The “Charming” group associates have been running what appears to me to be a rather obvious letters to the editor campaign in the Clarkston News consisting of anti-Historic District Commission (HDC) charter proposal comments. The goal is to give you the impression these letters are organic. As I’ve said before, you shouldn’t be surprised to see a negative letter to the editor every week until the election because it’s a way to extend their efforts with no financial cost to the ballot proposal committee. We could have done the same thing with positive letters to the editor, but we didn’t solicit them because we know the not-so-charming “Charming” group members would have bullied the authors for having the nerve to express a contrary opinion (which makes me ever so grateful for secret election ballots).
I’ve started a section of the website that collects all the responses to the letters to the editor in the purple section on the righthand side of the website titled “Responding to the ‘Letters to the Editor’ Campaign.” You can find a response by the name of the writer by clicking the dropdown arrow.
I’ll tackle two at once in this post.
Derek Werner
There are a lot of new people in Clarkston who have no idea who the letter writers are or how they are connected, so let me give you some details about Derek Werner. Werner served on the city council with another letter to the editor writer, Scott Meyland. He’s been on and off the planning commission (currently on). He was also married to Cara Catallo, the former HDC chair who abused her authority by getting a stop work order involving the property at Waldon and Main that interfered with a previously issued city order directing the owners to clean up the property. Catallo has been extremely outspoken about the charter amendment (including lots of crazed yelling at city council meetings about the supposed sacredness of the charter).
Werner starts his letter by saying the charter is meant to guide the community and was “thoughtfully crafted by people who genuinely want what’s best for Clarkston.” That’s a complete misunderstanding of what a charter is and pays far too much homage to people known as the “old guard,” many of whom were not bright or kind and have either died, moved, or retired to a nursing home. (Fortunately, we still have some brighter and kinder “old guard” members around, and they are frankly horrified at the way things turned out with cityhood and the HDC.)
A charter is the city’s constitution. Werner seems to suggest the charter should remain as it is – just because. But our charter wasn’t dictated from a burning bush on a cloud-covered mountain, and if I had to guess, I suspect much of our existing charter was cut and pasted from other city charters and the remainder of the text was written by whomever Clarkston’s lawyers were at the time. Clarkston voters are the ones who decide what’s in the charter by voting on its provisions. If they don’t like something, the “thoughtfully crafted” charter provides a mechanism to change it. Clarkston voters don’t owe deference to anyone.
I don’t recall Werner’s position on the most recent charter changes when former mayor Eric Haven wanted a charter commission formed to work on a charter change that would benefit only the seven elected officials who might want to move between offices. (I wrote about that in my response to Scott Meyland’s letter to the editor and won’t repeat those things here.)
However, I do know what Werner’s (and his former wife Cara’s) position on the 2022 marijuana charter proposal was (something I wrote about here). Among other things, that proposal would have:
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- Created a new chapter of the charter that tied the hands of city council who could do nothing that conflicted with the new marijuana dispensary chapter.
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- Allowed two marijuana businesses in any structure in the city, including in a historic home in the historic district. These businesses were allowed to operate seven days a week, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., to change locations, and the language was broad enough to overcome our zoning ordinance prohibition on flashing electronic billboards.
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- State licensed marijuana sellers would receive automatic approval from the city with no city council-added requirements, no license could be revoked unless the state revoked the license, licenses were automatically renewed each year, and license holders could freely transfer their licenses.
Both Werner and Catallo signed the petition to put the marijuana proposal on the ballot. Unlike the completely home-grown HDC charter proposal, the people and funding behind the marijuana proposal was not transparent and they even used paid signature gatherers. (If you look at the bottom right-hand corner of the petition Werner and Catallo signed, you’ll see the petition signature gatherer was from California.) Clearly, that ballot proposal wasn’t “thoughtfully crafted by people who genuinely want what’s best for Clarkston,” yet Werner supported it. Apparently, Werner’s ostensible deference for the charter “goes up in smoke” where pot is concerned. 😂
Werner encourages voters to “do their homework,” claiming that all the protection you would ever need already exists in Michigan’s Local Historic Districts Act (LHDA) and the city’s historic district ordinance (which is pretty much a cut and paste of the LHDA). Werner also claims, without evidence, that the charter proposal is “destructive,” circumvents “the real protections,” and will “irreparably damage the historic district.”
But as with all the “Charming” group claims, this is not true. As you can see from the chart comparing the charter proposal with the LHDA and the historic district ordinance (linked here), there is absolutely nothing in the proposal that would destroy, circumvent protections, or irreparably damage the historic district. Werner is simply repeating false claims, and he undoubtedly knows it. Since Werner isn’t specific about his claims, I’ll just point you to my debunk of the “Charming” group’s latest flyer that addresses a lot of the claims.
There is no protection in the ordinance or the LHDA against abusive HDC conduct, and we’ve never had a majority on council who gave much of a damn about it. Resident “protection” is limited to “go hire a lawyer and hope for the best.” The HDC charter proposal provides a process that requires the city council to hear complaints about abusive HDC members, and it requires council involvement before the HDC orders or initiates lawsuits in one of three extraordinary actions against historic district residents – issuing a civil infraction and fine that could result in residents losing their property at a tax sale or getting one of two types of orders that would allow the HDC (or their designates) to come onto private property against an owner’s will and forcefully make changes to it – all of which would result in significant, unbudgeted legal expenses for all Clarkston taxpayers.
For the people who’ve observed or experienced HDC abuse over the years, and all the taxpayers who were forced to pay the legal fees involved in defending HDC decisions, it’s not hard to understand a “yes” vote on the charter proposal, yet Werner claims it’s a “head scratcher.” For me, it’s more of a “head scratcher” why Werner would choose to support pot dispensaries open twelve hours a day in a residential historic home over protections for residents from abusive HDC conduct, but I guess that’s all water under the bridge with the opening of Moses Roses in Independence Township.
Jim Markwalder
The kindest thing I can say about Jim Markwalder’s letter is that he gets an “E” for effort. Apparently, Markwalder industriously cut and pasted the charter proposal and various federal constitutional amendments into his Office 365 Word program so he could calculate a word count, which he then used to create one of the more vacuous arguments against the charter proposal to date:
There are too many words!
Vote no on the charter proposal because . . . words!
I have faith that Clarkston voters are intelligent enough not to be scared of words. Except for Markwalder, who has clearly not read the charter proposal, presumably because it contains too many words.
Markwalder claims the charter proposal:
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- Micromanages social behaviors
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- Naively tries to legislate kindness
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- Will foster more division than unity
If Markwalder hadn’t disclosed his problem with words, I would wonder what on earth he was talking about. The charter proposal has nothing to do with social niceties, and protecting residents from abuse and putting the elected city council in financial control is not in any way divisive.
When I’ve used the phrase “Make Clarkston Kind,” it’s shorthand for saying that we shouldn’t allow a group of hobbyists with no professional or educational credentials to have the unchecked ability to financially destroy their neighbors because that would be really hard to put on an 18” x 24” yard sign. It would be nice if the HDC commissioners said “please” and “thank you” to people who are bringing applications for work to them for approval, but there’s nothing in the charter proposal that would address their lack of social skills if they don’t.
Perhaps I can help Markwalder out by sharing a cut and paste of the bullet points we provided last June that contains less words:
As anyone can plainly see from reading the charter proposal or the bullet points, Markwalder’s concerns are not tethered to reality.
We love questions! Unlike our opponents, we’ll give you honest answers with lots of evidence to back up what we say. Feel free to send questions to: ClarkstonCharterProposal@gmail.com.
(And if you’re tired of HDC abuse and favoritism, then please consider voting yes on the proposed HDC charter amendment on November 5! And because I’ve just said that and even though I haven’t spent any money, I’m going to add the following text though I’m not sure I have to:
Paid for by Susan Bisio, P.O. Box 1303, Clarkston, MI 48347 with regulated funds.)