city-pretty ordinances. Doesn’t that sound nice?

Kingsbury spent a lot of time flitting around the city like an annoying little gnat, sending letters to residents alleging they’d violated the city’s make-the-city-pretty ordinances, and she managed to make some residents angry. For example, she sent a warning letter to one resident for failing to shovel his snow after he’d cleared his sidewalk multiple times during and after a snowstorm, and she (or the city staff) had a practice of deliberately (or perhaps just negligently) delaying mailing her little warning letters. This had the effect of giving the targeted resident one day to correct a claimed violation rather than the one week allowed for in the letter, for example. (Ask me how I know this. 🙄)

Despite that, the warning letters worked quite well without the need for any financial punishment. On 11/22/21, Smith said Kingsbury had issued eight or nine letters, and almost all the residents had “immediately come in line.” On 5/23/22, Smith said they aren’t about punitive yelling and screaming at the residents. Attorney Ryan said that the city gets compliance 99.8%, 99.9% of the time following a warning letter. On 7/10/23, Smith said 99% of the time, violations are fixed within a week of sending a letter. There were a couple of people who didn’t comply with the purported ordinance violations, and the city decided not to go to court to force the issue – something they’ve always been able to do for extreme cases without punishing the entire city.

According to Smith, the inability to punish people with fine-based citations really bugged Kingsbury, so much so that she decided to simply stop showing up to work and didn’t bother to tell anyone. At the 2/26/24 city council meeting, Smith said he followed up with Kingsbury’s employer to ask why she’d stopped showing up to do her job, and he was advised poor Stacey didn’t want to work for Clarkston if she couldn’t write code violation tickets.

Not providing code enforcement services for the make-the-city-pretty ordinances was a breach of the contract the city has with Code Enforcement Services. The contract didn’t name a specific person to provide these services; it simply said the services would be provided. Rather than demanding Code Enforcement Services honor the contract and send someone to do the job we’d contracted for, Smith apparently thought the better response would be to ask the city council to essentially kiss the assular area (another new word!) of little princess Kingsbury by creating a fining system for city residents for both the make-the-city-pretty and building code ordinances, despite the outstanding resident compliance success the city has had without any associated punishment. To that end, your city council authorized attorney Ryan to go to work on an ordinance change, making it clear that your city council values a person who won’t do her job (and who should never be allowed to work in Clarkston again) over protecting the residents of the City of the Village of Clarkston from overzealous code enforcement officers.

And just so you know, if you don’t pay the fine required by one of those ordinance violation tickets, you will be dragged into court. You better hire a lawyer, because even though the city attorney told the council that once something goes to court it’s out of the city’s hands, that isn’t true – the city attorney would be the one prosecuting the tickets and Kingsbury would be his star witness against you. And FYI, if you’re found responsible for one of these tickets by a court, you will be required to pay court costs and a “justice system assessment” along with the fine. If you don’t pay it, you can be jailed until you do – one day for every $30 portion of the fine. Isn’t Kingsbury a lovely person for being upset enough to walk off the job because she can’t do this to you?

Everyone had been waiting to see another piece of stellar work product from attorney Ryan, i.e., his draft of a proposed punish-the-citizen-rather-than-firing-the-princess code enforcement ordinance – at taxpayer expense. But that’s not what Ryan delivered to the city council at the April 8^th, 2024, city council meeting. Instead of a fining ordinance for building and make-the-city-pretty ordinance violations, Ryan proposed a different punish-the-citizen ordinance, one that hadn’t been requested by the city council. His substitute proposal would allow the HDC to fine Clarkston historic district residents up to $5,000 for not complying with their orders or for doing work on their homes without their permission. (You will be made to listen and obey, damn it!) How did this little gem slip in for city council consideration? Perhaps we should ask our city manager, since he’s apparently been working on it in the background for a while.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the little demigods on the HDC, let me tell you a bit about them. Michigan law prefers that one HDC member be a graduate of an accredited school of architecture with two years of architectural experience or someone who is a registered architect in the state. But if such a person is not available, then we can just skip that requirement. As for the other members, Michigan law only requires that a majority of them have a “clearly demonstrated interest in or knowledge of historic preservation.” What were the qualifications of the most recent appointment to the HDC? Well, she loves the downtown area, was happy to have purchased a historic home, she did work on her home with approval from the HDC, and she talked with two members of the HDC about serving. And this is one of the people who sits in judgment of you and wants to be able to fine you for up to $5,000 for not following HDC orders. Impressive, huh?

The HDC members are busy little bees. Some of them have been known to patrol the neighborhood looking for “violations.” They’ve refused to allow the demolition of a home that sits in the historic district, even though it’s been deemed unsafe by a professional inspector and doesn’t fall within the date range of homes that are considered “historic.” They spend our tax dollars fighting over porch railings and fences. They went to one home (both the husband and wife are physicians) and threatened the husband because of some really beautiful work he’d done in his backyard that apparently didn’t match their personal tastes. They use our tax dollars to pay for opinions from an architect about things like window replacements.

The HDC is really focusing in particular on financially crushing another homeowner for “destroying historic materials.” What horrible thing did she do? She replaced her windows. 😱 That’s right. This terrible event was discovered during a neighborhood patrol by a former HDC chair, but fortunately for us (and the world), the former HDC chair was able to garbage pick three of the old windows and save these precious artifacts from the landfill. However, because of her act of disobedience and insubordination, the HDC wants to force this poor woman to remove thousands of dollars of new windows and replace them with something that looks historic because it comes from a company that manufactures “historic” appearing windows at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars more. (I suspect, without knowing for sure, the reason the windows were replaced without the proper approval was because the window company didn’t ask for a permit, something most people would expect their contractor to do. City officials are supposed to send permit requests for work within the historic district to the HDC so they have notice of the work.)

I have personal examples. We had to live with a leaky roof while the HDC considered for months whether our shingles were appropriate (even though they were the same shingles as before, except they were a lighter shade of grey). And the HDC was behind a stop work order issued over replacing rotting wood on our porch, and they hid the fact that they were responsible for it – the orange order was plastered to our window, issued by some unnamed “township” (even though Clarkston is a city), signed with an illegible signature, and done on a Friday when our city staff doesn’t work so we couldn’t ask questions – even though our painting and repair work had been going on for quite a while. Nobody bothered to simply talk to us about what work was being done before posting the stop work order and telling our carpenter to immediately stop what he was doing. After the HDC realized we were simply repairing and replacing what we already had, they rescinded the stop work order, approved what we were doing, and offered to “help.” Um, thanks but no thanks. I wrote about many of these things here.

Oh wait, there’s more. A previous HDC chair with a recognizable local family name (cough, cough, Catallo) issued a stop work order to prevent property owners from clearing all the trees on their own property. I’m sure it was just a coincidence that one of those property owners is a developer and the property in question was right across the street from that former HDC chair’s brother’s restaurant. And it was totally another coincidence that her mother (a former mayor and council member who lives across the street from the former HDC chair) cut down her own tree without asking for permission from the HDC (because the rules aren’t important with the right family name or connection). And nothing screams 1800’s mill town more than a Latin street food restaurant right in the middle of the downtown. (Yup. Same family).

The HDC has even had the chutzpah to tell the city manager he was unwelcome at HDC meetings. They also claim they don’t report to the city – they only report to the State Historic Preservation Office. We’re just supposed to endlessly fund them with our tax dollars with no oversight.

Recent HDC minutes reveal they have been exploring putting a restriction on the property deeds to our homes. That’s right. They want to eff with the deed to your most important asset – your home – whether or not you are doing work that would allow them to interfere with your home.

And these are the folks that now want to fine you up to $5,000, with the amount to be determined at their discretion.

Have we had enough of these tyrants yet?

Can we do something about bad treatment?

Yes, we can.

We can recall elected officials who do things we don’t like, and we can single the worst offender out for recall as an example. If we don’t like an ordinance, our charter allows us to change it and put it to a public vote. I don’t recommend trying to change an ordinance, because it requires a lot of signatures and the city council only needs to wait two years to issue the same ordinance again, provided it has five votes in favor.

What’s left? The very best option, I think – a charter amendment. And I also think we should start with the HDC.

Because there are people in the city who will try to twist what I’m going to say next, let me be crystal clear about what I’m trying to do and why I’m trying to do it:

1. 1. I am not anti-historic district. I like it. I don’t want it to go away.

1. 2. I am not anti-HDC. I believe the HDC is an integral part of the historic district. It’s really sad to see how much they’ve drifted from where they were 20 or so years ago when we bought our house in the historic district to where they are today.

1. 3. I believe the HDC has gone way too far afield, we need to force a course correction, and our charter provides us with the tools to do that. We are a small town. The HDC is not separate from us; it is a part of us. It is not OK for our HDC neighbors to use the levers of government to hurt our other neighbors. It is not OK for our HDC neighbors to rain down financial destruction on our other neighbors. No one should ever have to live in fear of what our HDC neighbors might try to do to them – just because they believe they can. We should not continue to tolerate the intolerable. Our HDC neighbors should be cooperative, welcoming, educational, and advisory. To the extent they are not, we need to do something about it.

Nothing I am about to propose would eliminate the historic district or the HDC. You can see that for yourself by reading the suggestions that follow. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to manipulate you by telling you things that are untrue.

Now that I’ve made my intentions clear, here goes.

Section 14.4 of our charter allows us to propose charter amendments as permitted by state law. The state statute controlling charter amendments is MCL 117.25, and it only requires that we collect 5% of the signatures of the qualified and registered voters in Clarkston. The state isn’t very good at requiring that voter rolls be purged for people who move or die, so it’s inevitable there will be more registered voters than actual voters. Even so, I’m confident we can get enough signatures to put a charter amendment addressing the HDC’s conduct on the ballot without breaking a sweat.

To give you some idea what 5% means signature-wise, I have a Clarkston voter list from September 2022 that has 802 registered voters on it. If that number were current, that means we would only need 41 valid signatures on a charter amendment ballot proposal petition. The current number of registered voters is probably slightly different, but you get the point. No doubt we could get all the signatures we need just by visiting people who’ve been hurt by the HDC’s actions. I plan to order another list to get an updated number of registered voters and to give me something to cross check to confirm that any petition signer is a registered voter.

So, what should we put on our charter amendment? The world is our oyster provided we don’t directly contradict state law. How about:

• • Forbidding the HDC from getting involved in anything that doesn’t relate to the structure of the home, which includes paint colors (something they haven’t gotten into – yet).

• • Michigan law states that the HDC “may” fine people up to $5,000 (that’s where the city attorney got that number). Since this is discretionary (“may” means you can but don’t have to do something), we could limit the amount or simply say that fines are not the appropriate way of enforcing HDC decisions. We could prohibit the city council from funding any code enforcement activities for the HDC or at least require the city council to separately budget and approve expenditure of any funds to enforce fines. That way, the HDC could still try to fine people, but it’s much more difficult to serve an enforcement ticket or prosecute these purported violations.

• • Establish a complaint procedure for claims of HDC abuse. Due process requires the accused HDC member(s) be allowed notice and an opportunity to be heard on a complaint, but if the city council determines an HDC member was abusive or engaged in “misconduct in office,” they would be removed. (There is already a provision in the charter for the council to remove commission members for misconduct in office. This would just emphasize that it applies to HDC members and formalize the process.)

• • Prohibit the HDC from being involved in tree removal and landscape decisions unless the plants and trees are as old as the historic district. Or maybe declare that plants and trees existing today are not significant in the city’s history and therefore not within the HDC’s purview.

• • Limit the HDC budget to a fixed percentage of the overall city budget.

• • Require that the HDC obtain city council approval before any lawsuit is filed or answered by prohibiting the HDC from spending any part of its budget on litigation without a separate, explicit appropriation of funds. Require the HDC to file periodic lawsuit status reports with the city council.

• • Require city council review and approval of HDC policies and procedures.

• • Require HDC meetings be recorded and put online so the public can monitor the way their fellow citizens are treated by the HDC.

• • Require HDC minutes to clearly state what was discussed and the basis for the HDC’s actions.

• • Prohibit HDC members, city employees, or agents of the HDC or city from entering private property without the permission of the owner or occupant.

• • Limit the HDC’s authority to matters affecting the exterior features of a “historic resource” visible from public streets, sidewalks, or other public property.

Those are just my initial thoughts. What do you think? Do you have any additional suggestions? My husband and I can work on the language of the charter amendment, and I’m willing to pay for an election attorney to flyspeck it to make sure that it’s compliant with state law (which will prevent the city attorney from attempting to keep it off the ballot due to a technicality rather than letting us decide how we wish to be governed).

Do you have your own example of HDC abuse? These stories can be collected and sent to our elected representatives. They need to know the kinds of things that are going on at a local level so our representatives can revise the state law and reign in abusive behavior.

If you have any suggestions for additional items for a charter amendment, or if you have a story you’d like to share, please send them to: ClarkstonHDCAbuse@gmail.com No capitalization is necessary. The emails will go to me, not the city.

Enough is enough. The HDC has created its own fiefdom and believes it’s untouchable. As I said, I’m honestly not trying to eliminate the historic district or the HDC, but we can – and should – put the HDC back in the appropriately sized box where it belongs.

I look forward to hearing from you!