Parents and grandparents may recognize the cadence of my title from the book, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” It goes something like this: “If a hungry little mouse shows up on your doorstep, you might want to give him a cookie. And if you give him a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk. He’ll want to look in a mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a milk mustache…” After borrowing your mirror, the mouse will need some scissors to trim his hair and then a broom to sweep the trimmings. Then he needs a nap, a story, and supplies to draw a picture. And then he needs to hang the picture on the refrigerator, and that makes him thirsty, so he needs a glass of milk – which of course leads to a request for another cookie. (Summary courtesy of Wikipedia; quote from author Laura Lumeroff’s website.) “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” is a child’s introduction to what adults refer to as a “slippery slope,” where the hardest thing one can do is to look down the hill and push off. After that, continued rationalization keeps us moving down the hill at full speed.
Let’s go back in time to August 24, 2020. The pandemic had been roaring on for most of the year and our planning commission suggested the city council establish a committee to study the feasibility of establishing a “social district” in Clarkston. A committee was formed and consisted of former planning commission member Frank Schoebel, former councilmember/former planning commission liaison/current mayor Sue Wylie, and former councilmember Jason Kniesc. On October 5, 2020, the committee presented its recommendation for a social district to the city council and a resolution to establish the social district on November 23, 2020. You’ll note the city council relied on the COVID pandemic as part of its justification for the social district, as well as a claim that establishing a social district was necessary to keep Clarkston “competitive and attractive to consumers.” (Remember that – the social district was intended to attract non-resident “consumers.”)
What is a social district? In its presentation, the social district committee said it is a “[d]efined geographical area which contains common areas where qualified licensees whose premises that are contiguous to the common area may sell beer, wine, mixed spirit drinks, sprits or mixed drink[s] that patrons may then consume in the common areas of the defined Social District,” and the drinks have to be contained in special little cups. In other words, our 2020 social district was designed to benefit Honcho (a Curt Catallo restaurant), the Union Woodshop (a Curt Catallo restaurant), the Clarkston Union (a Curt Catallo restaurant), and The Fed.
You may recall that at the time the social district was being discussed, Catallo’s Honcho restaurant was enjoying the rent-free, exclusive use of the end of Church Street. This was because the city council has always believed it is entitled to give away taxpayer resources (including Depot Park fee waivers and the cost of wages for our Department of Public Works [DPW] employees for their forced work at private events) – even though it’s unlawful to give away public property for a private use. They receive advice from a city attorney who is apparently unfamiliar with Article 7, Section 26, of the Michigan constitution and its prohibition on a public body “lending its credit” for private purposes, or our city’s charter, which contains no authorization to allow the city council to make charitable contributions of any kind. (Voters could have included a limited authorization in the charter for the city council to make some charitable contributions if they’d wanted to, but they did not choose to do so.) I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, since our city attorney also isn’t very familiar with the Open Meetings and Freedom of Information Acts either, or he wouldn’t have been responsible for three lawsuits involving these statutes.
At the October 26, 2020, city council meeting, a citizen expressed concern that Catallo’s restaurant was favored above the other restaurants because of his taxpayer-funded occupation of the end of Church Street. Rather than just answering the question, then-councilmember Joe Luginski demanded the citizen first identify himself, because that was apparently far more important than addressing yet another example of the city’s commercial favoritism that oddly seems to favor one business owner most often. Catallo, who was at the meeting, claimed the idea was suggested to all businesses by city manager Jonathan Smith and Wylie, but it “only works for Honcho” because they were the only ones with the “bandwidth and courage” to do it. (I think we can all agree that patting yourself on the back for all your “bandwidth and courage” as you receive tens of thousands of dollars of benefit from a fee-free exclusive lease of the end of a public street courtesy of Clarkston taxpayers really isn’t a good look.) Catallo also said he would be “honored” to play a part in establishing a green space at the end of Church Street. Is anyone surprised Catallo would be in favor of a “green space” right next to Honcho, created and maintained by Clarkston taxpayers, that would give his customers a place to hang out and eat? 🙄
Going back to the social district presentation, the committee recommended closing “Church Street permanently when the current closure ends on October 31, 2020 and eventually transition the area into a common area when details can be worked out…” (FYI, Catallo maintained the exclusive – and free – use of the end of Church Street until July 7, 2021, at which time he finally committed to removing all of his blocks and barricades. See April 12, 2021 city council meeting, informal transcript linked here.)
Clarkston taxpayers weren’t asked for permission for the Church Street property giveaway, and as noted, the city council had no authority to temporarily donate the use of this property under the charter or otherwise. After a letter was circulated in the community warning about the permanent closure of Church Street and asking people to make their feelings known, the city council was finally forced to address resident concerns. (I published a copy of the letter here. I removed the name and contact information before publishing it so the person would not be attacked by any member of the city council for expressing a viewpoint contrary to their own.) At the November 9, 2020, city council meeting, and in response to the concerns raised by the letter, then-councilmember Wylie told us the possibility of closing Church Street and creating a publicly owned green space had been briefly discussed and that discussion was intertwined with the discussions regarding the social district. She also said permanently closing Church Street would require public input and serious investigation and that hadn’t happened yet. Y’all know I’m a big fan of now-mayor Wylie, even if we don’t always agree, so I trust her when she tells us that a public street will not even be partially closed without “public input and serious investigation.”
Enter Jonathan Smith, our city manager, the guy who isn’t above twisting the truth to get what he wants and then literally denying the words that came out of his mouth afterward. (I wrote about that here.) Smith also has no problem limiting the information the council and public receive, allowing him to sidestep any objection to whatever he wants to do until it’s too late for objections to be made. Smith’s December 11, 2023, “placemaking” proposal is the most recent example of that.
Smith intentionally provided zero details about his placemaking plans in advance of the December 11, 2023, city council meeting to either the public or the city council. After all, taxpayers can’t show up and object if they don’t have any facts. And if the city council is a clean slate because they lack any data before the meeting, then Smith can gaslight them by limiting the amount of information they receive to only those things he wants them to know. Indeed, the only public statement Smith made before the December 11, 2023, city council meeting extensively described a grant opportunity from General Motors and obscurely stated: “As part of my City Manager Report discussion in the December 11th Council meeting, I would like to present a placemaking idea for downtown that I have been considering for a couple of years. I will be seeking feedback from Council before applying. The deadline for the grant is coming up soon – Noon on Wednesday, December 13th.”
So, Smith has ostensibly been thinking about this idea for a couple of years, he had a presentation in his back pocket, and he planned to present things to the council in a take it or leave it fashion because of the limited amount of time left to apply for a grant relating to his undescribed placemaking proposal. Even though some council members apparently believed General Motors (the grant provider) would allow only a few days to apply for such a significant grant, that wasn’t the case at all. The application period ran from November 13th to December 13th, so Smith was the one who gave council the abbreviated deadline, not General Motors. Smith claimed he’d just learned about the grant opportunity, and I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to believe that or not given his track record for truth-telling. If true, it certainly worked out in a convenient way for Smith because it allowed him to push the council into doing what he wanted and all he had to do was show them some pretty pictures and lure them with the siren song of $50,000 in “free” grant money.
Even though no one else had sufficient information to allow them to do research and ask intelligent questions, Smith was fully prepared with a multi-page presentation that was not shared in advance of the meeting. Three Historic District Commission (HDC) members and the Planning Commission chair also happened to be in the audience, even though they don’t usually attend city council meetings.
Here are some of the points that came out during Smith’s presentation for his proposed “placemaking” place:
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- It needs to be where the businesses are.
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- It’s intended for patrons and visitors to increase the likelihood they will return to Clarkston. (Too bad, so sad for Clarkston residents – as usual, you aren’t the priority, even though you are going to at least have to pay to repair and maintain the space.)
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- People walking around with alcoholic drinks from The Fed and Catallo’s three restaurants in the social district need a place to sit. (If you give a mouse a cookie…)
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- People should have a place to socialize while they’re outside of the restaurants because they can’t take their alcoholic drinks into Depot Park. (After you give the mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk…)
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- People text and talk too much, and they apparently wouldn’t do this in Smith’s magical space.
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- It will bring people to the city, and we’ll be “left behind” if we don’t do this. (Because that’s totally how I choose my day trips, don’t you?)
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- Smith goes to all kinds of meetings – city manager meetings, planner meetings, Michigan Municipal League conferences, and economic development meetings – and gosh darn it, they’re all talking about placemaking! (No wonder Smith claims to have no time to do anything, what with attending all those meetings and enjoying six paid sick days, fourteen paid holidays, fifteen paid vacation days, and having every Friday off.)
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- Gosh darn it, our “competition” is doing it! Just look at Lake Orion (population 2,895), Oxford (population 3,462); and Milford (population 6,474). (Clarkston only has 916 residents, but we apparently need to keep up with those other city Joneses, even though we have thousands fewer people paying taxes than they do. What are we “competing” with these other cities for, restaurant patrons? Restaurants directly benefit the city only by paying property taxes, just as you do – we do not get a “cut” of every burrito sold. If there’s a patron “competition” issue, then that’s a restaurant problem, not a resident problem.)
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- Placemaking is in the Master Plan. (There are lots of things in the Master Plan that Smith ignores, but he apparently likes this one thing a whole lot.)
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- A lack of placemaking can lead to vacant storefronts when the economy turns downward. (Because people without discretionary spending money will drive all the way to northern Oakland County to go to a few overpriced restaurants only if they can sit down, outside, with an alcoholic drink, and only when Michigan weather permits it. Weird that Smith expresses zero concern about the taxpayers’ ability pay all our city workers in the future when he asks for significant raises and retirement plan matches at budget time, because that also would be affected by any economic downturn.)
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- Rodgers thought the other businesses might want to stay open later if people had somewhere to hang out rather than eating and going home. (At the December 14, 2020, and November 14, 2022, city council meetings, Smith said paid parking was implemented not only for revenue but also to incentivize turnover of parking spaces, because hello, we don’t have enough effing parking spaces and really don’t want people “hanging around.”)
Smith said he remembered the proposal to close Church Street and establish a “green space” next to Catallo’s Honcho restaurant was “met with quite a bit of criticism.” (Um, yes. To put it mildly. 😂) And I suspect avoiding criticism was precisely why Smith kept the details of his proposal hidden from everyone before the meeting – because gaslighting is one of his favorite ways to get the city council to give him what he wants.
So, where does Smith think the place designed for non-Clarkston residents to drink and be merry should be located? He wants to block off and use Mill Street as his special little placemaking place, all 36 x 100 feet of it, from the sidewalk to the back alley that the giant delivery and trash trucks use. The dumpster would stay, but no worries, Robert Esshaki plans to make it pretty. (Esshaki is the man who wants to jam two new restaurants into the footprint of the old Rudy’s Market and Clarkston News buildings. Esshaki has publicly stated residents should share his parking pain as he builds his two additional restaurants with full awareness that he has no place for any of his future patrons to park – because he wants to make his problem, your problem.)
Smith told the city council that Esshaki and The Fed owner “endorse” closing Mill Street for a “permanently closed seating area.” Gosh, it’s truly a mystery why these two restaurant owners would support an outside seating area between their restaurants that they don’t have to pay for or maintain, isn’t it? 🤔 Their “endorsement” is no different that Catallo’s expressed “honor” to help establish a taxpayer-paid green space next to his restaurant.
Smith told us his placemaking idea would result in the loss of at least three (and probably four) parking spaces. Since we have way more parking than we need in Clarkston, who cares? Oh wait, we don’t. No doubt you’ll be super glad to have even more overflow employee and transient restaurant patron parking in front of your home because of a “placemaking” project we’ve been expressly told is not intended to benefit us.
Smith noted the city council and the HDC weren’t interested in closing Mill Street several years ago, but he thought it was time to ask again. Smith even resurrected former mayor Percival (God rest his soul) in support of his placemaking idea because nothing is apparently too tasteless for Smith when it comes to trying to get what he wants.
I suspect most Clarkston residents don’t know where Mill Street is because we don’t colloquially refer to it that way. Rudy’s Market used to use Mill Street for parking, and many people believe the Mill Street property is owned by Esshaki. (Nope. Esshaki has always relied on the largesse of Clarkston taxpayers to provide “free” parking for his private businesses.) You can see a photo of this city-owned street as it currently exists as well as a photo of the old Clarkston Mills here.
The Clarkston Mills was once located at the end of Mill Street, and both the Clarkston Mills and Mill Street are an integral part of our shared community history. As HDC member Melissa Luginski noted at the December 11th city council meeting, the reason the City of the Village of Clarkston is listed on the federal National Register of Historic Places is because we are an 18th century mill village. HDC member Michael Moon told the council Mill Street is one of the most historically relevant streets in town. HDC member Jennifer Radcliff said Mill Street isn’t just a place that can be dismissed because it’s currently vacant, and there’s a reason why it’s there. There has always been a collection of commercial activity around Mill Street, and she didn’t think it should be closed off to make a place for people to socialize rather than allowing its current continued use by the people who actually live and work here.
Smith said General Motors will announce the grant winners in January, the funds will be sent out in February, and the projects must be completed by August. Smith said he realizes that work on the façade of Esshaki’s restaurant might prevent all other work on Mill Street, but he’s been advised the façade work is scheduled to conclude by May 2024. As we all know, construction projects always finish on time, so that leaves plenty of opportunity during the heaviest part of the Michigan construction season to find a crew to come out for a small job pouring specialty concrete. 😂
Smith has no clue what his grand plan will cost. (What else is new?) He thinks the $50,000 General Motors grant would likely pay for the fancy concrete but probably not the seating, bollards, planters, and lighting he’s been fantasizing about. And if Smith doesn’t have enough money to complete his little project by the August deadline established by the grant, he’ll “have to probably find other sources to fund it,” including donations from currently unidentified, nonexistent benefactors – or risk losing the grant entirely. (Hide your wallets, taxpayers.) Smith will be getting help with the application from the city attorney and our contract city planner, which is another gift from the taxpayers to these four restaurants since neither of these professionals work for free. (I guess we’ll have to wait until the bills come in next month to see how much this gift cost us.)
Did you notice what Smith did on December 11th? It’s something called “thinking past the sale.” The “sale” is Smith presuming he’s going to get his placemaking space if Clarkston is awarded the General Motors grant. He sufficiently manipulated the council members so they were asking questions about what comes after the grant is awarded, not whether Mill Street should be destroyed as a working street to service transient people who want to walk around with alcoholic drinks in the first place. Every subsequent objection has now been reduced to a mere detail that Smith will overcome no matter how much it costs in local history and taxpayer money – because he’s already made the sale to the city council. Pretty slimy, eh?
And here is the part you really need to pay attention to – Smith said if the General Motors grant doesn’t work out, he “ought to pursue some others” so he can bring his latest dream project to fruition. Smith expressly asked if the council would consider closing Mill Street to become a permanent placemaking opportunity, with the only remaining issue being the money to fund it. (Thinking past the sale again.) And even though they didn’t vote on Smith’s proposal on December 11th, it appears most council members are on board. Councilmember Forte was so excited about the idea she even volunteered to be on a currently nonexistent committee to get it done. What this tells you is if Clarkston receives this grant or any other, then your chance to object was apparently tossed to the curb on December 11, 2023. The council will listen to any three-minute public comment made in opposition to Smith’s plan because they are forced to do so, but it’s pretty clear a majority of the council members will eventually vote in favor of Smith’s plan over any objection taxpayers and residents might have.
And now you know why city residents and city council members were given no advance notice of Smith’s grand plan to destroy Mill Street in favor of creating a gathering place for alcohol-drinking restaurant patrons. If the city is awarded this grant, Smith will argue the city council gave him the green light to proceed with his placemaking idea and move full steam ahead because after all, we can’t refuse “free” money, right?
As noted above, mayor Wylie once told us that closing a public street requires “public input and serious investigation.” Back then, she was referring to Church Street. Mill Street is also a public street, and it has significantly more historical importance than Church Street to Clarkston. Yet, at the December 11, 2023, city council meeting, Wylie said she would allow only limited comment from the public regarding permanently closing Mill Street because Smith was “only looking for feedback from council.” Why close off discussion from the public? The council discussion had clearly trended toward favoring the destruction of an important piece of history. It certainly appeared they were willing to reduce Mill Street to nothing more than a gathering place for outsiders to enjoy alcoholic beverages a few months per year. But hey, it’s good to know they intend to slap a plaque on the wall and perhaps add a faux gas light or two in homage to Mill Street’s (former) significant historical importance to the city after it’s handed over to alcohol-drinking restaurant patrons.
It’s not clear whether the HDC is on board with this proposal, and to be fair, nothing has been presented to them. If they do end up supporting this, then I don’t ever want to hear any more nonsense about how they are trying to preserve Clarkston history – because reversing themselves a few short years after they said no to allowing a project like this to go forward demonstrates the current members are more interested in shiny objects than in historic preservation. And you would do well to remember that these are the same people who will mercilessly punish you for home repairs that literally no one would notice. For example, if your window installer doesn’t get a permit and installs the wrong windows, they’ll demand you rip them out and purchase windows that are fabricated by a window maker specializing in historic windows at a huge cost (cha-ching). Or, in our case, our roofer told us the HDC held up the replacement of our leaking roof for months even though we’d planned to replace the roof using virtually identical shingles, and they also slapped a stop work order on our front window at the same time our carpenter was performing what the HDC later admitted was a like-for-like repair of our rotting porch pillars. The HDC includes the following motto in its brochure: “What a community chooses to save is what a community chooses to say about itself.” Destroying Mill Street to benefit four restaurants so strangers can have a place to sit and enjoy their overpriced alcoholic drinks would speak volumes about what the HDC really cares about. It would also demonstrate that they prefer nitpicking and harassing residents about things like windows, shingles, fences, and even landscaping(!) over broader and more significant preservation issues within the historic district.
And let’s not forget that Smith is the president of the Clarkston Community Historical Society (CCHS) or that Clarkston taxpayers are forced to annually donate the cost of DPW wages and Depot Park fee waivers to his private organization. Smith and his wife (CCHS’s director and only paid employee) claim they are entitled to our forced contributions because the CCHS supports historical preservation within Clarkston and the surrounding area. Their website states: “The Clarkston Community Historical Society has been created in order to bring together those people interested in the history of our community; and, as far as possible, to collect and/or preserve such things that are of historic interest.” And yet Smith is advocating for the destruction of an integral part of Clarkston’s history because he thinks the more important value is that outsiders have a place to drink alcoholic beverages for a few months of the year. Perhaps Smith should find another place to volunteer his personal time because he obviously doesn’t really believe in the mission of his own organization.
Should Clarkston receive the General Motors grant, Smith will attempt to jam his idea through every roadblock, including Clarkston residents, employing half-truths and whatever else he needs to do to get what he wants. You don’t need to remember very far back to know Smith was the primary driver for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that taxpayers were forced to pay for the city hall/DPW expansion, involving multiple cost overruns, even though repairing the building and adding security features would have cost less than $50,000. Smith got a private office and taxpayers were stuck with a giant bill that will take years and years to pay off. The city hall/DPW expansion is the gift that keeps on giving, because the money for this boondoggle was “borrowed” from our water and sewer funds, leaving us with no money for the sewer repairs that are anticipated soon. There was plenty of money in the fund earmarked to pay for sewer repairs before it was “borrowed” by the city council in support of yet another of Smith’s grandiose plans, and Smith will be asking for a 9% increase in your quarterly sewer bill at the Monday, January 9, 2024, city council meeting. (It’s tedious work, but I’ll eventually post the actual costs for the DPW/city hall expansion as well as an explanation of how it was funded in response to Smith’s public claims that “borrowing” money from the water and sewer funds for this project has nothing to do with the fact that we have no money in our sewer funds to pay for sewer repair.)
If the council and the HDC approve this use without the “public input and serious investigation” mayor Wylie said must happen, then it’s grossly unfair to expect Clarkston taxpayers to pay a single dime for this. After all, this placemaking space isn’t intended for us. It’s meant to help the downtown businesses, but only a few of those businesses – the restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages. If that’s what these restaurant owners want, then they should pay for it. All of it – including every penny related to planning and installation costs as well as the inevitable repairs when the area is vandalized.
I hope our mayor makes it clear to Smith that whatever he thinks happened on December 11th, it did not constitute council approval for anything. I also hope she will confirm that council approval will not be given without the “public input and serious investigation” necessary before a public street is closed, just as she promised should be the case in 2020 in connection with the proposed Church Street closure.