At the May 27, 2025, city council meeting, city manager Smith threatened the council that if the clerk’s compensation was raised – something Smith claimed was actually necessary and something he requested – but he didn’t also get a $13,000 raise, then he would quit. Are you offended yet?
If you haven’t gathered by now, I’m not a fan of city manager Smith. He’s cost the city a fortune, and I frankly don’t care if he quits. In fact, I think the city would be better off.
I’ve written about how we got here with regard to Smith’s giant salary demands for our six employees (including himself) here and here and here. The two DPW guys aren’t sharing in the bonanza as much as the office staff, and their hourly increases are small in comparison. Smith is proposing a 5.7% increase for the DPW supervisor and a 3% increase for the DPW laborer (though the DPW laborer will be working a 40-hour week now instead of a 32-hour week and it looks like he’s getting a bigger raise on paper than he actually is).
No, the big salary increases funded by a tax increase are reserved for the four office staffers who don’t get their hands dirty. They will split $33,180 in increased salary – $13,325 to Smith, $6,680 to the treasurer, $11,780 to the clerk, and $1,485 to the administrative assistant. Do the math, you’ll see Smith is demanding over 40% of the salary pot. This does not include new health insurance benefits and an increased retirement savings match – Smith’s budget does not disclose how much more we are going to be paying for those goodies.
How did we get here? I’ve written about it before, but briefly, Smith became enamored with our contract clerk despite a number of publicly unanswered questions about her employment history and he wanted to bring her on full-time. But alas, the clerk wanted more money and benefits than allowed by our current salary structure. So, Smith convinced the city council to approve an expensive salary survey that relied on data from only one source and mostly considered cities with much larger populations and tax bases. Then he convinced the city council that the salary survey should form the basis for giant salary increases, not just for the clerk, but everyone else (and especially Smith). In his budget presentation, Smith had the chutzpah to suggest these giant salary increases are as necessary to Clarkston residents as police protection, assessing services, legal services, and building and inspection services. (Seriously?)
And our stupid city council has fallen for this – hook, line, and sinker.
I don’t think Smith deserves such a large salary increase. He’s cost taxpayers a fortune in unnecessary expenses and shirks responsibility when he makes costly mistakes. Two examples come immediately to mind – the city hall renovation/Department of Public Works (DPW) expansion and the $171,000 in police and fire overpayments.
City hall renovation/DPW expansion: One of Smith’s earlier projects involved shoving through an ~$400,000 DPW/city hall expansion over voter objections. The objections were quite clear – there was a petition drive and a city-wide sign campaign opposing the expenditure. Smith convinced city council to “borrow” taxpayer money that was specifically earmarked for water and sewer repair to pay for this project. Wonder why you are seeing surcharges on your sewer bill? Because when we needed the money for repairs, it wasn’t there – it was used for the city hall renovation/DPW expansion. We will be paying back the “borrowed” money for years and years, and the payments reduce the money available to spend on things taxpayers actually care about. Repairing city hall would have cost only $48,000 but would not have given Smith his private office, so he wasn’t in favor of that (and at the time, Smith referred to doing repairs only as the “do nothing” option).
Police and fire overpayments: Smith has refused to take any responsibility for his portion of the $171,000 police and fire overpayment eff up. The overpayments went on for fourteen years, with the last eight occurring while he was city manager. Smith has repeatedly claimed to a gullible city council that no one could have known the city was overpaying for police and fire services, yet my husband was able to figure it out by reading the contract and looking at Oakland County’s website. Granted, it’s hard to discover overpayments when you don’t look in the police contract file. If Smith had done that at any point during his eight years with the city, he would have realized city hall had only part of the years’-old original contract and no new contracts on file. I know this because I FOIA’d the contracts from the city. The city was only able to give me part of the original contract, and I had to ask Independence Township for a complete original and all later contracts. After my husband discovered the debacle, Smith blamed Independence Township for not providing billing detail for police and fire services every month, suggesting that if they’d done so, then he would have realized we were overpaying. Yet if Smith wanted the billing detail, he could have picked up the phone and asked for it (and unless he’d read the contract, the billing detail wouldn’t have helped). Smith didn’t even know the city contracts with Independence Township for police services, telling a council member our contract was directly with the Oakland County Sheriff.
These are only two examples, but they are big and have cost taxpayers dearly. While Smith has gotten more experienced through the years, that doesn’t make him a professional city manager. After eight years on the job, I’d expect he would have learned something.
Want other examples? Look no further than the May 25, 2025, city council meeting:
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- We need to rush into a higher-cost contract for assessing because Smith hasn’t researched alternatives. (Probably too busy trying to justify giant salary increases.)
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- Smith asked the council to proceed with a grant application for road repair, claiming an engineering firm’s work would be completely free to the city and covered by grant funds if the engineering firm was successful in helping us obtaining the grant. Apparently, Smith didn’t read the contract, because after further discussion at the city council meeting, it became obvious the city would not only be on the hook to match the grant money, but that money could not be used for engineering services. This added 20% more to the amount the city would be responsible for – $45,000 more!
- Smith didn’t explore any other police coverage options, claiming the more expensive Oakland County Sheriff “is really the only game in town” until a community decides to build its own police department that we could piggyback on. (I guess Waterford, White Lake, and Lake Angelus, for example, don’t have a police department?)
- Smith urged a contract with Independence Township for building and inspection services “because we don’t have the time to do a full assessment.” (Maybe if Smith spent less time on the salary increase issue he would have been able to do work we actually care about?)
- Smith ignored Depot Park camera installation, document scanning, and Depot Road speed control for yet another budget year.
When it comes to employee salary increases, I honestly don’t care where anyone comes out on the issue, and I’ve been supportive of salary increases over the years. I am against these particular salary increases because of the way they are being implemented. You and I will be paying more in taxes to provide them – without our consent – because Smith is taking advantage of a loophole.
In Michigan, before a local government can raise taxes, it needs to get the consent of the voters. The only reason this .691 mill tax increase is happening without our consent is because the city is breaching a lifetime promise that we wouldn’t be double-taxed if we voted “yes” to establish a new district library (now known as the Clarkston Independence District Library) and agreed to pay a separate 1.25 millage to support the district library. Before that vote, we paid .691 mills directly to Independence Township to support the old library. The city council promised voters, through a resolution, that if we voted yes for the new district library, we would not be double taxed (.691 mills for the old library plus 1.25 mills for the new library). To avoid double taxation, the city council promised it would always credit the .691 mills back to us every year.
Clarkston voters stupidly relied on the city council’s promise and voted yes for the new district library. We did not insist on a charter amendment to memorialize the .691 mill annual rollback – and that’s the reason that Smith is able to push through a tax increase of .691 mills. Smith is correct that it can legally be done because the city’s promise is apparently not worth the powder to blow it to Hades. The city perceives this .691 mills as “their” money that they now want to take back. Councilmember Gary Casey even outrageously referred to the .691 mill credit as a “gift” to taxpayers during the May 27, 2025, city council meeting, because keeping your own money as promised is apparently a gift from the city to you.
Frankly, I think Smith and the city council are doing things this way because they know they could never convince a majority of Clarkston voters to vote for a tax increase to do this. Seriously – would you vote yes on a tax increase knowing that 100% of the money would be used for salary increases for four city hall employees (adding in the DPW employees takes the total dollar increase for salaries even higher than .691 mills)?
Back to Smith, the salary increases, and how full of cr*p he’s been over the years.
When Smith was hired in January 2017, the city manager job paid $30,000/year. That’s not a lot of money, but the city tends to hire retirees and Smith was no exception. The Clarkston News reported on the hire and Smith’s background. At the time of his hire, Smith had been retired from Chrysler (now Stellantis) for around eight months. He’d worked there for 30 years, which suggests a nice, Big Three auto company pension and probably a great 401(k) filled with years of employer matching. His experience “included” production planning, strategic operations, and capacity studies. He did not claim he had any experience working for government or any understanding what a city manager does. At the time of his hire, Smith had an automotive consultant job and an antique business he ran with his wife. He claimed, “money was not [his] motivation” when accepting the city manager’s position. Eight years later, a web search suggests Smith is now 68 years old (December 1956 birthdate), making him eligible for full Social Security benefits and Medicare. He works 32 hours a week, enjoys 15 vacation days, 6 sick days, 14 holidays, a retirement savings match, and a salary of just under $45,000/year.
I mention these things not because I care about Smith’s bank account and income streams, but simply to make two points. First, it’s extremely unlikely that Smith needs the city manager job or a giant raise. And second, if I had to guess, I suspect he’ll only be hanging out at city hall until he’s 70 years old, at which point his maximum Social Security benefit will stop growing and he’ll be gone, so I’m not sure why anyone cares if he leaves now or two years from now.
Smith’s actions have also suggested he doesn’t need the income, nor did he seem to care if a direct report makes more money than he does. Apparently, there’s something special about the 2025 budget year that’s made him change his mind?
At the May 9, 2022, budget presentation to city council, Smith told the city council if they wanted to take him out the equation and increase the other five salaries but not his salary, he was perfectly fine with that. In 2025, when it means raising our taxes, Smith not only thinks he’s entitled to 40% of the proposed salary increase pot, but if the clerk was the only position with a salary change, he would “just find that so disrespectful, [he’d] have to leave.” So, if the city council gave him exactly what he asked for late last year – to match the compensation demands of the contract clerk because we “have to have her” – that would no longer be good enough.
Why is that?
Smith claims his “competitors” start at an $80,000 salary. (Which 880-person city is that, Mr. Smith? Name it. We’ll wait.) He also claims he and the others are “constantly” approached by other municipalities. Fair warning, Mr. Smith – higher salaries come with actual accountability and I doubt the city council at these competitors would be as gullible or forgiving as the Clarkston city council if you wasted as many tax dollars there as you have here.
Smith also claims he’s entitled to $13,000 more per year out of concerns for “hierarchy,” and “even in the business world, rarely do you have the CEO making less than a worker out on the floor.” (So, Smith is a CEO and everyone else is a factory worker? I don’t have a problem with factory workers or see them as “less than,” but Smith apparently does.) And Smith had zero problem with our DPW supervisor earning more annual salary that he earns for years now. Granted, the DPW supervisor works an official 40-hour week, but Smith claims he works far more than 40 hours per week. But in 2025, Smith is objecting to the clerk making the same amount or more than he will. A couple things jumped out at me – one, the clerk is female, and DPW supervisor is male. Smith has a problem with one making more than he does but not the other. Why? And two, the clerk has solid job experience justifying the money – Smith does not.
So, apparently, we need to give Smith more money, because . . . we need to give him more money.
Smith also claims he’s deserving of more money “because as you go up the chain, you carry more and more weight on your shoulders” and he has to take ultimate responsibility when something goes wrong. Really? Because Smith took exactly zero responsibility for the eight years of police and fire overpayments and even tried to blame Independence Township. That doesn’t sound like someone who deserves more money for taking ownership of office f*ck ups, does it?
I want to share Smith’s threats to the council taken from an informal transcript of the May 27, 2025, city council meeting that you can hear for yourself by going here:
So, I disagree with a thought, let’s raise the clerk to this level, but let’s leave the manager at this level. I’m opposed to that. If that’s the direction the decision would go, I would respectfully resign.
Smith said if that was the proposal, is leave Jonathan where he’s at, and raise the rockstar [clerk] salary, that would be disrespectful in my mind, because I’d have the responsibility and no corresponding payout. I would just find that so disrespectful, I’d have to leave.
One of the many things I learned in my years in HR management was never to countenance an employee threat. Whenever someone threatened to leave if the company didn’t do X or Y, the smartest response was always offering to help them pack. Rewarding workplace blackmail never leads to good results.
So, if Smith wants to throw a tantrum and quit if he doesn’t get his way, I’ll be glad to provide the packing boxes.
I sincerely appreciate your efforts to keep us fully informed about our City government!