I sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on May 14 requesting copies of the three grant requests city manager Jonathan Smith made asking the government for more than a $1 million to fund his latest scheme to replace all the sidewalks on both sides of downtown Main Street. I also asked for records revealing exactly how much Smith’s 2025-2026 salary and benefit proposal would cost taxpayers.
This was a simple FOIA request, and the records were ready to be given to me on June 4. But Smith deliberately delayed disclosing these records showing the full cost of the substantial compensation increases for office employees (including Smith himself, who got the biggest increase) until after the city council voted on the 2025-2026 budget containing the compensation package increases and a tax increase to pay for them. I’ll talk about what he did with the FOIA request (and why I think he did it) in the discussion below. I’ll also link to the FOIA material at the end of this post and find it amusing that Smith published the original FOIA invoice but not the fee appeal in the online council packet, leaving the public to guess why the city’s new lawyers agreed with me to some extent. If you take the time to read the fee appeal that I’ve linked at the bottom of the post, I think you’ll see why Smith preferred to keep that hidden from the public as well.
Smith’s deliberate delay in producing public records by abusing the city’s ability to request an extension and fee deposits is another example of the city’s continuing efforts to keep public records from the public:
Requests for a FOIA deposit are like a form of earnest money, allowing the city to ask a FOIA requester to pay up to 50% of the “good faith” estimated costs of retrieval, review, and copying before the work is started, and the city is allowed to keep the deposit money (and the records) if the FOIA requester doesn’t pay the remaining balance once the work is complete. The Michigan Legislature added the ability for public bodies to request deposits to protect themselves should a FOIA requester decide not to go through with full payment. I expect that the next time the FOIA statute is revised, there will be plenty of testimony providing examples of gamesmanship like Smith’s, the language will be tightened further, and public officials like Smith will howl about how unfair things are. 🙄
Even though Smith had recently bragged about submitting the three grant requests in the preceding weeks before my May 14 FOIA request, and his first budget request for wage increases was made two days before my FOIA request, Smith claimed he needed a total of fifteen business days to locate these public records.
When he finally got around to responding on June 4, Smith lied about needing a 50% monetary deposit before he started collecting documents. Why was Smith’s request for deposit a lie? Because Smith had completed all the retrieval work as of June 3, the day before he claimed – in writing – that he hadn’t yet started the work. This meant the request for deposit was nothing more than a subterfuge to delay the FOIA response. I believe Smith’s delay was a deliberate attempt to hide salary and benefit information from the public until after the June 9th city council meeting when the budget and tax increase received final approval. Even if Smith had sent a final cost request on June 4 – the appropriate response – he could have easily delayed providing the records until after the budget and tax increase were approved since he’s allowed a “reasonable” time to provide the records after payment is made.
Complain all you want now – Smith and his three city hall buddies got the fat paychecks they wanted. I suspect your mayor and the other six city council members had the salary and benefit information Smith concealed from me and the rest of us, but I can’t confirm that without an additional FOIA request. If the mayor and city council had the salary and benefit information, they also didn’t share it with the public, no doubt in part because they all were in favor of raising your taxes to pay for it (rather than eliminating waste and pet projects). If Smith didn’t provide them with this information before they voted on the budget, then the mayor and six council members were negligent for approving salary and benefit increases without knowing what they would cost. (Sadly, Clarkston is the home of incompetent government so either scenario is possible.)
Fee padding and other eff ups:
Smith unlawfully padded his FOIA fee request to bring the total FOIA fee ($63) above the city’s policy to waive FOIA fees if the total is less than $50. One example of this was Smith’s laughable assertion that the city clerk stood in front of our brand new, high-speed copier for at least 30 minutes to copy fewer than 53 pages of records at a cost of $10.50. (A lot of lawyering work is boring but dealing with bold-faced lies like these really makes taking depositions fun.) Without getting into the weeds about how FOIA time is to be tracked and charged (that you can read about here if you’re interested), Smith’s response made it obvious that he’d failed to keep any records of his search time to justify his fee request, which meant he was impermissibly guessing at the actual time required. He also treated each of the four requested documents as a separate FOIA request so he could charge at least 15 minutes of search time for each, risking fines against the city for deliberate delay and for charging excessive fees under the FOIA statute.
If you’ve entertained the notion that Smith might be worth that $13,000+/year raise he just got, you may want to rethink that because Smith also failed to keep a copy of one of the federal grant applications – you know, the federal grant applications asking for more than $1 million to pay for his latest pet project to rework the entire downtown. (The latest cost estimate of the probable construction costs is $1,680,700. To put this into perspective, the revenue for the City of the Village of Clarkston for an entire year from all sources is less than $1 million dollars.) Public bodies are required to justify charging a fee in every instance, and Smith’s justification for charging me a fee for this request was “to locate the congressional grant applications which were submitted online, not through paper copies.” In other words, Smith thought it was appropriate to charge me because he didn’t keep a copy of an important grant application before he pressed the “submit” button. (FYI, he still doesn’t have a copy of the missing grant application, even after trying to charge me to search for a copy of it on a federal website.)
Why am I making a big deal about a minimal fee that violates the law? I’m perfectly willing to pay legitimate fees for responding to FOIA requests. But here Smith manipulated the fee process to delay responding to the request and concealed the real cost of compensation increases for himself and his office friends until after the city council approved the increases and raised taxes to pay for them. I’ve been vilified for asking for public documents and some council members have advocated using the fee process as a weapon to discourage public record requests. So, if the city wants to manipulate the fee process to delay and conceal public records until the passage of time makes them moot and wants to weaponize the fee process to stop public record requests and continue to make decisions in secret, this becomes more than a dispute about $63. If the city wants to invoke its right to FOIA fees, it should follow the law and not manipulate the process for other reasons.
The Increased Salary and Benefits for Four City Hall Employees:
You may recall the city council authorized Smith to spend $3,500-$4,000 taxpayer dollars for a salary survey to determine a reasonably competitive rate to pay the city clerk. Though a competent city manager would try to find the least expensive way to obtain the services the city needs, Smith has never bothered to explore the cost of contracting with another municipality for election-related services and fixed his sights on hiring our contract clerk. His reason for shirking his obligation to the city residents who pay his salary was simply “[w]e have to have her.” No other arrangement and no other person in the universe would do. Who is this irreplaceable person? I don’t know her personally, though I did publish the public records I obtained from her previous public employers here. You can draw your own conclusions about whether you think hiring her was wise or unwise. But one thing is certain is that she is not irreplaceable – no one is.
The consultant Smith recommended to the city council for the salary survey used only one source for his salary information – the Michigan Municipal League’s (MML’s) salary survey database. This biased the results in favor of larger municipalities that pay more money to their employees because smaller communities tend not to participate in the MML salary survey. To make up for this glaring deficiency, the consultant looked at the lower end of the compensation paid for positions that were purportedly equivalent to Clarkston positions and called it good, though this isn’t the same as surveying a representative sample of communities with fewer than 1,000 residents to learn what they actually pay for a clerk, treasurer, city manager or administrative assistant (or whatever we’re calling Evelyn Bihl now, since her titles have also included treasurer assistant, administrative/treasurer assistant, and deputy clerk). Then, using the salary data from communities having very little in common with our community of fewer than 900 people, the consultant established a recommended salary range for each of the “four city hall positions.” I put “four city hall positions” in quotes because we don’t know how closely the positions in other municipalities matched Clarkston’s positions. I provided data for salary surveys in my human resources days, and I was supposed to match job duties established by the survey as much as possible with my organization’s job titles when providing salary data, but it was definitely a subjective decision.
Let me give you an example of why you have to look beyond job titles to decide if some salaries are outliers and should be excluded. Because of Smith’s 2022 salary proposal, I did some of my own salary research and looked at communities that were close in size to Clarkston. At that time, the City of Au Gres had a population of 863, but their city manager made an eye-popping $57,125.06 base salary (his bonus brought him up to $60,932.21) and the city paid 90% of his and his wife’s health insurance premium and put 8% of his gross wages into a retirement plan. Why was he paid so well? Because he was indirectly responsible for a library, a park, a campground, and a harbor, and he was directly responsible for a clerk/treasurer, DPW water and sewer superintendent, full and part-time DPW employees, and an administrative assistant to the clerk/treasurer. Smith can’t hold a candle to the Au Gres city manager in terms of responsibility (and probably not in competence). I didn’t see Au Gres in the salary consultant’s survey, and I suspect it’s because they are one of the almost 200 small Michigan towns that don’t participate in the MML’s salary survey.
So why bring up Au Gres? Because if a straight title comparison was used, it’s confounded by two layers of subjectivity – the subjectivity of the person providing the data and the subjectivity of the consultant in deciding if the titles match sufficiently to be used. The data the consultant used for the Clarkston salary survey was further confounded by the fact that it was skewed because most of it came from larger municipalities that have larger tax bases and populations.
Keeping those things in mind – that the survey skewed the salaries higher and it’s unclear how close the title match was – the consultant recommended three things regarding the salary ranges he established from that salary data:
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- He told Smith to divide the salary ranges into progression steps. The consultant suggested 3% steps or 11 equal steps as examples, though 3% results in smaller steps than 11 equal steps does (11 steps would be calculated by subtracting the salary range minimum from the maximum and dividing by 11).
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- Once steps were established, Smith was supposed to place employees at the step closest to, but not less than, their current salaries.
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- The city should pay to have the ranges reviewed every year (which, in the consultant’s case, means using only the skewed MML database to determine if the ranges should be adjusted).
FYI, giving someone a salary increase because of salary range placement doesn’t limit the increase the organization can give to a person which can be over and above whatever the placement increase is, e.g., 3% more if that’s the budgeted salary increase for everyone that year. This is helpful when the salary range placement increase is small. If the salary range placement results in a very large jump in salary, organizations will sometimes split the salary range placement increases into pieces, e.g., giving half now and half in six months in recognition of budget constraints.
Smith repeatedly claimed he was relying on the salary survey as the basis for making salary and benefit increase recommendations. But as you can see from the attached “Salary Study Impact Assessment for the Administrative Staff – May 2025” that I suspect Smith provided to city council members and the finance committee (but not the public), Smith completely disregarded the salary structure and recommendations proposed by the consultant for every employee – except himself – when making his final recommendations, and our malleable city council adopted these recommendations without question.
Smith’s starting point was a misrepresentation of the consultant’s conclusions to the point of lying about them. Under the title “Rahmberg Compensation Recommendations” (the section of the table in blue), Smith has a column titled “annual salary” and a footnote (b). His footnote (b) says “adjusted to reflect experience/knowledge of current employee.” But these were not Rahmberg’s adjustments – they were Smith’s adjustments that Smith misrepresented as Rahmberg’s adjustments.
If you accept these are accurate salary ranges for an 880-person community (and I don’t), under the Smith-massaged, falsely titled “Rahmberg Compensation Recommendations,” Smith placed himself at the midpoint when he should have been at the $58,225 minimum, put treasurer Coté at the midpoint of the range ($35,300) when he should have been placed at $33,857 (using 11 steps at $963 per step with cents rounded up), put clerk Guillan at the maximum of the range ($44,850) when she should have been placed at $38,470 (using 11 steps at $1064 per step with cents rounded up), and put deputy clerk/administrative-treasurer assistant/administrative assistant Evelyn Bihl at the $18,785 minimum.
Smith’s “Total Compensation” columns in both the green and blue areas of his chart also included only the 401k match and health care coverage in the total compensation value, but that sells the compensation package short. (Smith is apparently unaware that 401k isn’t the correct IRS tax code reference, but I’ll use his label for comparison’s sake since that’s what he put in his chart.) Let’s use Smith for illustration purposes. In addition to a paycheck, Smith also receives fifteen vacation days, fourteen holidays, and six sick days a year. This means taxpayers pay him but get no work in return for almost nine weeks of his four-day, 32-hour work weeks per year. (This is apart from Smith’s other income, which likely includes a 30-year Stellantis Big 3 automaker pension, Medicare or generous Big 3 automaker health insurance coverage, and the ability to collect full Social Security benefits without reduction if he wants it because he’s 68 years old.) Smith did reduce the Rahmberg recommendation for a 401k match from 6% to 4% and removed the $3,080 healthcare in lieu of coverage payment recommendation for employees who didn’t want our health coverage. (FYI, the salary survey of larger cities with bigger tax bases revealed the average number of holidays is 11.7 days compared to Clarkston’s 14 holidays.)
Now that you know why the salary survey structure is a crock and how little Smith actually relied on it, let’s look in more detail at how Smith used it to screw over the taxpayers. I’ve listed the salary ranges from Smith’s “Salary Study Impact Assessment for the Administrative Staff – May 2025” chart below, with the new salary rate Smith proposed – and got final approval from the city council for – in red. Keep in mind these salaries are based on a 32-hour week (and I didn’t add the value of vacations, sick time, and holidays to the total compensation numbers). Annualizing them to a 40-hour/week rate (25% more) allows you to compare apples to apples and consider whether any of these people are worth that much pay in the real world where people work a regular work week, and unlike Clarkston, are paid for competence and fired for incompetence.
City manager Jonathan Smith – $58,225 (recommended range minimum), $68,500 (recommended range midpoint), $78,775 (recommended range maximum) – $58,225 recommended for the 2025-2026 budget (up from the 2024-2025 rate of $44,990). Smith really liked this part of the inflated salary survey and threatened to quit if the council didn’t give him this $13,235/year raise (a threat that would have gotten him fired in the real world). Smith will also enjoy a $2,329 taxpayer-funded 401k match, bringing his total compensation for part-time work to $60,554. Smith’s 40-hour week equivalent is $75,692.50/year, and I dare Smith to name one city in Michigan with fewer than 1,000 residents that pays anywhere close to this amount with as few responsibilities as Smith has.
City treasurer Greg Coté – $30,005 (recommended range minimum), $35,300 (recommended range midpoint), $40,595 (recommended range maximum) – $40,000 recommended for the 2025-2026 budget (up from the 2024-2025 rate of $33,320). At most, Coté should have been placed at the midpoint ($35,300), which is supposedly the market rate for this position in the inflated salary survey and more than was justified by the consultant’s step increase recommendation. Instead, Smith completely ignored the salary survey structure and pushed Coté’s salary right to the top of the salary range. Coté’s taxpayer-funded 401k match is $1,600, bringing his total compensation for part-time work to $41,600 (he apparently has health insurance coverage through some other source since there was no separate cost listed for health insurance for him). Coté’s 40-hour week equivalent is $52,000/year.
City clerk Angela Guillen – $33,150 (recommended range minimum), $39,000 (recommended range midpoint), $44,850 (recommended range maximum) – $50,000 recommended for the 2025-2026 budget (up from the 2024-2025 rate of $38,220 for what was a vacant position). Guillen’s salary increase was the most outrageous of the four. The reason Smith asked for a salary survey was to provide evidence to the council and public that the clerk’s position should be paid as much as Guillen was demanding from the city for the privilege of hiring her, but that’s not what the data pulled from cities larger than Clarkston showed. Last year’s clerk’s salary of $38,220 was close enough to the $39,000 midpoint of the proposed salary range to be deemed a competitive rate without changing it. Since even the inflated salary data didn’t give Smith what he wanted, he ignored it and bumped Guillen up to $5,150 above the maximum of the clerk’s salary range established by the consultant. Guillen will also receive a taxpayer-funded 401k match of $2,000 and taxpayer-funded health insurance benefits in the amount of $8,000, bringing her total compensation for part-time work to $60,000/year. Guillen’s 40-hour equivalent is $75,000/year.
Administrative assistant/deputy clerk/administrative-treasurer assistant Evelyn Bihl – $18,785 (recommended range minimum), $22,100 (recommended range midpoint), $25,415 (recommended range maximum) – $13,880 recommended 2025-2026 budget (up from the 2024-2025 rate of $12,396). Bihl will also receive a taxpayer-funded 401k match of $555, bringing her total compensation for part-time work to $14,435 (she apparently has health insurance coverage through some other source since there was no separate cost listed for health insurance for Bihl, and she’s old enough to be Medicare eligible). Bihl’s weekly hours vary so I can’t accurately annualize the rate, but we’ve been told at various times she works between 12 and 20 hours per week. Smith excluded Bihl from the salary-palooza, paying her less than the minimum of her salary range so I guess he cares far less about her than he does Coté, Guillen, or himself.
As you can see, Smith used the consultant’s salary structure when it suited him (for himself) and ignored it for the other three city hall employees, yet in the comments on the salary budget proposal he provided to the public, Smith stated the “[s]alary increases [were] based on a 3rd-party, Independent Salary Study in order to attract and retain the administrative employees.” As I explained, Smith’s proposed salary increases were not “based” on the salary study – Smith used the salary study as subterfuge to secure approval to overpay city employees from an uncritical and gullible mayor and city council.
Things to remember:
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- There are approximately 200 communities similar in size to Clarkston in Michigan (less than 1,000 in population), and very few of them participated in the single-source MML data used by the consultant to establish Clarkston’s salary ranges.
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- Rather than surveying smaller communities to obtain realistic salary rates, the salary consultant used data from cities with far larger populations and tax revenue than Clarkston contained within the MML database as the basis for his salary recommendations to Clarkston. The consultant admitted the MML database lacked robust data from similarly sized communities but was willing to survey appropriately sized communities – for an extra fee. (Remember the old saying “garbage in, garbage out”? It applies here.)
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- The consultant then used the lower end of the already high salary data to establish salary ranges for Clarkston without validating whether that was a fair and accurate assumption to make by seeking out a representative sample of small communities – because Smith didn’t ask him to.
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- In one of his biggest sleights of hand yet, Smith suggested to the city council and the public that the consultant’s salary recommendations should be followed (and were apparently as precious as the stone tablets created for Moses despite the glaring deficiencies). Smith then proceeded to ignore the consultant’s recommendations and proposed a salary structure that gave him what he wanted.
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- To conceal what he was doing, Smith never shared the “Salary Study Impact Assessment for the Administrative Staff – May 2025” with the public or with me, since he knows I would have published it before the final budget meeting, giving people a chance to be fully informed and object to the way their tax dollars were spent. Frankly, I think the desire to withhold this document is the real reason why Smith slowed down the response to my FOIA request.
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- Smith destroyed the salary range structure for the clerk and the treasurer. The treasurer is now paid almost at the very top of the range, and the clerk’s salary significantly exceeds the top of her range, so there is no basis to give either of them a salary range increase in the future unless taxpayers pay for another salary survey and that survey shows that the salary ranges should be adjusted upward.
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- In addition to hiding where he placed himself and the three other office employees within the already-inflated salary structure, Smith concealed the cost of increased benefits to the four city hall employees. Increasing the 401k match from 3% to 4% will cost taxpayers an additional $6,484, and providing health care coverage to our part-time clerk will cost taxpayers an additional $8,000 per year.
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- The financial obligation to taxpayers to pay salary and benefits for four of our six employees is $176,589, and that excludes the cost to pay the employer’s portion of Social Security taxes on wages (6.2% for 2025), Medicare taxes on wages (1.45% for 2025), and required unemployment and worker’s compensation insurance coverages. Social Security and Medicare taxes alone add $12,401 (because there are no Social Security and Medicare taxes on healthcare and 401k matches), bringing the total cost to taxpayers for these four employees to $188,950, and that number doesn’t include the cost of unemployment and workers’ compensation expenses.
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- Our Department of Public Works (DPW) employees are a separate expense. Smith hides their salaries in financial materials published by the city, charging them to multiple departments so it’s hard to keep track of the totals. DPW employees are eligible for health insurance and 401k matching plus time-and-one-half overtime pay after eight hours in a day and double time pay to work on any of the city’s fourteen designated holidays. Smith provided only the cost to pay them for straight time without benefits in his 2025-2026 budget presentation, which was $96,845.
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- Rather than cutting fat from the budget to pay for the massive salary increases that were based on data that had nothing to do with Clarkston, Smith went after the .691 library millage rollback, convincing the city council to break its express promise to taxpayers and use a loophole to raise our taxes by .691 mills without voter approval.
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- The .691 mill tax increase will generate $44,130.21 in additional revenue to the city. Smith’s chart demonstrates that wasn’t enough to fully pay for the salary and benefit increases, since the total salary and benefit increase for just the four city hall staff (without counting the increased salary costs for the two Department of Public Works employees) was $44,796. So, when council members try to tell you your taxes weren’t raised to pay for Smith’s, Guillen’s, Coté’s, and Bihl’s salary increases, feel free to look them in the eye and tell them you know that’s a lie.
Smith stated the city anticipated receiving $722,231 in taxes from Clarkston residents and businesses in the 2025-2026 budget year (an 11.7% increase), so it’s not unreasonable to suggest that we’re approaching a time soon when half of all taxes paid to city hall will be sucked up to pay six employees’ salaries and benefits. We’re close to $300,000 in employee costs right now when the taxpayer expense of salaries; health insurance; 401k matching; vacations; holidays; sick time; overtime; double time; and city obligations for Social Security, Medicare, worker’s compensation, and unemployment insurance are considered and added together. (Is it any wonder that people are asking more often whether we can continue to afford to be a city?)
(Fun fact: Smith revised and republished the city’s Policy and Procedures Manual effective June 10, 2025, the day after the 2025-2026 budget was approved but before it became effective on July 1. It now reflects the 4% “401k” match, which Smith more correctly refers to in the manual as the municipal employee retirement savings plan [plus a bonus typo] but still states health insurance is only for full-time employees when that is no longer true. What other changes did Smith make to the manual without the required city council approval? Inquiring minds want to know.)
The Downtown Sidewalk Project:
I’m less concerned about the delayed disclosure for the sidewalk and driveway apron repairs downtown than I am with concealing the full impact of salary and benefit increases. Smith has been able to convince our uninformed city council that every sidewalk slab needs to be replaced downtown if seven driveway aprons are repaired. Smith claims that replacing the driveway aprons triggers the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and I don’t quarrel with this. I’m also sure that sidewalk slabs immediately adjacent to the driveway aprons may need to be replaced as well for grading purposes. But I’m not buying Smith’s B.S. that this means every downtown sidewalk slab needs to be replaced at a cost of $1.6 million dollars using the excuse the ADA requires it. If that were true, then every sidewalk slab on every side street would need to be replaced if one were replaced, and we are all aware of sections of city sidewalk that would create a tipping hazard for a wheelchair-bound person. For example, the sidewalk on the southeast side of Church Street adjacent to the stream has been an ignored safety hazard for both the able and disabled for the 22 years I’ve lived in Clarkston, even though the city has done sidewalk repair on Church Street. I think we’re entitled to see a signed engineering report backing Smith’s claim that the ADA requires that all downtown sidewalks must be replaced if seven driveway aprons are replaced because we all know Smith will say whatever he needs to say to get what he wants (see the salary discussion above for the most recent example).
The reason I’m less concerned about the delay in providing copies of grant applications related to Smith’s latest pipedream is at least one of these $1.6 million grant applications requires a 20% taxpayer dollar match (20% of $1.6 million is $320,000). We don’t have the money because Smith recommends – and city council approves – annual budgets that spend every dime we take in, saving nothing for a rainy day. Since Smith and the city council raided our water and sewer funds to pay for the city hall/Department of Public Works expansion over taxpayer objections and have used a cheat to force us to pay .691 mills more in taxes to fund salary and benefit increases for four city hall employees, there are no arrows left in Smith’s quiver that would allow him to find the necessary funds for a project like this without asking taxpayers to approve increased taxes or a bond issue. I’m guessing you’re not as gullible as our city council, and I’ll also wager that you won’t forget that your taxes were increased to pay for higher salaries, 401k matches, and health insurance used primarily to enrich Smith, Coté, and Guillen. (Vote accordingly when asked for more money.)
Let’s be real – this downtown sidewalk/driveway apron project will primarily benefit the downtown businesses, and no one is going to be fooled about Smith’s other claim that this huge project is necessary to provide bump outs for pedestrian crossing areas (because we could fund that separately if safety were really a priority for Smith and if bump outs were ever approved by the Michigan Department of Transportation since M-15 is a state road). Your city government could not care less if your wheelchair-bound family member is injured in the city – their priorities are the downtown businesses (and restaurant businesses are favored over non-restaurant businesses). Your city government also knows it won’t be paying injury claims from the city treasury for trip and fall accidents because those claims would be covered by the city’s liability insurance. (Remember this when Smith claims repairs are necessary because of bazillions of lawsuits that haven’t materialized.)
If you don’t believe me about the real motivation behind the project – helping the businesses – read the grant application material Smith did manage to keep a copy of in the FOIA material I provided below from the city’s second response. Though he mentions the ADA and trip and fall issues, two of the four reasons why Smith is asking for a grant from the state and federal government to help him spend a fortune downtown are to “encourage residents and visitors to patronize downtown businesses . . . leading to higher business income” and to “dramatically increase the aesthetic value and vibrancy of our downtown district while also increasing the business property values.” Smith also claimed “[i]f no improvements are made it is anticipated that the vibrancy of our downtown will no longer compete with other communities, resulting in a loss in business income and possible employment reductions.”
In other words, Smith has been more honest with the federal and state government than he has been with the city council and the public about the real reason he wants this project to go forward. This is no different than the three reasons Smith gave when applying for a grant to pave over historic Mill Street that would have saddled taxpayers with all costs over the grant award that I wrote about here:
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- “It is our feeling that our Mill Street Placemaking project will contribute to the health, happiness, and well-being of the patrons of our downtown businesses by providing them with a space that they can connect with and enjoy, time after time. They can use it as a quiet space for reflection or a landmark for meeting family or friends.” (Bolding mine.)
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- “By addressing the needs of the patrons, we also anticipate that customer loyalty to our downtown businesses will gradually increase, thereby strengthening the City’s relationship with our business owners and Main Street Oakland County program.” (Bolding mine.)
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- “The above two benefits will improve the overall strength of our business district and, presumably, make us more resilient in an economic downturn relative to other communities not focused on Placemaking.”
It should be no surprise that Smith is a board member and treasurer of the Clarkston Area Chamber of Commerce. Their mission is “to cultivate business opportunities and relationships, for our members in the Clarkston area.” (Underscore mine.) Their vision states they “are an innovative business accelerator, connecting businesses with our community.” (Underscore mine.)
I have nothing at all against the Clarkston Chamber and believe our nation is great because of capitalism, but I reject Smith’s use of my taxpayer dollars to further the interests of another one of his non-profits or any private business. (I’ve previously written how Smith has used Clarkston taxpayer resources to support his other non-profit interest – the Clarkston Community Historical Society – here and here and here, for example.)
If we receive any of these grants, the future question for you is this – are you willing to pay even more in taxes for any reason after just receiving a .691 mill tax increase that wasn’t enough to pay the full amount of the salary and benefit increases Smith greedily pushed for himself and the three other city hall employees? If so, are you willing to pay more in taxes to benefit downtown businesses rather than a bazillion other things that affect you more directly, like our city side streets?
I think if the downtown businesses and/or the Clarkston Chamber want prettier sidewalks, then we should set up a special assessment district and make them pay for it themselves. If our highly compensated city manager cared more about city residents than his Chamber of Commerce colleagues’ business interests, he would have proposed it already.
FOIA Correspondence and Documents:
06-04-2025 – City’s first response