OMG She’s Baaaaack! (At Least Until Something Better Comes Along)

Unbelievable. Clerk Angela Guillen is apparently back at Clarkston city hall.

Let’s recap the outrageous string of events, shall we?

• • Guillen sent a resume to the city in 2024 expressing interest in the city’s then-open city clerk position. She declined an interview after learning the city didn’t offer health insurance benefits.

• • Guillen began working here as a contract clerk at $40/hour before the 2024 election because city manager Jonathan Smith told the city council that Clarkston taxpayers had to match the hourly rate Guillen was making for contract work with the City of Montrose. But FOIA records from the City of Montrose show Guillen was actually making $35/hour for contract work there. I don’t know whether the $40/hour claim originated with Guillen or Smith, but it was Smith who made the false claim to the city council to induce it to approve a $40/hour rate for Guillen.

• • Smith falls hopelessly in love with Guillen, claiming not only do we “have to have her” but also that all our future elections – nay, even whether we would continue as a city or not – was contingent on hiring Guillen. At some point (and I’m too lazy to look up the exact meeting where he said it), Smith said he knew what Guillen’s salary demands were – but he didn’t share them with the council or the public. Smith promised “[w]e’re not gonna raise taxes, I would never, ever, would ever propose that we raise taxes” to pay for hiring Guillen.” Riiiiight.

• • In an apparent (and desperate) attempt to kowtow to Guillen’s compensation and benefit demands, Smith sweet-talked the city council into spending $3,500-$4,000 for a salary survey that didn’t survey anything except the Michigan Municipal League’s database (rather than a custom survey of cities that were the same size as Clarkston). This survey proved that larger cities pay more money and give better benefits to their employees than smaller cities. (Duh.) The salary consultant massaged the data and created salary ranges for the four Clarkston office employees, setting a maximum salary of $44,850 for the clerk position and placement for the clerk position at $38,470 within that newly-created salary range.

• • Oops! That wasn’t enough for Guillen’s still undisclosed salary demands, so Smith tossed out the salary structure that you and I paid for and demanded a $50,000 salary for Guillen plus health insurance (that we never offered to part-time employees before) and an increased retirement savings match, amounting to an additional $10,000 in taxpayer cost for Guillen’s compensation package. Guillen was also eligible for 14 city holidays, vacation time, and sick time per the city’s policies – and a sweet four-day work week. Oh, and we also were to pay for her to attend conferences.

• • While all this was going on and after learning about Guillen’s sudden and mysterious departure from a highly compensated position after a relatively short period of employment with the City of Howell, I sent multiple FOIA requests to Guillen’s previous public employers and identified a number of concerning issues that someone in the city (Smith, the mayor, or city council members) should have required her to satisfactorily explain before the city offered her a job. Smith and everyone on council had the information I gathered before the offer was made and ignored all concerns – including the fact that Guillen had six jobs with six different employers during her most recent four-year employment period.

• • At budget time last May, Smith proposed raising our taxes to pay for Guillen’s salary, the treasurer’s salary range-busting increase, and Smith’s own extortive demand that we pay him an additional $13,000 – or he’d quit. (Wait, didn’t Smith also say he “would never, ever, would ever propose that we raise taxes”? Yup. He certainly did.)

• • Council voted to raise our taxes by .691 mills per year, breaking an express and forever promise to reduce our taxes by this amount in exchange for our “yes” vote to establish a district library (because we would have otherwise been double taxed for library services). Smith lied to the public about the reason we had the .691 millage rollback, suggesting that it was a gift rather than a promise not to double tax the residents (because lifetime promises are so yesterday!). Yet even that .691 mill tax increase – bringing us to the maximum property tax rate possible – was not enough to pay for the three giant salary increases for Guillen, Smith, the treasurer, and the salary increases for the other three city employees. The additional money for the salary palooza over and above the .691 mill tax increase was to be paid for by expected increased property taxes from resales and new construction (money that could have otherwise been used for things that taxpayers actually care about since we get next to no city services from our city employees).

So now we had Guillen and our elections and the city’s future was safe and sound, right?

Oh, not so fast.

On January 9, 2026, Smith made the following announcement in his “weekly communication letter”:

Resignation of City Clerk Angela Guillen

I am sad to report that our Clerk Angie Guillen notified me in late December that she has decided to accept an offer from another municipality to become their Municipal Clerk.  She expressed that while she loves working here and the people here, recent increases in personal expenses no longer make it feasible.  Her new job starts January 5^th. 

Excuse me, but W the actual F?

So, Guillen officially started working for Clarkston on July 1, worked for us for less than six months, and didn’t bother to tell us she was leaving until “late December”? And Smith decided not to tell the public until January 9, four days after Guillen had started her new job? Smith obviously didn’t want to talk about this cluster you-know-what because there was no agenda item to discuss Guillen’s resignation at the January 12 city council meeting.

Once you’ve followed Smith’s antics for a while, it’s easy to spot when he’s using weasel words to avoid telling the whole truth about something. And the phrase “late December” suggested to me that Smith was probably hiding something again. No surprise, because the responsibility for this debacle falls entirely on Smith’s shoulders. Think that’s unfair? When trying to justify his exorbitant pay-me-$13,000-more-or-I’ll-quit salary demand at the May 27, 2025, city council meeting, Smith told us we have a right to hold him accountable for everything the clerk does. He stated: “I carry, if something goes wrong on the clerk, it falls on my shoulders. Yes, the clerk will have some explaining to do, but ultimately it’s on my shoulders. I have that responsibility. That’s the reason for the salary hierarchy, is because as you go up the chain, you carry more and more weight on your shoulders.”

Yet the city council never holds Smith accountable for any mistake or failure in judgement. Why not? What exactly are we getting for that additional $13,000 in salary?

I sent a FOIA request asking for copies of all communications between Guillen and the city regarding her resignation, including but not limited to a resignation letter. Guess what? That request was denied because Smith stated all communications were verbal. (I supposed he meant oral, not verbal.) Translation – Guillen didn’t even extend Clarkston the professional courtesy of sending a damned email saying she was quitting.

I’ve often said that sending FOIA requests is like playing the game “Battleship.” The people who answer FOIA requests for Clarkston (and pretty much every other public body) like to pretend they are Boston lawyers and read FOIA requests in a hyper-technical, narrow way so they can deny them and/or hide as many records as possible from the public. I have no doubt Smith suspected I wanted to know exactly when Guillen had resigned, but since Guillen hadn’t bothered to resign in a professionally acceptable way through a written resignation notice, Smith was able to deny my FOIA request. But, since Guillen told the city she was leaving and Smith would obviously have to make the city council aware of her departure, I knew there would be a written record of that notification and that would likely disclose the resignation date. So, I sent another FOIA request asking for copies of communications between Smith and the council and mayor telling them that Guillen had quit. And this is what Smith sent to city council members and the city’s attorneys regarding Guillen’s departure:

Got that? A courteous professional gives two weeks’ notice in writing. Smith used weasel words in his weekly email to the public to cover up the fact that didn’t happen. Instead, Smith said Guillen advised the city she was leaving in “late December,” but Guillen’s December 30 notice was as late in December as possible since December 31 and January 1 were city holidays. This means Guillen gave the city less than two business days’ notice – whatever was left of the day on Tuesday, December 30 plus Friday, January 2. Through her actions, Guillen could not have more clearly communicated how little she thought of Clarkston and its residents, of all the backflips Smith went through to hire her, or the promise that council had to break about the .691 mill tax rollback to meet her compensation demands. I predicted Guillen would quit as soon as something better came along, but even I couldn’t have predicted she would be so unprofessional in her departure.

You’ll also note that even though our city constitution (the charter) requires the city council to appoint a clerk and set a salary, Smith decided on his own that not only was the city going to hire a clerk with the same duties as Guillen but we were also going to pay this new person more than the maximum salary range established by the consultant. (Wait, I thought the higher-than-market salary we paid Guillen was unique to her because we “had to have” only her? Apparently, Smith lied about that too.) Smith posted the clerk’s job before even bothering to ask whether council wanted to continue playing games with Clarkston elections and roll the dice again on a clerk who will leave in six months — or do the more intelligent thing and contract that part of the job out.

So why did our highly compensated clerk – whose salary caused our taxes to increase forever – leave? At the January 12 city council meeting resident Chet Pardee asked if Smith had done an exit interview to find out why Guillen dumped Clarkston (my words, not Pardee’s), what her new salary was, and where she was going. Pardee had to ask the question because Smith didn’t include the opportunity for any discussion about Guillen’s resignation by adding it as an agenda item and no one on city council moved to amend the agenda to add a discussion either, presumably to protect Smith as they always do.

Smith told Pardee he had in fact done an exit interview and:

We did not talk about her new role, her new salary, certainly. She did not want to disclose that information of where she was going. But suffice it to say, her salary would be going up somewhat significantly. She had experienced some high expenses here in her home and her health care. So, it just wasn’t conducive for her to stay here. Beyond that, there wasn’t a lot. She had no complaints about the city or the staff or working with anybody, working here in the office. She loves the residents. No issues whatsoever in that regard. So, there were no red flags, no reason for her to leave in that regard. So that’s all I know.

So, Guillen had no reason for leaving her job except that she didn’t like the salary and benefits she’d demanded. And do any of you really believe Smith and Guillen didn’t talk about where Guillen would be working and how much her “significant” salary increase would be? Riiiight. 🙄

It took me about ten seconds to figure out that Guillen left Clarkston to work for Meridian Township, that her title was “Deputy Clerk/Elections Administrator,” and to find her contact information on the township’s website. I sent a FOIA request to Meridian Township because I was interested in how much more Guillen was making, what benefits she was receiving, and when her first contact with them was to help determine how long she worked for Clarkston before starting to look for her next job (or at least this next job). I sent the request on January 10 before Smith told us at the January 12 city council meeting that the identity of Guillen’s public employer and her public salary was super-secret – FYI, it’s not secret at all. The Meridian Township clerk extended the time to respond to January 30 because this simple request apparently requires a lot of time.

But wait, there’s more!

I learned today that Guillen is back in Clarkston with no clue when she returned. Two people told me she’s back. It’s not clear exactly how long that “significantly” higher paying job lasted, but it obviously didn’t even last through the end of January. Her name has been wiped off the Meridian Township website. Since today is January 22 and Guillen started working for Meridian Township on January 5, she probably didn’t give them the courtesy of a standard two-week notice either.

Here are the facts. Guillen quit her Clarkston clerk’s job with less than two business days’ notice. The moment she left, the Clarkston clerk’s job became vacant. The city affirmed that Guillen quit her job in Smith’s communications with the public. There was no city clerk attending the January 12 city council meeting (and no comment about that), so Smith acted as clerk at that meeting and prepared the draft meeting minutes. Smith took concrete steps to replace Guillen by posting the job to hire a new clerk.

This means there simply was no job for Guillen to return to. In order to come back to Clarkston, Guillen needs to be formally rehired by the city council.

I have questions. And when I have questions, I send FOIA requests. I obviously want to know what records Meridian Township has concerning Guillen’s departure, but I have even more questions for Clarkston, such as:

• • What discussions did Guillen have with the city about being rehired and with whom did she have those discussions?

• • Only the city council can approve a clerk hire, and only council can set a salary, so what status are we pretending Guillen has? Is she an employee? A contractor? Who authorized Guillen’s return? Who approved her salary?

• • Was Guillen reappointed as a city officer? How was the reappointment accomplished since there was no city council approval at an open public meeting?

• • Is Guillen signing documents as the city clerk? If so, under what authority?

• • Did the city council have a secret email vote or phone meeting to authorize Guillen’s rehire? If so, they’ve violated the Open Meetings Act again, even after being warned by the Oakland County Prosecutor that future violations could result in criminal penalties. If that’s what happened, then perhaps criminal charges are necessary to force the council to take the Open Meetings Act seriously.

I’ll let you know more as I get information back from my FOIA requests and if I’ve misunderstood what’s happened with what appears to be Guillen’s rehire, I’m more than happy to correct things. But don’t hold your breath on the FOIA responses – I expect both Clarkston and Meridian Township to delay providing the information as long as possible.

The more pressing question is why on earth would Clarkston want to rehire Guillen if that’s what happened? Giving a two-day oral notice was a big middle finger to Clarkston taxpayers – and to Smith. No matter what happened in Meridian Township, Guillen has already told the city that she’s not planning on staying here. According to Smith, Guillen cannot afford to continue to work here because her health care and housing costs have increased significantly. Do you think anything has changed since she quit her job on December 30? Smith said Guillen told him that she’d given her situation a great deal of thought but saw no alternative except to quit, it wasn’t conducive to stay here, and she had no complaints about the city, the office staff, or any resident so there’s nothing to do to keep her in Clarkston except to throw more money at her – and that would be stupid after everything that’s happened. After looking at her employment records I suspected Guillen wouldn’t be here long, but whatever caused Meridian Township and Guillen to part ways so soon, based on her statements to Smith, it’s clear Guillen is simply using Clarkston to pay her bills until something better comes along. And we should have no expectation that Guillen will give more than an oral two-day notice when she inevitably leaves again. As Maya Angelou famously said, when people show you who they are – believe them the first time.

We deserve better than this from our employees. The city should have told Guillen thanks but no thanks when she asked to come back, but it’s never too late to do the right thing and send her packing.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Clarkston government is an effing clown show, and I don’t know why anyone would want to pay the maximum in taxes to move here and put up with this nonsense. Smith and the council need to explore contracting with Independence Township or some other public body to handle our elections because throwing money at our clerk problem clearly didn’t solve the clerk problem.

And maybe we should explore contracting for a professional city manager while we’re at it?