Here’s the Cliff Notes version of what’s going on here.
Step one: Since last year, Jonathan Smith has had an unquenchable desire to hire contract employee Angela Guillen as the city’s clerk, despite some red flags in her employment history that suggest we’re the best she can do for now and she will leave as soon as something better comes along. Hiring Guillen has been Smith’s overarching goal, and everything that has happened since then has been Smith’s way of inching forward with his plan because Guillen’s as-of-yet undisclosed compensation demands are higher than our current salary structure allows. At the May 12, 2025, city council meeting, Smith confessed a willingness to contract out practically our all of our city services to Independence Township – even our beloved Department of Public Works (DPW) employees – yet he’s not willing to contract with Independence Township for election services because that would mean he could not get his heart’s desire – Guillen – if he did that. I can tell you from FOIA records I received that Guillen declined an interview with us last year because she wanted health insurance (but not because of the salary for the position); this means whatever additional salary she wants will likely also include health insurance. So, we’ll now be paying for health insurance for all our part-time city employees because you can’t give it to Guillen and not the rest.
Step two: To justify Guillen’s compensation demands, Smith cajoled and convinced the city council to pay up to $4,000 in taxpayer money for a salary survey last year. This salary survey was limited only to participants in the Michigan Municipal League’s salary survey database, which excludes most of the almost 200 cities, villages, and townships in Michigan with populations less than 1,000 people (like Clarkston). That deliberately skewed the results toward higher salaries. And let me give you an inside scoop on how the job comparisons go – Smith would have had a little office meeting before the consultant came in and told the three office employees to exaggerate their job duties as much as was believable so the salary consultant would compare them to higher paying jobs at these larger cities, villages, and townships. It’s a corporate game, Smith is a Stellantis retiree, and he knows how to play. Maximizing the comparisons was necessary because if Smith met Guillen’s salary demands, she’d likely make more than he would and everyone in the office would be super mad. So, Smith’s latest boondoggle is to throw some cash at everyone and claim it’s a budget imperative that requires a tax increase to pay for it. Let me remind you what Smith said last November 12 when he talked to the public about the results of the salary survey – “We’re not gonna raise taxes. I never, ever, would ever propose that we raise taxes. We have to find a way within our walls, within our resources, to make this work.” (It shouldn’t surprise you that Smith lied about this because he lies all the time. The only way you can catch him in a lie is to read the unofficial transcripts on the Clarkston Sunshine website so you can compare the things he says from meeting to meeting. When I’m feeling charitable, I call these “Smith myths,” but that’s a nice way of saying “Smith lies.”)
Step three: Now that Smith had a salary survey in hand to support giant salary increases for all four positions in the office at city hall, including his own, he started crafting his salary demands with the finance committee by asking for even more than he wanted and later reducing the demand to make it look more reasonable. In this case, he apparently came in with a 38.7% increase ($51,060) in administrative compensation that he later reduced to 28% or $36,883. But Smith doesn’t want to share all the individual compensation details with the council or the budget committee just yet – including the details of the raise he personally expects to receive – because he doesn’t want to risk having his plan derailed. Nah. It’s better to float large numbers and percentages and see if the pitchforks come out. If that doesn’t happen, then he can proceed with a public hearing that he hopes no one will attend so he’ll get a rubber stamp from council.
Step four: Put a presentation together, call it “budget challenges,” and use a busy slide that attempts to hide the fact that over 50% of the so-called “budget challenges” is increases to employee compensation, amounting to a 28% increase to be split among four office employees. You should also pound the podium a lot and talk about how everyone deserves more money. Except there are no real budget challenges are far as employee compensation goes, remember? All this came about because Smith wants to hire Guillen, so if we contract for election services with Independence Township, there would be no “budget challenges.” Smith has told us that non-employee compensation costs have increased by $35,758, and this amount is mostly covered through the increased property taxes the city will collect this year.
Cliff notes over.
This is about breaking an express promise to Clarkston taxpayers, raising our taxes without our consent by using a loophole, and giving four city employes (including Smith) giant compensation increases.
Anyone who says the facts are otherwise is lying to you.
To the extent that Smith claims the city has no money to meet all its so-called “budget challenges,” that’s another lie. The city is sitting on $96,219.57 in the general fund that it never anticipated receiving. This money was recovered after my husband discovered city employees had been negligently overpaying for police and fire services for fourteen years. The overpayments amounted to at least $171,799.59, and Smith and the treasurer are responsible for eight years (the majority) of those overpayments. Smith has refused to take any responsibility for this debacle and repeatedly lied to the public, claiming that it was impossible to discover the overpayment – without ever explaining how my husband was able to accomplish it from outside the city simply by reading the contract and going to the same Oakland County website Smith went to when he prepared his slides for the May 12 presentation. Because the statute of limitations on contract claims is only six years and Independence Township told the city to pound sand to collect more than that, taxpayers lost $84,497.66. We collected only $96,219.57 which represented six years of overpayments plus interest. (FYI, Smith and the treasurer are two of the four employees who will share in the $37,000 compensation increase bonanza because we should be rewarding negligence, right?)
Smith wants to spit in your face and keep the money in the general fund, saving it for his grand scheme of helping the businesses (but not the residents) by repaving the entire downtown with new sidewalks, bump outs, underground water supplies for trees, driveway aprons, etc. with a $1.5 million dollar grant. He told us about it at the March 24, 2025, city council meeting and said the grant would require a $300,000 match (more tax increases – yay!) Never mind that Smith does a really bad job writing grant requests; he’s convinced a federal government that’s cutting costs left and right is going to fork over a bunch of cash based on his slapdash grant application.
What are the Smith “budget challenges” exactly? Looking at page 3 of the “budget challenges,” Smith claims he needs to pay for increased costs for police services ($21,117), even though he didn’t bother to research what the cost would be to contract with someone other than Independence Township for a lesser amount; assessing services ($4,306, but Smith admits this likely a zero cost increase); and building and inspection services ($10,335), or $35,758 in total. We need police, assessing, and building and inspection services. We don’t need to give four office workers a giant wage and benefit increase. Smith admitted the city will enjoy a natural increase in property taxes this year (that comes from uncapping property tax rates for new buyers, increased property taxes for home improvements, and the normal 5% increase or the cost of inflation on overall tax receipts, whichever is less). Smith could cover all necessary costs in his fake budget concerns by spending the police and fire overpayment money that’s sitting in the bank. He could even cover the outrageous salary increases. But he wants to keep that for his pet project – because his money is his money and your money is his money.
But how can Smith pay for giant salary increases without affecting his downtown renovation dream? Smith is pushing for a .691 mill tax increase. Now you might think your taxes can’t be raised unless you vote to approve it. That is Michigan law. But Smith wants to use a loophole by reneging on the forever library millage promise. He couldn’t even tell the truth about what it was about, and he hopes you don’t figure it out. Here’s what Smith said at the May 12, 2025, city council meeting:
So, the library reduction millage. This is an old story that dates back to 2014. In 2014, the library needed a millage to survive. They put a millage in place. The city council at the time said, we want to show our support for the millage, but we also want to give some relief to the homeowners that are going to have to pay this 1.25 point millage. So as a way of showing their support to the residents, they said, we will give you a 0.691 millage reduction to help kind of bridge the gap. This new millage has been put on you. So, recognize that we’re going to give you a reduction back so that this kind of eases the pain a little bit.
Is Smith lying again or is he so incompetent that he didn’t bother to understand what actually happened? Hard to tell. Neither are laudatory.
The library didn’t need a millage to survive; it was an Independence Township department that wanted to become a new entity (an independent district library) and charge a new millage that it could keep for itself. The library didn’t put a 1.25 millage in place; Clarkston and Independence Township voters agreed to it. Clarkston taxpayers had been paying the equivalent of .691 mills to support the old library out of the general fund, but voting yes on the new library entity would mean Clarkston voters would be taxed an additional 1.25 mills and our greedy Clarkston government could take the .691 mills that used to go to the library and use it for council or city manager pet projects. (Seriously, who would vote yes to that?) To entice Clarkston taxpayers to vote for a new independent district library, Clarkston government made a forever promise to Clarkston voters that if they voted yes, they would never be penalized for their yes vote (which is why there’s a .691 millage reduction from your overall tax bill every year before you see it). This had nothing to do with Smith’s claim of Clarkston government’s “support for the residents” (since they clearly don’t care about us); it was because the city council wanted the residents to vote yes for the new library. In Smith’s mind, not charging us .691 mills means that the city has been “giving” us something rather than what actually has happened – we kept more money because we weren’t taxed for the .691 mills the city promised it would never tax us for. This promise was immortalized in a city council resolution that states: “In future years, the City will reduce its general operating millage levy by 0.691 mills from the level that the City would otherwise have imposed.”
And we stupidly believed the city council. I say stupidly because we allowed them to get away with making the promise in a resolution rather than a charter amendment. A change to the charter requires a vote of the residents; a change to a resolution does not. The city council can change as resolution whenever it wants to, regardless of what residents want. So, to this extent, your city council can raise our taxes by .691 mills, and they know there isn’t anything we can do about it. Back then, taxpayers didn’t envision a greedy city manager who would say whatever he needs to say to get the thing du jour that he wants, including compensation increases for himself.
Smith anticipates that .691 mill tax increase will bring in an additional $43,900 to the city, so if you ever wondered what the price of integrity is to Smith and your city council, you have your answer – it’s $43,900.
I want to share some of the things that were said at the May 12, 2025, city council meeting.
On hiring Guillen and the giant salary increases for everyone, including Smith:
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- Smith admitted that his desire to hire Guillen is what’s driving all of this. Rodgers and Avery also admitted that we’re doing all of this for one person – Guillen. Smith suggested that we can’t afford not to do this because if Guillen isn’t hired Clarkston could be sued by the State of Michigan over election mistakes. But that’s not true – we could contract with another entity to run our elections, save a ton of money, and not be sued by the state.
- “We’ve got to find a way to have qualified people here.” Is Smith under the impression that throwing money at unqualified people suddenly makes them qualified? Because it doesn’t. It simply means the unqualified are making more money. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I think Smith was unqualified when he was hired, is still unqualified, and he’s cost taxpayers a fortune because he often doesn’t know what he’s doing after eight years on the job. You get what you get – and we got a Stellantis retiree who didn’t know anything.
- Cara Catallo made one of the rare comments I agree with – “And also, even though we’re partnering with the township for everything, I want a $17,000 raise. . . And it’s just weird to hear, like, oh, no, we don’t have enough money, except we do to give myself a raise.”
On breaking the .691 library millage promise that “[i]n future years, the City will reduce its general operating millage levy by 0.691 mills from the level that the city would otherwise have imposed”:
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- Smith admitted that he was deliberately avoiding using the general fund balance to finance his and the other three employees’ compensation and benefit increases – “Our fund balance is doing very well right now because of the $97,000 police refund . . . that’s still in the bank, we haven’t touched it. So that’s, we have a healthy fund balance. . . . So, we’re not asking to take money out of the fund balance or take a loan out of it, put a bond debt or something.” No, buddy, you’re not going to do this through bond debt. First, you couldn’t do it without taxpayer approval. Second, bond debt is for infrastructure – and lining the pockets of four city employees (including yourself) isn’t infrastructure.
- Without increasing our taxes by .691 mills, Smith claimed the city would be “giving us back” $44,000. He later admitted his claim that the city was “returning” this money to us each year was not true; in fact, we are paying .691 mills less taxes and he wants us to pay .691 mills more in taxes. There are no rebate checks to the taxpayers.
- Smith said, “we just feel we can’t do this any longer.” I guess Smith is the royal “we,” and “this” means not forcing taxpayers to pay the maximum tax allowed by law. Smith is demanding we pay .691 mills more for employees to do whatever is left after we contract almost everything out to Independence Township. (Fair question – why do we need to be separate from Independence Township? We could keep the historic district and save $168,676 in employee salaries if we merged with Independence Township. It’s a legal impossibility – for now – but we are entitled to know what we are getting for $168,676.)
- Smith acknowledged the .691 mill promise was intended to be forever, “[b]ut things change . . . our backs are against the wall.” Apparently, giving city employees giant salary increase is “what’s going to get us into the next ten years. So, we’re not looking at dissolving because we can’t afford to pay our bills.” Smith also claimed if our taxes weren’t increased, he doesn’t know what he would do – and he wouldn’t answer councilmember Jones’s direct question about what other avenues he’d considered before a tax increase. We have almost $100,000 in the general fund that could be applied to these fabricated “budget challenges.” We also wouldn’t “dissolve” if we couldn’t pay our bills; we would enter into bankruptcy proceedings or financial receivership where an appointed receiver would make decisions about what we really need as a city, just like what happened with the City of Detroit.
- “I see a day that we cannot afford to be a city anymore.” Drama much? Life would go on here if we contracted with someone else for election services, didn’t hire Guillen, and Smith and the remaining two employees didn’t get giant raises.
- Smith thinks you shouldn’t care about a tax increase if it’s small, gosh darn it. Smith claims the “average” tax bill will go up around $100 a year. The point is we didn’t agree to any tax increase, large or small.
- You should be happy that your tax bill decreased because we paid off three debt millages recently. FYI, the debt millages were the result of the city buying infrastructure improvements on the equivalent of a municipal credit card because the city has always spent every penny it takes in and saves for nothing, but at least taxpayers got to vote on those debt millages. So, yes, it’s a good thing when we pay off debt, but fiscal mismanagement is not something to celebrate. (Note: We’re still paying for the city hall expansion that Smith pushed that had multiple cost overruns, except that was funded by stealing from the water and sewer funds over taxpayer objection.)
- Even though Smith admitted the .691 mill tax increase is actually a tax increase, he also said “I don’t want to consider a bond or some kind of tax increase” if the city council didn’t approve the .691 mill tax increase. Oh, and without this tax increase, there probably would be a reduction in services (but he wouldn’t provide any details because he’d obviously not considered this possibility). You know what? I’ll bet no one would notice a cut in city services because we pretty much get all the services we care about from the two DPW guys. Leave them alone and we won’t care.
- Avery called it like it is – “[o]bviously, you’re going to get a lot of feedback from residents when you talk about raising their taxes because that’s what we’re talking about doing here, right? I mean, there’s no way to sugarcoat that . . . That’s taking up the [$43,900, or .691 mill tax increase] that we’re going to collect. Additionally, a lot of that’s going to be eaten up by the pay raises, and that’s what people are going to see.” Winner, winner, chicken dinner! That’s exactly right.
- Smith apparently thought we should be celebrating that the giant salary increases weren’t as giant as he originally wanted because the 401K match will “only” be 4.5% rather than 6% and employees won’t get a bonus for not choosing to get healthcare. Yay! 🙄 (Since Evelyn Bihl and Smith are over 65 and Medicare eligible, this was just gravy on their potatoes.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out mayor Sue Wylie and councilmember Amanda Forte for being absolute jerks.
Forte thought “we should maybe reword it so it’s not like the library millage, because that seems to be a point of contention.” So, in addition to reneging on a promise, Forte thinks the city should lie to people. Forte also said “[i]t’s going to hurt everyone in different ways. But I do think, like, if we want to maintain the city and want to maintain Clarkston, this is the cost of it. Like, I don’t know. And I know someone’s going to be pissed and so on and so forth.” Let the taxpayers seethe, cry, and eat cake. Forte really doesn’t care.
Forte did throw us a bone and suggested toward the end of the meeting that people should be able to vote on a .691 mill tax increase – before mayor Wylie shot her down and said “well, it’s not on the ballot. We’re [the city council is] voting on it. There’s nothing on the ballot.” That’s right. Because as Avery admitted, “I mean, it’s nice to say that you’re for a tax increase, but nobody’s going to vote for that. You know that, right? I mean, if we put that on the ballot, what do you think the chances are that it’s going to pass? I would vote for it, but not many.” He knows, and we know, that taxpayers would never voluntarily agree to a .691 mill increase knowing that most of it would pay for a $37,000 increase in employee compensation to be split among four office employees. That’s why Smith and your city council are using a loophole that allows them to renege on the .691 mill promise without Clarkston voters having a say because the promise was made in a resolution that the city council can change and not through a charter amendment.
Mayor Sue Wylie claimed she was “most opposed initially to removing the library millage reduction.” But that was then, this is now. Wylie borrowed Smith’s language and said “our backs are up against the wall, and I think this is the time to remove that library millage reduction.” You know, I really miss Sue’s husband Steve. Not only was he a super guy, but he would also have set her straight on what a disingenuous claim this is. Steve was a very vocal supporter of keeping the .691 library millage promise. You don’t break a promise because you think “your back is against the wall,” especially when there’s no wall that anyone is backing into. You also should never break a promise when the public trust is involved. Sue promised to be faithful to Steve until the day he died – was that a conditional promise, meant to be kept only until her “back was against the wall” or something better came along? I don’t think so. Sue Wylie knows what a promise is. She just doesn’t value Clarkston residents enough to keep this promise.
And your city government is likely going to be asking for money in the near future when it asks for debt millages or a Headlee override to bring us to the absolute maximum tax the charter authorizes. Smith told us that as well – “[I] think it’s not the last time our backs are up against the wall. . . . I think every year we’re going to have our challenges in front of us . . .” Fortunately, we won’t be at their mercy then because they will have to ask for a vote in the future. When that happens, remember that your city government raised your taxes simply to pay for giant salary increases – and vote accordingly.
The budget isn’t final until the final budget vote at the first June city council meeting on June 9, 2025. There will be a public hearing at the May 27, 2025, city council meeting. If you’re not happy with a .691 mill tax increase that will be used primarily to give four city employees almost $37,000 more in wages and benefits, then you need to let the city know by showing up at the meeting.
If you can’t come to the meeting, you can call the city at (248) 625-1559. Whoever answers the phone is one of the people who will receive a giant salary increase. Let them know what you think of that. Politely, of course.
You can also call city manager Jonathan Smith. His city cell phone number is (248) 909-3380 and he keeps his city cell phone with him at all times. Call whenever you want, and he’ll probably answer. Give him an earful but be polite. You can also email him at Smithj@villageofclarkston.org.
And you should definitely also email all your city council members because Smith can’t be trusted to forward comments that don’t support his higher tax plan.
You can email your city council members at the following addresses:
Sue Wylie, WylieS@VillageofClarkston.org
Laura Rodgers, RodgersL@VillageofClarkston.org
Gary Casey, CaseyG@VillageofClarkston.org
Amanda Forte, ForteA@VillageofClarkston.org
Erica Jones, jonese@VillageofClarkston.org
Ted Quisenberry, QuisenberryT@VillageofClarkston.org
Al Avery, averya@VillageofClarkston.org
Better yet, do all these things. And even if Smith gets his way this time, make sure any request for a future tax increase is met with a NO vote because of what they’re doing now. That’s the only way to force Smith and the city council to stop wasting our tax dollars and work within the budget they have.