I recently wrote that I believe waiving user fees for Depot Park (or for use of any other taxpayer-owned and maintained asset) is illegal. I also said the city council needs to knock it off if they want to avoid another lawsuit.
But let me be clearer – the city council needs to stop unlawfully giving away our taxpayer dollars if they don’t want me to file another lawsuit that will be drafted in a way to avoid their insurance coverage. What I mean by that is the city will not be able to get “free” legal services through its insurer so the city can drag things out for years and use two entire law firms to attack my husband and me personally to avoid addressing the legal issues – as they did in my first Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and my husband’s Open Meetings Act lawsuit. And this will definitely happen sooner rather than later if the city agrees to use taxpayer money to provide “free” parking to private Clarkston business employees in private parking lots.
That said, this post is mostly about the Depot Park user fee freebies the city council has been unlawfully handing out like candy lately. I’m focusing a lot on the Clarkston Community Historical Society (CCHS) again because I’ve received some troubling new information that I think you should know about. You know, perhaps I should provide financial information for every organization coming to the city council asking for a forced Clarkston taxpayer contribution to their organizations. I’m sure we could learn a lot, including how much these organizations have in the bank. I think all forced contributions are unlawful, but it adds a layer of disgust to the whole issue when these organizations can well afford to pay a Depot Park user fee – and don’t. I also think having financial information can help us decide where to direct our voluntary charitable contributions and to avoid organizations that take advantage of us. If these organizations don’t want a spotlight shown on their lack of need, then they should stop demanding Clarkston taxpayers support them. Otherwise, we have every right to know how our money and our assets are being used – and by whom.
Clarkston taxpayers have been forced to provide support to the CCHS for two years in a row now (for longer than that, actually, as I’ll show you), so we should all want to learn more about the CCHS, especially since the city manager is the president and treasurer of the CCHS and his wife is CCHS’s museum director and sole employee. While it’s perfectly fine for the city manager to volunteer his time wherever he wants, and for his wife to work wherever she wants, once the city manager asks for Clarkston taxpayer support; is potentially managing payments from the CCHS to the city; and likely assigning city staff to do work that benefits the CCHS, more scrutiny is warranted. Oddly, the city council seems remarkably disinterested in asking questions.
It’s important to know why the city council cannot give away Depot Park user fees. Michigan law establishes the perimeters of Clarkston’s very existence. It also tells us what provisions we must – and those we may – include in our city charter.
The Clarkston charter is our city’s constitution. Clarkston voters approved the original charter and must also approve any changes, and Clarkston government may only act within the authority granted by the charter. Michigan’s home rule city act allows taxpayers the option to establish how (and whether) their tax dollars can be given away to “charities,” but any such authorization must specifically be included in the Clarkston charter. MCL 117.4k of the home rule city act states:
Each city in its charter may provide for the appropriation and allocation of public funds to a public or private nonprofit institution engaged within the city in the provision of civic, artistic, and cultural activities, including but not limited to music, theater, dance, visual arts, literature and letters, architecture, architectural landscaping, and allied arts and crafts, to the general public.
In other words, the decision to give away taxpayer resources to charities belongs to Clarkston taxpayers, not the city council.
Guess what? Our charter has no provision allowing the city council to give away the use of any city assets (or any city funds) for charitable purposes. Since we don’t have such a charter provision, the city council would have to find authorization for its taxpayer-funded freebies in Michigan’s general law – and there is no support for it there either. As I explained here, Michigan’s general law prohibits the use of taxpayer assets for private purposes. The only other way the Clarkston city council could be authorized to use taxpayer funds for private purposes is if there were a specific statute or court decision that allows it. For example, MCL 123.851 allows Clarkston to appropriate money to defray “the expenses of the proper observance of armistice, independence, and memorial or decoration day or for the proper observance of a diamond jubilee or centennial.”
Unfortunately for the city council, there is no charter provision, Michigan general law authorization, or specific Michigan statute allowing it to give away park user fees – or any other taxpayer resource – to anyone. This means that every time our city council votes to give away user fees the city is entitled to collect from others to use our city assets, it is doing so without any lawful authority.
In the 1998 case, Bolt v City of Lansing, the Michigan Supreme Court noted that a valid user fee is something that is “exchanged for a service rendered or a benefit conferred, and some reasonable relationship exists between the amount of the fee and the value of the service or benefit.” There are three criteria a court will consider when determining whether a user fee is valid: “1. A user fee must serve a regulatory purpose rather than a revenue-raising purpose; 2. A user fee must be proportionate to the necessary costs of the service and correspond to any benefit conferred by the service; and 3. A user fee must be for a commodity or service voluntarily used. . . . User fees should reflect the actual cost of use of a service provided, and such fees should be borne by those who stand to benefit from the service financed with such fees.” Bolt Refresher, Michigan Municipal League, December 2017 (underscore in original).
I’m pretty sure park user fees are intended to offset costs to the city, such as general park maintenance throughout the year, gazebo repair, the incremental cost of utilities used by people reserving the park for an activity, etc. However, if these park user fees do not reflect the actual cost of (or have a reasonable relationship to) exclusive park use for a two-hour period, then the city is not permitted to charge people to use all (or part) of the park. If park user fees do reflect the actual costs, then anyone wanting more than the same general use of the park everyone else receives must pay the fees. Each time the city council gives away a Depot Park user fee, the person or organization receiving the fee waiver is getting a benefit, and the taxpayers are forced to make up for the funding deficiency in an equal amount by getting less of something else (like sidewalk and street repairs), because we have to pay for increased park maintenance and use due to these increased, specific uses of the park.
Clarkston requires all park-related user fees to be paid in advance. The city’s online form refers to renting the gazebo, but as the previous city clerk explained at the July 25, 2022, city council meeting, reserving any part of the park is done through the gazebo rental form. The city has also published helpful “park rules” that govern use of the park on the second page of the reservation form. Rule #1 states: “Each reservation is for a two-hour period. The cost is $200 for City residents or $250 for non-residents and must be paid prior to reservation being confirmed. . . .” The “park rules” are quite clear that these fees cover only a two-hour period, even for a wedding! (See rule #8.) The reservation form asks the requester to expressly state the starting and stopping times for the two-hour period being reserved.
The annual forced Clarkston taxpayer contribution to the CCHS is one of the more blatant city council abuses, because the city council gifts the CCHS with the exclusive use of all of Depot Park for an entire weekend, enabling them to hold their giant, private Art in the Village annual fundraiser without paying any park user fees. Everyone has been referring to this as a $200 fee waiver, but even though it has the word “Clarkston” in its name, the CCHS isn’t located in the City of the Village of Clarkston so it should pay the higher, $250 non-resident rate to use Depot Park – for each two-hour period (based on the city’s published “park rules”).
If park user fees were assessed on a pro rata basis, the CCHS should be paying thousands of dollars for the exclusive use of Depot Park for its private fundraiser – because there are many two-hour increments during a weekend period. Though the event starts on a Saturday, the CCHS begins its use of the park on Friday so it can set up all the vendor tents for the next day. Let’s do the math – 72 hours for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday use, divided by two-hour increments, times $250, equals $9,000. The CCHS is receiving $9,000 in value based on the city’s published “park rules,” yet it has the unmitigated gall to complain about paying $250 (which has inexplicably been unilaterally reduced to the $200 resident rate). Do you think $200, or $250, if paid, would even cover the taxpayer’s cost for the utilities the CCHS and its vendors consume during that long weekend? I doubt it.
The city council asserts it is entitled to give away our user fees to private organizations such as the CCHS because it is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (even though it lacks any authority under the charter to do this). I discussed the huge financial benefits these organizations receive courtesy of state and federal taxpayers here. Yet the city council is being disingenuous when council members claim they only give taxpayer gifts to 501(c)(3) organizations, because they’ve also recently waived fees for organizations that do not have a 501(c)(3) status. For example, the Milo Project event received a Depot Park fee waiver at the April 24, 2023, city council meeting, despite the fact that its organizer told the city council the Milo Project is not a 501(c)(3) organization. The city council approved a $1,000 cash give away to Main Street Clarkston purportedly to help it become a 501(c)(3) organization at the August 22, 2022, city council meeting (and the proponent of that donation rewarded Clarkston taxpayers for their forced generosity by inappropriately accusing our mayor of being “anti-diversity” – and it was patently obvious what she was implying by that). The city council apparently doesn’t even need to be involved in the user fee waiver bonanza – our city manager has given away lots of Depot Park user fee waivers, including many to Mueva Fitness, a private, for-profit business located outside the City of the Village of Clarkston (and obviously not a 501(c)(3)) without even bothering to ask for permission from the city council.
Now let’s circle back to the CCHS.
At the June 26, 2023, city council meeting, the CCHS, represented by the city manager – the CCHS’s president and treasurer – along with other CCHS representatives, had its hand out again to ask for a Depot Park user fee waiver. The CCHS representatives made the following claims at the meeting:
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- Their work benefits the Clarkson community.
- The park fee waiver and city worker wages “help[s] support them.”
- “Every penny” they make is reinvested back into the community. *
- The work of the CCHS is “worth the investment.”
- They purchase all or part of the historical markers around town.
- They operate the museum located in Independence Township at the Clarkston Independence District Library.
- They buy insurance from local businesses.
- They store their artifacts in local places.
- They’ve published educational materials.
* (I’ve provided links to six of the CCHS’s income tax returns (2017-2022) in the discussion below. Take a look at them and decide for yourself if “every penny” is reinvested in the community. For example, the CCHS spent $128,481 over a six-year period on program activities, but it also spent an additional $95,606 in compensation payments to the city manager’s wife for that same period.)
Apparently, the CCHS believes Clarkston taxpayers should be forced to let them use a taxpayer owned and maintained asset (which necessarily includes the water and electric fees required by the vendors at Art in the Village) at no charge – because they do nice things. Not only does the CCHS believe it’s entitled to a user fee waiver, but its representatives also admit they believe it’s OK to force taxpayers to “donate” our Department of Public Works (DPW) employees’ labor and wages because it “help[s] support them.” News flash – Clarkston taxpayers should not be required to support the CCHS or any other private organization.
We all know people will voluntarily support an organization if they perceive it to have value. If the CCHS isn’t receiving enough donor support without forcing Clarkston taxpayers to help, then perhaps it’s because people living in the Clarkston area don’t find enough value in what the CCHS does to write them a personal check.
Despite regularly forcing taxpayers to “donate” park user fees to private organizations, the city council has never expressly authorized anyone from the city to waive the taxpayers’ right to reimbursement for all wages our DPW employees are paid for their forced work relating to Art in the Village events, whether it’s performed during regular work hours or on overtime. To give you an idea of just how much money we’re talking about, the city council approved a $25.00 per hour rate for the DPW supervisor (or $37.50 per hour at a time-and-one-half overtime rate) and a $17.33 per hour rate for the DPW laborer (or $25.995 per hour at a time-and-one-half rate) for the 2023-2024 budget year. That’s $63.495 per hour for each hour our two DPW employees are forced to work during the weekend at the 2023 Art in the Village event. And if they’re assigned to any set up and tear down work on Friday or Monday, taking them away from doing the work taxpayers employ them to do, we are paying $43.233 per hour. (But who’s counting right?)
Who is responsible for assigning projects to our DPW employees? The answer is found in section 5.3(b), page 15, of the city’s charter. “City Manager – Functions and Duties” states, in part, “Supervise and coordinate the work of the administrative officers and departments of the City . . .” If the city manager isn’t directly assigning our employees to do CCHS-related work, then who is?
In connection with its freebie request, the CCHS submitted a one-page document, included in the June 26, 2023, city council packet, emphasizing how wonderful it is. It also listed contributions that were “outside of its core history mission” – providing staffing and prizes for a corn hole game, along with 300 s’mores kits, for the Clarkston Holiday Market; helping to plan and run Shiver on the River from 2014-2018, which included providing “hundreds of children’s prizes and s’mores”; and creating Porchfest (free concerts on porches from 2017-2019). I think it’s rather shocking it appeared to be admitting it is using tax-exempt donor dollars to fund things that have nothing to do with historical education, which is the only reason it has a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in the first place. (I wonder what the IRS would think about those expenditures. 🤔)
It’s no surprise that our city council voted to give the CCHS a park user fee waiver again. Our city council rubber stamps all requests from the city manager, even when he’s in front of them acting as the president and treasurer of a private organization. Kudos to councilmember Wylie for voting “no” in this one case, but that was only because the request was to use the park for a giant, private fundraiser. (She regularly votes to give away Depot Park user fees to “charities”; this was only one exception.)
I made FOIA requests to find out just how much I and every other Clarkston taxpayer have been forced to “donate” to the CCHS over the last several years. In 2022, I asked for records of all unreimbursed costs for the CCHS’s Art in the Village for the last five years (2017-2021), and I sent an updated request on July 6, 2023, to include the 2022 Art in the Village event. I’ve attached the chart titled “Income and Expenses for the CCHS Art in the Village Event,” and the city manager’s “FOIA Notes,” that the city provided in response to my July 6th request here.
You’ll note the city created a column at the far right of its chart purportedly to show the net expense and income to the city relating to the CCHS. I’ll explain why this column is inaccurate in the detail below. However, for now, just know that it grossly misrepresents what actually occurred, is likely the city manager’s way of inappropriately massaging the data (or asking someone else to massage the data) to try to make the CCHS look better in response to a Clarkston taxpayer’s FOIA request (while getting paid by Clarkston taxpayers), and it should be completely ignored due to its inaccuracy. And, if Clarkston government is really claiming that Depot Park user fees are income, rather than reflecting the actual cost of the use of the park, then Bolt v City of Lansing requires the city to stop charging everyone to use Depot Park for an event because the charges are not valid user fees.
Our city manager was appointed to his Clarkston position on January 23, 2017. The CCHS’s tax returns (linked below) show the city manager has also served as the president and treasurer of the CCHS during the 2017-2022 Art in the Village events and they state the CCHS’s books are in his care. (To the best of my knowledge, the city manager remains in both those CCHS roles today.)
If the CCHS is like most organizations, the treasurer signs the checks (and you’ll note he signed the CCHS’s tax returns I linked to below). If the CCHS’s checks are authorized by its treasurer, that means the city manager has been signing the checks from the CCHS to the city at the same time he has served in an appointed position for the city where he’s responsible for supervising the Clarkston treasurer. And if that’s not the case, then I invite someone from the CCHS to correct my assumption in the comments below and let us know who is signing the checks sent to Clarkston relating to the CCHS’s Art in the Village event if it’s not the city manager. (I also invite the CCHS to correct any factual misstatements in this post – if it believes there are any – because I try to be factually accurate and to link to supporting material.)
You’ll note the city’s chart refers to “donations” under the “income type” column to represent payments from the CCHS to Clarkston in varying amounts (usually less than the actual costs to the taxpayers for the Art in the Village events). There is no provision in our city ordinances for donations in lieu of full reimbursement of taxpayer expenditures for any private organization. Apparently, this benefit is something the city manager authorized not only for his own organization, but he told us at the August 8, 2022, city council meeting he’s also bestowed this favor on the Chamber of Commerce for its events too. Even if this were OK, and it’s not, does anyone else besides me think it’s absolutely inappropriate if the city manager, while acting as the president and treasurer of the CCHS, is deciding how much these inadequate taxpayer reimbursement “donations” to Clarkston should be? (And if the city manager isn’t making the decision, then who is?)
I’ve summarized the information from the city’s chart in a more easily readable format, and I’ve also included information from the CCHS’s tax returns so you can see for yourself they make a ton of money from Art in the Village, have a big fat bank account, and have no reason not to pay the park user fees or to fully reimburse the city for the straight time and overtime labor costs of our employees (and I suspect the same is true for the Clarkston Chamber of Commerce). You’ll note the amount the CCHS caused Clarkston taxpayers to absorb started out small but has increased significantly over the six-year period, and there was no year the CCHS was unable to afford to fully reimburse all costs.
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- 2017 Art in the Village, 9/16 and 9/17/17. The CCHS paid a $225 Depot Park user fee on 9/27/16, presumably to reserve the park in advance. (This is the only transaction shown on the chart that occurred before the city manager was appointed to his Clarkston government job.) Though it beggars belief, the city’s report claims total DPW wages for the entire weekend event were only $51. The far-right column on the city’s chart suggests the “net income” to the city was $174. This is a perfect example why this last column should be ignored. The CCHS paid a Depot Park user fee of $225, rather than the required $250, and the CCHS also failed to reimburse the taxpayers for even the unbelievably small amount of DPW wages. This means there was a forced and improper donation from the taxpayers of $76 to the 2017 Art in the Village event with no express city council approval. The CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2017 reveals it had net assets of $171,726, and the gross proceeds from the 2017 Art in the Village were $23,580.
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- 2018 Art in the Village, 9/15 and 9/16/18. The CCHS paid only $50 of the required $250 Depot Park user fee on 9/12/18, a mere 3 days before its event. (Do you think if you paid 20% of the required park user fee 3 days before your event, the city would allow you to hold the event?) On 10/1/18, the CCHS made a “donation” of $145.50. Eight months later, on 6/15/19, the CCHS coughed up another $150 “donation.” DPW wages were $145.50 for the event, and the city suggests these transactions together represent $200 in net income to the city. No, they don’t. What they show is the CCHS failed to pay the full $250 Depot Park user fee, even though it did pay the full $145.50 in DPW wages – as it should have. This means there was a forced and improper donation from the taxpayers of $50 to the 2018 Art in the Village event with no express city council approval. The CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2018 reveals it had net assets of $154,322, and the gross proceeds from the 2018 Art in the Village were $26,405.
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- 2019 Art in the Village, 9/14 and 9/15/19. On 9/17/19, after Art in the Village had taken place, the CCHS paid $250 to use Depot Park for the entire weekend (in two payments of $50 and $200), and it “donated” $108 to the city on 9/17/19, which was the same amount as the actual DPW wages for the event. (Clarkston’s park rule #1 requires the park user fee to be paid in advance, but I guess the city ignores this rule when the city manager’s own organization is involved.) These transactions show the CCHS is fully aware it is obligated to pay not only the $250 non-resident Depot Park user fee but also any actual DPW wages. The CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2019 reveals it had net assets of $175,488, and the gross proceeds from the 2019 Art in the Village were $25,338.
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- 2021 Art in the Village, 9/18 and 9/19/21. (Note: the 2020 Art in the Village was cancelled due to COVID, but I’ve attached the CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2020 for consistency.) The CCHS paid a park user fee of $275 on 10/1/19, overpaying by $25. (If I had to guess what happened, I think the CCHS paid the park user fee for the 2020 event before anyone knew the COVID pandemic would cause the event to be cancelled and decided to keep the deposit with the city to be applied the next time the event was held rather than ask for a refund. Or the city mistyped the date on the chart and the CCHS paid the fee after the event again. Only the CCHS and the city manager know for sure.) Over three months after the 2021 event, on 1/2/22, the CCHS made an additional “donation” of $450, even though actual DPW wages totaled $819.56. This means there was a forced and improper taxpayer donation of $344.56 to the 2021 Art in the Village with no express city council approval. This was the biggest discrepancy yet, even though the CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2021 reveals it had net assets of $169,885, and the gross proceeds from the 2021 Art in the Village were $22,690.
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- 2022 Art in the Village, 9/17 and 9/18/22. This is the first year the city council (improperly) allowed the CCHS to avoid paying the $250 Depot Park user fee, though I would note the city council only waived $200, not the $250 park user fee actually owed by the CCHS as a non-resident under the city’s park rule #1 for two hours of park use. Actual DPW wages were $1,249.88. As of July 6, 2023, would you like to know how much the CCHS “donated” to the city for its exclusive use of Depot Park for the weekend, despite having net assets of $131,111 as reported on the CCHS’s Form 990 tax return for 2022? Nothing. Not a damned thing – until I asked for records ten months later, that is. This means there was a forced and improper taxpayer donation of $1,499.88 to the 2022 Art in the Village and only $200 of that amount was (improperly) excused by the city council (because it apparently thought the applicable Depot Park user fee was $200, not $250).
The resolution presented to the public and approved by the city council on August 8, 2022, for the 2022 Art in the Village did not authorize taxpayer payment of DPW wages for this event in any amount. To the contrary, that portion of the resolution states “WHEREAS, As in year’s [sic] past, the Society will pay the DPW wages for their time worked during Art in the Village weekend . . . ” This is yet another admission the CCHS is fully aware it’s supposed to pay for all DPW wages, at regular and overtime rates, but it’s also a false statement because the CCHS did not pay the full amount of DPW wages in 2017, 2021, or later, in 2022. (I wonder who prepared this resolution – was it the city manager?)
Now let’s look at the resolution for the CCHS’s 2023 fee waiver request. At the June 26, 2023, city council meeting, the city council waived only $200 of the $250 fee the CCHS was required to pay as a nonresident (for two hours of use, not 72 hours of use). Council member Sue Wylie expressly asked the city manager how much the city pays in DPW overtime wages for this event. The city manager told her the DPW wages for the weekend are $500-$600 and said the CCHS has paid $300-$400 the last couple of years.
Obviously, the DPW wages were way more than that in 2021 and 2022 ($819.56 and $1,249.88, respectively, up from $108 in 2019). At the time the city manager made this representation, the CCHS had made zero “contribution” to the DPW wages for the 2022 Art in the Village event and only a $475 partial payment toward DPW wages (consisting of an overpayment of $25 for the Depot park user fee plus a $450 “donation”) in connection with the 2021 Art in the Village event – even though the 2022 resolution stated “as in year’s [sic] past, the Society will pay the DPW wages for their time worked during Art in the Village weekend . . . ”, which was a misrepresentation to the city council and the public. The 2023 resolution waived only $200 of the required $250 Depot Park user fee for two hours of use and doesn’t excuse the CCHS from paying all DPW wages related to its 2023 Art in the Village private fundraiser (and I’ll definitely be sending a new FOIA request to confirm the CCHS has timely reimbursed us for those costs).
The analysis above assumes the CCHS need only pay a $250 park user fee for using the park for two hours, rather than its actual use of 72 hours, which would require a fee of $9,000. Add that to the analysis and you can see the CCHS’s small payments are woefully inadequate.
And that’s how things sat – until I made a FOIA request on July 6, 2023, for the 2022 Art in the Village costs – almost a year after the 2022 Art in the Village event.
Oops! This prompted some action – unrelated to answering my FOIA request. In the response to my FOIA request sent on July 12, 2023, the city manager made a comment in the “FOIA notes” stating “the Historical Society’s donation for the 2022 event was just received this week after the completion of the detailed analysis of the DPW wages to explain a significant year-over-year increase.”
I was born on a Sunday, but it wasn’t last Sunday. Was I not supposed to notice the CCHS’s “donation” was “just received” because the city manager’s nonprofit “just got around” to sending it to the city? This purported “full analysis” was completed on July 6, 2023, the same day I sent my FOIA request, and the city’s chart shows the CCHS’s partial payment, i.e., “donation,” wasn’t paid until July 10, 2023 – four days after my FOIA request. The total cost to Clarkston taxpayers for the 2022 Art in the Village event was $1,499.88. The city council improperly excused $200, and the CCHS “donated” only $550 on July 10, 2023, leaving an unpaid balance of $749.88.
I’m calling B.S. on the city manager’s explanation for his organization not sending any payment until I made a point to ask for the details. What “full analysis” was required? Did it really take almost a year to do? Why was it necessary? After all, the CCHS believes it is entitled to “donate” whatever it feels like paying for the actual DPW wages, sticking the taxpayers with the rest of the cost while avoiding the park user fee applicable to two hours of park use for a resident (as opposed to the cost of three entire days of park use for a non-resident), regardless what city council’s resolution says – because the CCHS believes Clarkston taxpayers should be required “to support them.” So, what difference does an analysis make?
I suppose we could accept the city manager’s claim that our city employees have been diligently working for almost an entire year – at our expense – to complete a “detailed analysis” to provide to the CCHS. After all, our DPW employees are forced to work for them, so I guess our other employees should be too. And I guess we should unquestionably accept that the close in time dates of the FOIA request, the “detailed analysis,” and the reimbursement check were totally just a coincidence. Totally. 🙄
Or we could reasonably ask whether the CCHS – whose president and treasurer also happens to be our city manager – would have ever reimbursed the city in any amount if I hadn’t sent a FOIA request asking about it.
I made a separate request to the CCHS for the CCHS’s 2022 income tax Form 990 by letter dated June 28, 2023, because I wanted to know how much they made from the 2022 Art in the Village. I know they can afford to pay a $250 Depot Park user fee (and we’ll all just have to pretend it’s for two hours of resident use, not 72 hours of nonresident use), because the city manager told us the CCHS expected the 2022 Art in the Village to fill the park to maximum capacity with 120 vendor tents and we know how much Art in the Village has grossed for the last several years.
The public Form 990 documents are part of the income tax returns 501(c)(3) organizations must file each year, and portions of those returns must be made available to the public. (That’s the bone the federal government throws at us taxpayers for allowing these organizations to avoid paying any taxes on the contributions and income they take in.) The CCHS has 37 days from the postmark date to send the material since I included a $10 money order, which is more than a sufficient amount to pay for copying costs at the $.20 per page fee recommended by the IRS (and I even told them they could keep any extra as a voluntary contribution 😉). By my count, they are close to the due date, and there are penalties for failure to timely comply with a request.
I visited the CCHS’s website to try to figure out why it hadn’t yet responded to such a simple request and thought perhaps it might be unstaffed for the summer. While there, I noticed someone had uploaded the CCHS’s 2018-2022 Form 990s to the website on July 10, 2023. This means there is no excuse for not responding to my request dated a few weeks earlier on June 28, 2023, before the information was posted. Though the CCHS’s website claims it’s providing links to “all past tax filings,” that is obviously untrue. (The ProPublica website states the CCHS has been a nonprofit since January 1981.) The 2018-2022 Form 990s were uploaded four days after my July 6, FOIA request to Clarkston and the same day the CCHS finally got around to partially reimbursing the us for the 2022 event. (Another “coincidence,” I’m sure, but if I had anything to do with the CCHS’s newly minted desire for transparency, then that makes me very happy. 😊)
Oddly, the CCHS omitted Schedule G from the 2022 Form 990 it uploaded to its own website. Huh. Schedule G is the form that would reveal exactly how much the CCHS made from the 2022 Art in the Village, and it’s required to file a Schedule G because it reported more than $15,000 of fundraising event contributions. I’m sure that’s just another coincidence, the CCHS isn’t actually trying to hide these numbers from the public, and when it finally provides me with a copy of its 2022 Form 990, it will include Schedule G, right? Alternatively, it can publish all the public portions of the 2022 Form 990 that will disclose its earnings for the 2022 Art in the Village on its website and return my $10 money order (that it hasn’t yet cashed) in the self-addressed, stamped envelope I provided – I honestly don’t care which.
If the CCHS doesn’t respond soon, I can (and will) file a complaint with the IRS. If I have to spend the time to do that, perhaps I’ll go further and include the summary the CCHS provided to the city council that admits it is “supporting” activities outside its core purpose. If the money for all those s’mores and prizes didn’t come from the CCHS’s board member’s own pockets, then it’s fair to ask if it came from tax-exempt donations intended to support the CCHS’s educational purpose. I also wonder if the CCHS has been declaring the forced donations from Clarkston taxpayers for the full cost of the Depot Park fee waivers and the unpaid DPW wages. We’ll never know, because the CCHS isn’t required to disclose its donor list, though I’m sure an audit could sort all these questions out if the IRS chooses to pursue a complaint in that way. Frankly, I’d rather not invest the time in a complaint and prefer the CCHS just send me what I asked for.
In any event, if you want to see tax filings for other years, you don’t have to rely on the CCHS – you can go to the ProPublica website and see returns from 2004 – 2022, and you can find the CCHS’s 2016-2019 returns by searching for them on the IRS website. I noticed the CCHS’s 2022 Form 990 is also missing Schedule G on the ProPublica website. So weird. 🤔 Hopefully, the CCHS’s president and treasurer didn’t forget to file it, which is almost (but not quite) as bad as trying to hide the amount the CCHS made from the 2022 Art in the Village from the public.
In the meantime, the CCHS owes the city some money.
Looking at the broader picture, if Depot Park user fees don’t reflect the cost to the taxpayers for these special uses – which would amount to $9,000 for the CCHS’s use of the park for three days – then the city needs to abolish the park user fee schedule for everyone. If the park user fees are reflective of the actual taxpayer costs for special uses, then the city council needs to stop waiving them – because they have absolutely no legal authority to do so.