Breaking News – Clarkston Gets An “A” In Transparency!

I know I’m late but consider this post title as a belated April Fool’s Day joke.

As I listened to the March 11, 2024, city council meeting recording and prepared my informal transcription for the Clarkston Sunshine website, there were several things that raised my blood pressure to an unhealthy level. Some councilmembers (especially councilmember Ted Quisenberry) appeared to give serious consideration to using $3,500 of our tax dollars to pay for a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument in Depot Park at the request of Walled Lake resident Terry Hawke. The council also authorized spending tax dollars (with no limit on the amount) to pay the city attorney to draft an ordinance amendment to fine the snot out of us for code violations as a way to placate our whiny little princess code enforcement officer who, according to the city manager’s comments at the February 26, 2024 city council meeting, is apparently boycotting her code enforcement work for the city because she’s not currently allowed to punish Clarkston residents financially (more on that later). And finally, I was shocked at council member Ted Quisenberry’s outrageous comment that Clarkston is super transparent, which is the subject of this post.

What? You don’t agree with Quisenberry’s claim? Well, if that’s how you feel, then according to Quisenberry you’re the one with the problem, not Clarkston – because Clarkston is totally, completely, absolutely 100% transparent. The city has done all it can in this regard, and Quisenberry doesn’t want to hear you complain about it anymore.

Wowzah. I must be thinking of some other city. After all, Clarkston would never hide records in secret files in its attorney’s off-site office and make a BS claim that the records were unavailable under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), try to bankrupt a resident who didn’t accept “no” for an answer by unnecessarily jacking up litigation fees over a five-year period resulting in at least $700,000 in combined legal fees and costs, or attempt to damage her attorney’s ability to practice law for having the temerity to challenge the city’s anti-transparency decision all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. Um, they actually did that. And city council members would never unlawfully deliberate in private email, unlawfully close a public meeting, attack a former city council member for challenging these Open Meeting Act (OMA) violations in court, shred the former member’s constitutionally protected free speech rights by getting a court order prohibiting him from talking about what they were trying to do to him, be investigated by the Oakland County Sheriff for a criminal violation of the OMA, receive a warning letter from the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office warning them not to violate the OMA in the future, and eventually have to concede that yes, they had in fact violated the OMA. Oh wait, they did that too. And Clarkston wouldn’t ever try to secretly funnel a $10,000 check outside of the city’s normal payment system to deliberately hide the identity of the source of the funds from the public, raising questions about potential influence peddling. Oops, they did that. And the city wouldn’t use its resources to try to destroy a local business over nonexistent ordinance violations and then refuse to talk about what they were trying to do at a public meeting. Gosh darn it, that was Clarkston government again. But hey, the city absolutely wouldn’t try to hide records about its attempts to destroy that business, resulting in a second FOIA lawsuit they settled last June and conceding that yes, they did in fact violate the FOIA once more. Yeah, that happened too. Apparently, Clarkston would rather pay thousands of dollars in legal fees and subject its council members to criminal penalties than provide the public with information, which must therefore mean the city is totally transparent. 😂

But at least you can figure out what happens during city council meetings by reading the minutes, right? No again. The meeting minutes tell you virtually nothing. Why is that? Even though the clerk is responsible for publishing the minutes, she reports to city manager Jonathan Smith, and he’s decided the way the minutes should be presented to the public is in a form that doesn’t tell us jack about what happened at the meeting. At the April 12, 2021, city council meeting, while discussing Agenda Item #9, Smith said he didn’t want a lot of detail in the minutes because he thinks it’s time-consuming for the clerk and, because the minutes are published in the Clarkston News, fewer words mean less cost (but spending $3,500 to install a personal family monument in Depot Park and contemplating spending $90,000 to buy countertop water filters for each other  is a much better use of our tax dollars than letting us know what our elected representatives are doing, right?).

Neither of Smith’s proffered reasons are excuses for not keeping the public informed, and I’ll wager a hefty sum that the current city clerk would be more than willing to provide us with more information in the published city council meeting minutes. Why do I think that? Because she’s gone out of her way to provide me with more information when I’ve asked for it, and she seems to really care about her job. And there’s nothing keeping the city from publishing a synopsis of the minutes in the Clarkston News (which is all that’s required by Section 4.16 of the city’s charter) while publishing a more detailed version of the minutes on the city’s website so Clarkston residents can actually learn what happens at city council meetings. I spend my personal time and treasure to maintain the Clarkston Sunshine website where I do my best to provide an informal transcript of city council meetings, and I started that website in response to the city’s skeleton minutes as a way of giving back to a community where many are starved for more information about the city. I guess my efforts are a waste of time, given that Clarkston is such a shining transparency star. 🙄

Against this backdrop, council member Quisenberry thinks you have enough information about your local government. In fact, he arrogantly went so far as to say Clarkston deserves an “A” for all its transparency efforts.

Who is Quisenberry? Well, until last November, he was a city resident who occasionally attended city council meetings and made mostly intelligent comments. He was elected on November 7, 2023, and sworn in six days later on November 13, 2023. There were three people running unopposed for three city council openings during the November 7, 2023, election (two were incumbents), so all three won. As I recall, Quisenberry received the most votes of the three. My vote was one of them because the comments he made at city council meetings led me to infer he was both informed and fiscally responsible.

Boy, was I wrong. I never would have dreamed he’d get excited about spending $90,000 in taxpayer dollars to force us to buy water filters for each other. Or that he would support forcing us to pay $3,500 under the bizarre belief that if money can be found somewhere in the budget, not only must it be spent rather than saved but we also must spend it on stupid things like a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument. Who was the Hawke family? They were a local private employer who permanently closed their Clarkston facility by locking all the employees out after their Christmas break, something I talked about here. Yeah, it seems totally reasonable to set up a monument to honor them after the way they ripped away the financial resources of many Clarkston families right after the Christmas holidays.

Quisenberry had served a whopping 17 weeks in office as of the March 11, 2024, city council meeting when he made his ill-informed declaration about the city’s efforts to provide us with information. Because not only is he the king of wasteful spending, but he’s also apparently a transparency expert now, y’all.

The backdrop for Quisenberry’s tone-deaf comment about transparency is important. Earlier in the March 11, 2024, city council meeting, the council held a public hearing to listen to input from the public regarding the future of Depot Park, i.e., should we fill it to the brim with “amenities” such as fountains, band shells, pavilions, lighting, piped-in music, etc.; leave it alone; or do something in between, such as installing a small picnic pavilion that the Clarkston Area Optimists wanted to provide to us at no cost. Shortly before the meeting was adjourned for the evening, a resident expressed concerns about how the public would be informed regarding any Depot Park decisions following the public input session. Quisenberry’s response was directed to her specifically, but to all of us generally.

I’ve taken the liberty of clipping Quisenberry’s 52-second-long comment that you can view by clicking on the image below:

Here is a transcript of Quisenberry’s comments:

I think we get an “A” in transparency because we’ve had this discussion amongst ourselves and with other residents many times on what can we do to try to bring, make sure that the people are engaged. You have to remember that’s a commitment from the people as well as us trying to feel how to do it. We’ve looked at 12 ways from heaven to try to make sure that we stay engaged with you. Everything with, nothing is done secretively or anything along those lines. Open meetings is what we follow. And, and if there is, are people out there that don’t know, then I think the blame is on them, not necessarily on us because we’re doing everything we can to try to make sure things are presented in a way and, and not behind the scenes. People know.

I encourage you to click on the video and listen to both his words and the tone of his voice to get the full flavor of what he thinks about any plea you might make in the future for more government transparency. The video clipped comment begins at 1:31:38 of the overall meeting recording, but in the interest of fairness to Quisenberry and to provide the full context, you can view the entire meeting by going to this link and then decide for yourself whether this was one of the more asinine comments you’ve ever heard from a city council member.

And there you have it. Quisenberry, with his whole 17 weeks of city council experience, has apparently looked at “12 ways from heaven” (whatever that is), discussed transparency many times, and concluded you have everything you need to know about what’s going on in the city. If you don’t, well eff off – it’s all your fault.

What a joke.

The ultimate irony is that without my Clarkston Sunshine website, you wouldn’t be to see the written text of the public comments from people who took the time to tell the city council about the future they would like to see for Depot Park, and you wouldn’t be able to see the text of Quisenberry’s disrespectful comment about transparency. The meeting minutes indicate a public meeting was held but provide no detail whatsoever about what was said. You have the option to go to Independence Television and watch the recording, but that’s not a Clarkston effort. The Independence Television recordings happen because Clarkston sends the small kickback we receive from cable companies (known as Public, Educational and Government Access funds, often referred to as “PEG” fees) to Independence Television to record and broadcast our city council meetings (but no other meetings). The city manager told us at the February 26, 2024, city council meeting there’s a legislative possibility that PEG fees will be eliminated in the future so we might not have that resource much longer.

I agree with Quisenberry that we all need to invest some time to watch our local government like the proverbial hawk, because there are people in the city who would rather you didn’t and because there are council members like Quisenberry who want to treat the city’s treasury as a pipedream piggybank, wasting tax dollars on water filters and personal family monuments rather than infrastructure. I don’t agree the city has done all it can for transparency, though to the extent city manager Smith is at least giving some lip service to putting more meeting recordings online, he should be commended. (Since the proof is in the pudding, we’ll see if Smith follows through on what he says he wants to do.)

But for now, Quisenberry has spoken. Clarkston residents can just eat cake. The city is totally transparent. And if you want more transparency from the government you pay for, you’re just a whiner to be ignored.

Remember this if Quisenberry ever asks for your vote again.