The city put out what it apparently thought was a slick video about the 7-mill “public safety millage” starring none other than city manager Jonathan Smith. It is a rather boring attempt to try to convince us that it’s totally cool to vote for a 61% increase in Clarkston property taxes. The video even has music and an action video of the city’s logo at the end – wow!
If you managed to get through it without dozing off, were you convinced?
I wasn’t. If you’d like to see the whole video, you can find it on the city’s Facebook page or by clicking here. I sent a letter to Clarkston voters discussing why I recommend a “no” vote, and you can find that letter here. I’m also including copies of the city manager’s slides from his September 24, 2026, live presentation at a special public information session and you can find those here. I won’t be discussing all of them but I’m linking to the original set because I wouldn’t be surprised if Smith tweaked things based on my comments, replaced the slides without telling you they’ve been changed, and I think it’s important to compare “apples to apples.” I also downloaded Smith’s original video within 24 hours after it was posted to Facebook and am using that for my discussion when I refer to Smith’s purported October 5 “public safety presentation” posted on Facebook.
Notice the difference between my approach and Smith’s approach. I speak in terms of keeping your own money so you can do luxurious things like buy gas and groceries, and he speaks in terms of supposedly lost revenue being painful to the city. These “losses to the city” occur because of legal protections that were put in place by Michigan voters to protect homeowners against cities taxing them out of their homes. But this isn’t something the city manager cares much about. He just wants your cash and will say whatever he needs to get it.
The presentation is filled with half-truths, untruths, and fudging as I discuss below.
The first untruth was to immediately misrepresent when and where the video was recorded:
I don’t know when this video was made, but it certainly wasn’t recorded at a “public information session” the city supposedly held on October 5, 2026. I’m not aware of any public information session the city held on October 5. The first one was on September 24. And that session took place during a public information session where there were interruptions and no pretty white background. Some of those interruptions involved the city attorney correcting the city manager’s misstatements. This video contains none of that even though it was ostensibly created after September 24 and Smith knew the city attorney’s positions on some of the statements in his slide presentation. It’s not clear when the video was recorded or how many taxpayer dollars were used to create it. (Huh – thought we didn’t have money?)
Exactly how many years is this first “public safety millage” request for?
The city council discussed and voted for a five-year millage proposal, but what will be on the ballot is apparently a four-year millage. Clarkston’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30, and the fiscal years the millage covers are 7/1/27-6/30/28, 7/1/28-6/30/29, 7/1/29-6/30/30, and 7/1/30-6/30/31. Elsewhere, the city has discussed the millage as a three-year tax.
There were a lot of typos in the original packet for the council’s approval of the tax increase, so I’m sure this was just another city screwup, but the ballot language means it will only take four years for the city to raise our taxes by 61% rather than five years – if we vote to approve the “public safety millage” proposal, that is.
There are a few distinctions you need to be aware of. There are property taxes we send to the city for its use (11.4107 mills), and then there is total city revenue that includes what we send plus money the city gets from elsewhere, such as revenue sharing from the state (which is our cut of the state sales tax collected), parking revenue, court fines, various fees the city collects, and other sources. The city also acts as a pass-through collection point for all other property-related taxes.
We pay 37.2027 in total property taxes right now, based on the city manager’s numbers in his 2026-2027 budget presentation. This number includes the 11.4107 mills the city gets for its own use. You can determine how much that means to your property by multiplying .00372027 by the number in the taxable value box of your tax bill. Of that, 11.4107 (our general operating millage number, expressed as a .00114107 multiplier) stays with the city for use in general operating expenses.
Based on this slide, the city manager apparently doesn’t consider the 25.792 mills that are passed through to other taxing authorities to be real money that comes out of your paycheck, so it doesn’t count. The city manager wants you to volunteer to pay 44.2027 total mills by voting “yes” on the “public safety millage,” so multiply your taxable value by .00442027 and see how that sits with you.
Another misleading slide.
But before we get to that, let’s talk about what’s really going on with this “public safety millage” request. Right now, the city pays for police, fire, and emergency medical services (EMS) out of the general fund. The city no longer wants to do that. If it can convince us to pay for police, fire, and EMS out of a new, additional 7-mill “public safety millage,” then it gets to keep the money it was spending for police, fire, and EMS out of the general fund and spend it on other things, like endless pet city manager projects and more salary and benefit increases for employees. Smith repeatedly claims the city will reduce the 11.4107 mills it currently collects in general operating millage if you approve the “public safety millage,” but as the city attorney pointed out on multiple occasions, the city has made no promise to do that. And there is nothing in the ballot proposal language that requires the city reduce the 11.4107 general millage by any particular amount.
Don’t believe me? Go back and read the ballot language again. Approving this 7-mill increase is a green light to the city to charge you that 7 mills plus the 11.4107 mills you currently pay for a total of 18.4107 mills in taxes that “stay with the city.”
Back to the slide.
Based on the percentage claimed, Smith is using overall city revenue, which is different than property taxes we send to city hall that “stay with the city.” The taxes we send to city hall that “stay with the city” are 11.4107 mills at the moment. In order to get to the 41% number, Smith used overall city revenue, which includes revenue from other sources, such as revenue sharing from the state. The percentage would be higher if Smith were using only “taxes staying with the city” for his calculation. It’s the heading that’s false here. I don’t quarrel with calculating the percentage of total revenue that goes toward police, fire, and EMS but I think Smith should be honest about what number he’s using.
Police, fire, and EMS are currently budgeted at $408,776. In his purported October 5 “public information session” posted on the city’s Facebook page, Smith stated – twice – that the city doesn’t really pay that much. He said we pay approximately $380,000 for police, fire, and EMS.
My husband spent a great deal of time picking through the 2025 budget expenses and identified total employee costs (wages; benefits; required state and federal contributions such as FICA, Social Security, and workers’ compensation insurance; dues and conferences, etc.) as $369,176.95. This $369,176.95 does not include the cost of providing 10-15 vacation days, 14 holidays, and 6 sick days to five of the six employees (the sixth employee works a few hours per week and isn’t eligible for benefits). Each paid day off work costs the city not only the base wage paid but also the cost of all the state and federal required contributions that are tied into that wage rate because we’re paying for work we didn’t receive. That adds up to a lot more money, bringing employee costs close to (or exceeding) the cost Smith said the city pays for police, fire, and EMS. Weird he didn’t mention that.
Smith also does not honestly display employee costs in this slide, presumably because it doesn’t further his goal to get more revenue to use for general fund purposes through a “public safety millage” artifice. It also doesn’t serve his self-interest because he’s an employee and personally benefits from keeping you in the dark about employee costs.
Every time I see these slides – and Smith always includes them in his budget-related presentations – I always think “call the wahmbulance” because Smith never stops whining about the Headlee amendment or “Proposal A.” These were voter-approved changes to protect us from getting taxed out of our homes, and both have been around for years and years. Smith needs to get over it and budget accordingly.
Let’s talk about the Headlee amendment. The city is authorized to collect 15 mills in general operating millage under the charter, and the 11.4107 mills the city collects today is the dollar equivalent of what 15 mills was worth in the early 1990s when the 15 mills were first approved. A dollar in your pocket is worth less now than it was then too – it’s all relative. The Headlee amendment gives the city the value of the 15-mill bargain it made with taxpayers in 1992 plus an inflationary adjustment every year. Over the years, the dollar value of the 15-mill millage equivalent has decreased, just as the dollar value of the dollars you send to the city to pay for that 15 mills has decreased, so the current 15-mill millage rate is now expressed as 11.4107 mills. If the 7-mill “public safety millage” were to pass, it also would show a decrease in each subsequent year because the Headlee amendment would control that for inflation as well. All Michigan governments know this, and whining about it is just stupid. If the city really cared about the effects of Headlee, it could have asked us to vote on a “Headlee override” that would bring the millage collected to the full 15 mills in 2026 dollars (a 3.5893-mill increase). But that apparently isn’t enough to satisfy the city.
Proposal A simply caps your annual property tax increases to 5% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. That’s extremely fair, but Smith doesn’t like that either. Proposal A only operates on a principal residence and only for as long as you own the home. Once you sell your home, the purchaser pays the full, uncapped rate at the time of sale and receives Proposal A protection going forward. This is important to keep in mind, because buyers definitely take the amount of taxes into consideration when buying a home.
The practical (and intended) effect of this 7-mill “public safety millage” is to free up general fund money in an equivalent amount, far in excess of what would be allowed under the charter (15 mills) or state law (20 mills, if the city asked for a charter change to increase our millage to the state maximum, which would a 5-mill increase). The Michigan Legislature created a loophole to allow cities to get around the cap by asking for public safety millages. That’s why Clarkston is able to exceed the 15-mill (currently 11.4107) charter cap on millage.
This slide amuses me. The tallest bar in the graph is for health insurance costs, which increased far more than the “public safety” costs (police, fire, and EMS). In his purported October 5 “public information session” posted on the city’s Facebook page, Smith said health insurance costs have gone up 15% compared to 6.6% for police, fire, and EMS.
Gosh, let’s talk about health insurance. Before the 2025-2026 budget when Smith pushed through giant raises for three of the four office employees, the only employee who was eligible for health insurance was our full-time, 40-hour per week Department of Public Works (DPW) supervisor. Thanks to Smith, the DPW laborer’s hours have been increased to 40 hours per week making him eligible for health insurance. Also, thanks to Smith, three of the four office employees are now eligible for health insurance benefits, even though they work only 32 part-time hours per week. Smith secured these changes in partnership with a gullible city council that rubber stamps everything he asks for. And when I say “giant increases” in 2025-2026, I’m referring to paying the clerk far above her salary range (established by a salary survey the city paid for), paying the treasurer almost at the top of his range, and giving Smith a $13,000/year raise (he threatened to quit if he didn’t get it). The fourth office employee gets no benefits and did not get a giant salary increase.
So yeah, cry me a river about increased health insurance costs. That’s like shooting yourself in the foot and complaining your foot is bleeding.
And Smith is also complaining about parking service cost increases? Those costs are entirely paid for by parking fees. Parking fees were recently raised from $1.00/hour to $1.50/hour. Raise fees again and stop whining if the funds aren’t enough. No resident effing cares how much transient visitors pay to use two convenient city lots as opposed to parking somewhere else while they eat dinner at a restaurant.
The remainder of the cost increases are similar to the increases we’ve all experienced as individuals – water, electricity, property insurance, waste management, etc. The difference is when our costs go up, we cut expenses as much as necessary. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to demand a 61% raise from our employers rather than making hard budget choices?
Let’s talk about that “one-time police refund” in the 2024-2025 budget year. The backstory is that for 14 years, our negligent city employees overpaid our contract rate to Independence Township for police, fire, and EMS. Our current treasurer was responsible for the last 8 of those years as was Smith, his supervisor. Invoices came in, were rubber-stamped, and paid. My husband discovered the error. It’s a long story that you can read about here. When all was said and done, the city discovered the total overpayment was $171,799.59, and it only managed to recover $87,301.93 (a total of $96,219.57 when interest was added in). Taxpayers lost $84,497.66. No employee was disciplined or discharged and no policy changes were made to prevent this from happing in the future.
And nothing has changed. My husband recently discovered the treasurer had been underpaying for police services for an entire year and exposing taxpayers to interest penalties. The city manager and treasurer didn’t catch that mistake either. These people aren’t good stewards of the police, fire, and EMS funds we’re sending them now. Why send them more?
What happened to the $96,219.57 “one-time police refund” Smith notes on his chart? Well, it wasn’t applied to police, fire, and EMS bills. Smith decided to keep the money in the general fund to use for his own pet projects.
You know, come to think of it, Smith didn’t apply any part of the $96,219.57 to sewer repair costs either. I guess it’s far easier to assess us for sewer bill surcharges forever and ever, just like it’s easier to ask us for a 7-mill tax increase rather than address the ballooning cost to keep employees who provide us with virtually no city services. I honestly don’t know what they do beyond street shoveling, mowing Depot Park, and running elections, since city hall basically acts as a pass-through for payments for contracted services to outside vendors who perform city functions. Why not contract out those few things as well?
In his online video presentation, Smith claimed the city has been watching increased costs for police, fire, and EMS “for a number of years.” Despite knowing that, Smith asked for massive wage and benefit increases last budget year for himself and two others – and council approved it. Sure seems like Smith had a long-term plan of waiting until he’d secured increased salary and benefits for himself and the other two city hall employees before he claimed the sky is falling and the city has to have a 7-mill “public safety millage,” doesn’t it? Because he wouldn’t have gotten those raises and benefit increases if he’d been truthful about escalating costs (though that assumes he’s being truthful now).
The next slide simply combines cost increases with Headlee and Proposal A whining, and you can read that for yourself.
Smith continues to falsely claim there is a city ordinance that requires a 16.7% general fund balance. There isn’t. That 16.7% is based on a city council resolution requiring the city maintain two months’ worth of expenses in the fund balance. A resolution can be changed by another resolution, and the council could change the percentage at the next council meeting if it wanted to. I don’t quarrel with 16.7%, but I do expect Smith to understand the difference between an ordinance and a resolution after ten years on the job. He apparently still doesn’t.
Smith describes the fund balance as the city’s bank account, and I don’t quarrel with that either.
But I do have a question.
Just two years ago, in the 2024-2025 budget year, we had a $300,000 fund balance, which is just under half of the money we send to city hall for city use for one year. If you can believe anything he says (and I don’t), Smith claims in this chart that the city will have less than $50,000 in the fund balance by the 2028-2029 budget year. Where the hell did all the money go? I assume it was more profligate city spending on pet projects, but it would be nice to have an answer to that question – particularly since Smith admitted increased police, fire, and EMS costs were entirely predictable because “they were watching” them.
LOL. Let’s talk about some of these.
Increasing Revenue:
Item #1 – Paid parking fees were increased, but this money is earmarked for roads and sidewalks only, so this isn’t a general revenue increase and shouldn’t be lumped in with other things. Smith has tried to access this money for general fund purposes, but, so far, council has refused to allow him to do so.
Item #3 – So now the city is going to be nice to people who want to develop vacant lots after treating them like something you’d scape off your shoe for years? Riiiight. Pretty sure I remember certain vacant property owners referred to as evil developers when the Historic District Commission (HDC) charter proposal was on the ballot two years ago. And let us not forget that our HDC commissioners perceive themselves as the last bastion of defense against all new development. The comments made by the current HDC chair about the last proposal to develop the corner of Waldon and Main are still on Facebook (and I’ve saved copies of them so no need to try to delete them, darling).
Item #4 – In other words, spy on people to see what’s in their dumpsters?
Decreasing Costs:
Item #1 – The retirement savings match was increased as part of the huge salary and benefit increase in the 2025-2026 budget year salary-palooza that we couldn’t afford – but now decreasing the match for the apparently one person who voluntarily uses it is a savings. Umm-kay. And I wish the city manager would stop referring to this as a 401(k). It’s not. Government employees aren’t eligible for 401(k)s.
Item #2 – Smith claims reducing the hours of the least-paid person in the office over her objection was a cost saving, but he used this particular “cost saving” to justify the 3% across the board salary increases he wanted for the 2026-2027 budget year for the other five employees including himself. Because that “cost savings” has already been spent, it doesn’t belong on this chart.
Item #3 – Reduce conference budgets. Considering that even the DPW employees have a conference budget, this is a joke. Employees are still going to conferences. The city council approved conferences for the clerk and city manager within the last two months without even asking how much we would have to pay for any related lodging, meal, or mileage expenses.
Item #5 – Conducting early voting in-house. How much would we save if we contracted with another public body for all voting? And since the clerk tried to parlay this new early in-house voting as an excuse to get paid more at the budget meeting, I think there might have been some ulterior motive for doing in-house early voting. (She didn’t just want more; she claimed she deserved to be paid as much as Smith – her boss – and the DPW supervisor.)
Item #6 – Did we need an “early voting tabulator” for our 880 residents, when only about half that number turns out to vote in total in a good year? Were we planning to buy one of these machines? There was no mention of this at a council meeting. If we weren’t going to buy a machine, how is getting a free machine a cost savings? And someone’s tax dollars paid for it, so it’s not “free.” This ostensible “cost saving” makes up 26.8% of the total cost savings Smith presented.
Items #8 and #9 – Whenever Smith says he’s “investigating” something, it means he’s done the most minimal work possible allowing him to claim he’s “investigating” it. Here, he claims to be “investigating” contracting with the Oakland County Sheriff directly or selling the city’s truck and leasing something else. Therefore, these are not cost savings.
In total and including the questionable “cost saving” to get a “free” early vote tabulator that was never discussed as something we were budgeting for in any city council meeting I’ve listened to, these supposed cost savings amount to 2.9% of the 11.4107 mills we send to city hall. Removing the “free” machine from the total brings the cost savings to a not so impressive 2.1%.
Wow, dude. In the real world, managers are usually required to cut 10% on the first pass when there are significant budget issues. You’re not a serious manager.
What’s missing from Smith’s online video is the interruption from the city attorney correcting the crap on this slide. The city is not making any promise whatsoever to you to lower your taxes in any amount. Look at the language of the proposal. Voting “yes” means you are authorizing the city to charge you 7 mills for police, fire, and EMS plus the 11.4107 mils you are currently paying. And the language on this slide is slippery and doesn’t promise jack – “based on the facts known today,” “it’s anticipated that,” and “the exact amount won’t be known” until budget hearings to be conducted seven months from now.
Smith is suggesting the 11.4107 general millage will be reduced by 5.5 mills. Weird that he also suggested it would be reduced by 6 mills two months ago when the ballot language was approved by council.
There is no binding promise. Voting “yes” on this proposal authorizes the city council to raise your taxes by majority vote up to 18.4107 mills at any time in any increment they choose. Do you trust them? They’ve given you no reason to, particularly since they broke a forever tax promise last year to annually roll back our taxes by .691 mills relating to the library millage. That promise was made in a resolution, but your city council kept the promise only for as long as it was convenient. They aren’t even making a promise this time.
This slide makes me want to break my computer monitor. Because we paid more taxes in the past, we should be happy paying not quite as much in the future – is that the point?
This slide conflates debt millage with general millage. The debt millage consisted of bonds the city sold to do large construction projects, and they were finally paid off several years ago. That is a cause for taxpayer celebration. I guess what Smith is trying to say is we should be happy as long as we aren’t paying the same amount as we did when there were construction bills to pay?
The chart as presented is also a lie. In the last three bars of the chart, Smith is falsely representing that our 11.4107 general millage will be reduced by 5.5 mills all the way through 2029. But that’s not what city council said when it approved the ballot proposal language. They fully expect to take more money as each year goes by, eating up that supposed 5.5-mill reduction. And when the 7-mill authorization ends? There will likely be a renewal with a likely increase above 7 mills. A more accurate representation of what you agree to if you vote “yes” is taking that first bar on the left and copying it for all future years to the right after the millage is effective – because 18.4107 mills is what your “yes” vote gets you. It will not stop at “only” a 1.5 mill increase.
The next two slides continue the Smith fantasy that our taxes will only go up by a net 1.5 mills, and this will “only” mean a person with a home that has a taxable value of $100,000 would pay $150 more for the fantasy. Yet most homes in Clarkston have taxable values that are significantly higher than $100,000. Look at your tax bill and determine your own taxable value.
Forgive the 80’s reference, but welcome to Smith’s version of Fantasy Island!
If these three slides aren’t campaign finance violations, they should be. This is not factual material, and a city is only entitled to present factual material. Since the city cannot guarantee or promise that you will see “only” a 1.5 mill increase in your taxes, these three slides are hypothetical, not factual.
And here comes the threat. This is so smarmy that I’ll let Smith explain it to you himself:
Got it? The city supposedly needs money, but if we vote “no” on this “public safety millage,” the city is going to use tax dollars it says we don’t have to run a special election because the first “no” wasn’t good enough. The city claims it wants us to “weigh in” and tell it what we want, but if we tell the city we don’t want this millage by voting “no” a second time, then it plans to shove the tax increase down our throats through a special assessment.
What’s missing is the part about voters being able to petition to put the special assessment on the ballot and then vote it down for a third time. The city attorney mentioned that in the special meeting on September 24, but that fact is mysteriously missing in Smith’s posted video that was supposedly made on October 5. Just like the fact that the city isn’t making any millage reduction promises.
Please vote “no” on the “public safety millage.”