Clarkston’s Creepy Weirdo, Strange Citizen Comments, The Never-Ending Saga of a 17-Day Clerk, More City Manager Lies, and Proof an Education Doesn’t Make You Smart – Let’s Spill Some Tea!

Apparently, the city council thought it needed to discuss Catherine Ashley’s 17-day employment stint at great length at the last city council meeting. Okey-dokey, let’s do that some more – but I’ll include details you haven’t heard. FYI, Catherine started working for the city on July 1 and resigned without advance notice on July 31. I suspect the 17 days she spoke of in her resignation letter is a reference to the number of days she actually worked during that month of employment.

The August 12 city council discussion began with reconsideration of a motion not to accept Catherine’s resignation. I know this sounds absolutely insane, but the city council members are under the impression – based on the advice of the city attorney – that if they refuse to “accept” a resignation, they can close their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears, sing la-la-la-la, and pretend the person hasn’t really resigned. Crazy right? (Especially since slavery and involuntary servitude have been outlawed since the adoption of the 13^th amendment to the federal constitution in 1865.) But in keeping with the legal fiction that the city council can force people to stay simply through the application of their collective will (and votes), the city council voted to refuse to accept Catherine’s July 31 resignation at a special August 1 city council meeting. When Catherine didn’t magically reappear and come to work thereafter, the city council voted to reconsider its motion to not accept the resignation, and then to accept the July 31 resignation, on August 12. It’s not clear if anyone talked to Catherine about coming back, even though she’d left the door open for those kinds of discussions. These motions were apparently presented at councilmember Gary Casey’s request.

There was more poop thrown at the wall at the August 12 city council meeting than you would see at a monkey exhibit at the Detroit Zoo, but let’s try to sift through some of it.

As I’ve mentioned here, I met with Catherine at councilmember Peg Roth’s house on July 31, the evening of the day Catherine resigned. Peg graciously opened up her home so we could have an honest talk, and she hoped the end result would be that Catherine might reconsider (as did I by the end of the meeting). At that point, I’d already heard the surprising resignation news from city attorney Tom Ryan (in connection with his work with my husband on the election-related lawsuit involving the charter amendment to address the Historic District Commission), and I’d seen the special city council meeting notice. I hadn’t seen Catherine’s intemperate resignation letter at that point, something she (under)described as a little “salty” at our meeting.

After our chat, Catherine explained she was angry when she wrote the letter, felt bad after our discussion, had asked Smith to pull the letter, realized the two of us had a lot in common with regard to government transparency (I agree), and she planned to show up at the August 12 city council meeting to try to make things right. No one promised confidentiality during our meeting, but I chose not to say anything until now because I was hopeful Catherine might decide to continue to work for the city or that she might at least take the opportunity to try to unwind some of the mess she’d created for herself if she ever looks for another job (beyond her current employment). As for how I personally feel about her letter, I can honestly say I stopped giving a flying eff about what people associated with the city (or their friends and family) have to say about me a long time ago, it didn’t hurt my feelings, it will have zero effect on anything I might choose to do, and if the city ever wanted to drag the letter into a lawsuit for some reason, I would be more than happy to depose anyone and everyone working for the city to explore the subject in greater detail.

Catherine didn’t show up to make any public comments on August 12. If she simply changed her mind about showing up, that was certainly her choice, but she’ll have to live with the consequences of how it will affect her future employment opportunities. If she didn’t show up because she didn’t want to be criticized for Oakland County’s rejection of six of the seven affidavits submitted by mayor and city council candidates for the November election, that was definitely not her fault. The clerk isn’t responsible for filling out candidate forms; the candidates are. It’s not the clerk’s job to tell candidates how to fill out a one-page form that contains detailed instructions for how to fill out the form.

In her resignation letter, Catherine expressly thanked city manager Jonathan Smith, administrative assistant Evelyn Bihl, and treasurer Greg Coté for their warm welcome and assistance and said they weren’t at fault for her leaving. But was that objectively true? Does anyone really believe that Catherine, a person with 22 years of law enforcement experience, and one year of FOIA-related experience, suddenly couldn’t handle FOIAs and people she didn’t like after only 17 days of employment? Really? That makes no sense, and I seriously doubt it. Instead, I believe Catherine found herself in the middle of a group of gaslighting vipers – inside city hall and out – people who hate my husband and me more than they purportedly love the city. (In case you don’t know, to “gaslight” someone means to engage in factual manipulation that alters a person’s perception of reality by limiting the amount of information they receive. It can happen to anyone if they are kept away from facts that would tend to refute the false information.)

It’s hard to organize all the stupid things that went on in the August 12 meeting, so I’ll try to do it by topic.

The Clerk Isn’t Paid Enough

Catherine’s resignation letter claimed that $20 an hour wasn’t enough for all the ostensible emotional abuse she suffered doing her job duties, and councilmember Laura Rodgers thought it wasn’t enough compensation to handle FOIA requests. Though Rodgers’ extensive comments at the August 12 city council meeting were a shining example of the old adage that education doesn’t necessarily correlate with intelligence, some of the comments were unintentionally hilarious (especially the suggestion that the city should start charging residents for staples). I really hope the city takes Rodgers up on her suggestion because Clarkston apparently hasn’t been embarrassed enough in court. (Rodgers also opined on slander and the merits of lawsuits, so I guess that makes her an expert on the law and staples. 😂)

The fact that we can’t afford to be a city is a discussion for another day, but it necessarily means that we can’t pay for experienced employees, and this has cost us a small fortune. Take city manager Jonathan Smith for example. He is a retiree from Stellantis who apparently has experience with “big projects,” but his lack of municipal experience has cost us dearly. Two immediate examples come to mind. First, his recommendation and continued push to rebuild city hall (to include a private office for his personal use), costing hundreds of thousands of dollars when the estimated repair costs were only $48,000, and using money “borrowed” from our water and sewer funds to pay for the building, has resulted in taxpayers paying increased sewer bills to make up for the missing funds when we’ve  had unexpected sewer repair expenses (and Smith suggested at the August 12 city council meeting that we’re going to have to do it again). Second, 8 of the 14 years of overpayment for police and fire services occurred under Smith’s management. If you haven’t been following along on that story, our city employees overpaid almost $200,000 over a 14-year period because no one read the contracts, double-checked the quarterly bills from Independence Township, or checked the millage rates that are available online. (And FYI, everyone has settled on 14 years of overpayments as the target because the city council voted to eliminate the police department and our contract with the Oakland County Sheriff both began in 2010. However, no one looked at whether we were overpaying for fire services beyond 14 years, even though Clarkston has never had its own fire department.)

To a certain extent, the city manager is also responsible for the clerk’s wage complaints. He deliberately shorted both Catherine’s and our previous clerk Karen DeLorge’s wages when they were hired, withholding a portion of the full council-approved wages for a couple of months. Why? I can’t think of any other reason than it’s because he likes to appear magnanimous to new employees – “look at me, I’m giving you more money, aren’t I great!” If the issue is not paying enough, you don’t resolve that issue by not paying someone their full approved salary.

Smith’s treatment of former clerk Karen DeLorge was even worse. She started working in January, so Smith’s magnanimous “raise” to bring her to her full council-approved rate came close in time to the budget presentation that always includes a request for general employee wage increases. Smith recommended a ZERO increase for Karen for the entire next fiscal year, stating in his May 22, 2023, budget proposal to the city council that “Karen was just recently increased to $35,000, no further adjustments are proposed at this time.” I publicly chastised him for that on this website, and Karen’s zero percent increase was mysteriously (and correctly) increased to a five-percent increase before the final budget was approved.

If the city council is concerned about the wages of the clerks, they should start by addressing Smith’s conduct and stop stupidly approving everything he puts in front of them – especially when it comes to paying a new clerk less than s/he is entitled to receive because Smith needs his ego stroked.

The city has budgeted $38,220 for the part-time (32 hours per week) clerk’s position. (This is the base salary cost and doesn’t include the extra costs to the city for social security, etc.) The city council should consider using part of the money to contract out the clerk’s work to a professional, fully staffed clerk’s office in one of the surrounding communities. Any remaining monies could be used to hire a badly needed clerical support person. I say “badly needed” because taxpayers are paying $19.30 per hour for the least-paid person to do typing and filing.

Too Many FOIA Requests

Rodgers and Smith falsely stated there were 31 FOIA requests that came in during July – and the implication was they were all from me (they weren’t). This number came from a chart Catherine attached to her resignation letter that expanded individual requests into separate subparts to make the volume appear greater than it was. (She alleged she’d received 34 requests.) Multi-part FOIA requests are still considered one request, and I don’t know any FOIA coordinator who splits them apart. In my previous work, my personal record for a long FOIA was a 26-part request asking for records on completely unrelated subjects, and that same requester sent a couple more multi-part requests within the next several days after the first one (two of them came on one day). I referred to these requests by the requester’s name and the date they came in. I did not expand them and pretend they were 50+ individual FOIA requests to justify how busy I was, even though I regularly reported my activities to my management in monthly and annual reports.

I’d like to address one of my requests in particular because Smith told the council it took “three or four days” to pull the information together. The backstory on this request is that I’d asked for a copy of Catherine’s resume (since it wasn’t included in the council packet when her hire was approved). Smith sent me a mostly blank resume claiming that providing me with a full copy of Catherine’s resume would put her life at risk. (I am not kidding.)

Had Smith simply provided me with a copy of the resume without unlawfully trying to hide information, I wouldn’t have followed up with a 13-part request asking for records that specifically related to the clerk search to try to figure out what Smith was trying to hide with regard to Catherine’s hire. Taken together, these requests asked for the available information regarding the clerk job opening and Catherine’s interview process and hire. This is information that Smith should have been keeping together in an electronic or paper file in the event Catherine’s employment didn’t work out (or if someone filed a discrimination complaint because of his hiring process).

I received:

• • Eleven resumes – 26 pages that should have been kept together in a paper or electronic hiring file.
  • A one-sentence email with a spreadsheet attached, prepared by Evelyn Bihl, summarizing the candidates for Smith’s review – 2 pages. This document would be available in both Smith’s and Bihl’s email boxes and easily located using the Outlook search feature. (The spreadsheet was provided twice.)
  • Email exchanges between Catherine and Smith regarding a resume follow-up and arranging an interview time – 7 pages, mostly duplicative, that would be available in Smith’s email box and easily located using the Outlook search feature.
  • Email from Smith to Catherine – 2 pages because the first email bounced, and he had to resend it. The email had attachments – an offer letter (1 page), job description (1 page), and the city’s policy and procedures manual (34 pages) that would be available in Smith’s email box and easily located using the Outlook search feature.
  • Outlook calendar appointment – 1 page, easily located using the Outlook search feature.
  • Smith interview notes – 1 page that should have been kept in the paper or electronic hiring file.
  • An incomplete June 24, 2024, city council resolution and final minutes (4 pages)

Speaking from experience as a person who has done these types of record searches in response to FOIA requests asking for copies of my own emails and as an attorney retrieving and reviewing records from the Outlook email boxes of others, it’s patently obvious that Smith was lying to the council when he told them he and the office staff spent “three or four days” retrieving records to respond to this one request. The only way such a statement could even flirt with the truth is if Smith spent five minutes a day over a three-to-four-day period looking for the records, but even then, he deliberately presented the information in a way that was intended to suggest providing the records I described took three to four entire days’ worth of time to justify why he wasn’t doing his other work. The only additional time spent on this request was to redact the candidates’ personal contact information, something the city was optionally entitled to do.

If I’d received a FOIA invoice attempting to bill me for “three or four days” of work to respond to this request, I guarantee we would be in court cross-examining Smith and everyone else who was supposedly part of this extended record retrieval party, forcing them to testify under oath about what the heck took them so long. The timeframe of these records was limited to a several week period, and except perhaps for Smith’s one page of interview notes, were all available in electronic form, most were sent through the city’s email system, and all could be easily retrieved using keywords. And why was this supposedly burdensome extended search even required? Because Smith wanted to conceal Catherine’s resume in the first place. If he’d just produced the resume in the beginning, the follow-up request about the clerk hiring process would have been unnecessary.

At our meeting, I asked Catherine why she didn’t ever send a 10-day extension letter for any of my requests, and if 15 total business days wasn’t enough time to respond because of her conflicting duties, why she didn’t just reach out and ask me for more time? Catherine said even though she was aware she could do that, she never would have reached out because the office staff had led her to believe I was a terrible person, and she assumed without asking that I would never agree to any extra time.

This was gaslighting.

FOIA Fees

In her resignation letter, Catherine said it was “well past time” to start charging for FOIA requests that she perceived as nothing more than “fishing expeditions.” Rodgers made the same assertion, including her “make them pay for staples” comment. Smith claimed the city can charge for FOIAs but stopped doing that a few years ago ostensibly due to “harassment over, the dispute over the charges.”

The city does charge for FOIA requests. In fact, the city cashed two FOIA checks from me last year. Lying much, Mr. Smith?

I’m pretty sure I know what fee dispute Smith was referring to. If he perceived what happened as harassment, then he apparently views forced compliance with his statutory obligations as harassment and should think carefully about his next adventure into charging FOIA fees. (You can read about what you are entitled to expect from a public body with regard to FOIA fees here).

So, here’s the backstory that I think Smith was referring to, and once you know the facts, it shouldn’t surprise you that he didn’t provide any details to the councilmembers, most of whom weren’t on the council at the time it happened. As always, the starting point behind the FOIA requests was that the city was desperately trying to hide records from the public about something important.

The city hired an outside attorney to handle the aftermath of the financial mess the city had inadvertently made for itself while trying to destroy me in the five-year FOIA lawsuit. (This was necessary because the city made a malpractice claim against the city attorney for his misconduct during the lawsuit and they couldn’t exactly ask him for help after doing that.) After the lawsuit was settled, resident Chet Pardee noticed something fishy going on regarding changes in the city’s payment records involving the outside counsel, prompting Pardee to ask questions. Once he was backed into a corner, Smith claimed the changes to the records were made because the city had received a “very generous donation for about $10,000” to apply toward the city’s outside legal counsel fees, and the money was ostensibly received from a “charitable organization or business.” Smith said the “donation” was made on the condition that the identity of the donor remain anonymous, and to that end, Smith helped arrange for an “off the books” transaction. Specifically, the check was made payable directly to the outside attorney to avoid a paper trail that would have allowed citizens to find out whether the $10,000 payment was made to grease the skids for past or future favors from the city government. I sent a FOIA request on June 14, 2021, trying to get to the bottom of the concealment.

The clerk at the time did not ask for an extension of time, and her response was late. At one point, she contacted me to say that she was unilaterally taking more time, but she would provide the records on a flash drive within two days. She did respond two days later, but it was to send me an invoice. The invoice demanded payment of $777.25, followed by a “friendly reminder” a couple of days later asking me to pay the invoice.

Needless to say, I had questions. There was no formal response to the FOIA request itself as required by law (granting, denying, granting/denying in part or providing appeal and right to sue language if there was a denial). I had no idea whether I was being charged for records that weren’t found, which records had been found, and there was no “no records” certification included for records that might not exist (a certification that the FOIA law requires). I didn’t know if there were any redactions taken from the records the clerk proposed to provide. There was no link provided for (or copies of) the FOIA procedures and guidelines or the summary, as the FOIA law requires. I was improperly charged $.10 per page for digital records. The city provided no justification for charging a fee in the first place, as the FOIA law requires, and it failed to reduce any allowed fees by 50% for being so late. It wasn’t clear if any charges were attributable to record search work performed by the outside attorney, which would have been improper. The clerk also suggested I was charged for things that weren’t properly chargeable, like organizing the records and “weening out all the dupes.” I asked for a formal response to the request, the basis for the hourly rate charged, and I followed up with a request for a copy of all her time logs.

When responding to my inquiry regarding the basis for the hourly rate the city charged, I learned that Evelyn Bihl’s rate was used, and that Smith had lied to the council and public about how much Bihl was actually being paid. He told the council she was making $11.54 an hour in May 2021 during his budget presentation, and he proposed a salary increase to $14.42 an hour effective July 1, 2021. In truth, Bihl had been making $17.00 an hour since February 2021, and the city used the $17.00 hourly rate to bill me.

I was given a purported time record listing whole-hour time increments except for one entry, and the dates and hours documenting all this ostensible work were typed into an email. The labor hours included a charge for 10.5 hours of labor after I’d been told the work was supposedly completed except for organizing the documents, “weening out the dupes,” and scanning. (Of those three things, only the labor hours for scanning would be a lawfully allowed charge.) The city suggested I might want to make an offer to settle the amount, without ever providing a formal answer to the request or explaining what the charges related to.

I filed a fee appeal and an appeal of the late FOIA response (the missing letter explaining the response) and asked Smith and the former clerk to forward the appeal to the city council, as the FOIA law requires. My appeals were ignored, presumably on the advice of the city attorney. A month and a half later, I wrote directly to the city council and told them they could answer my appeals or expect a lawsuit. Two minutes later (not kidding), the records were sent to me without further explanation, almost four months after I originally asked for them.

So that’s the story of the supposed “harassment” over fees that Smith claims took place: The city demanded hundreds of dollars of fees without complying with the FOIA statute or even providing an answer to the request, ignored an appeal of the fee demand, and then just dropped the matter because, apparently, it couldn’t or didn’t want to document the claimed fees.

Help for the Clerk:

Smith has spoken to the council at various times about getting FOIA help for the clerk. At the August 12 city council meeting, he suggested he could use someone remotely to handle FOIAs. I’m pretty sure this would be a complete waste of money, since most of the time the city spends responding to FOIAs involves searching for records that can’t be done remotely for paper files (or for electronic files unless the city wants to give access to all its files to someone outside the city). The city can’t charge for the time spent writing response letters or preparing invoices; they can’t even contract out the time spent for someone to review and redact records if they have someone on site who is capable of doing that. The obvious answer is to hire clerical help in the city office to provide general support to the office and to perform FOIA record searches as they arise.

Smith counts on the city councilmembers having poor memories, and this issue is no exception.

On May 22, 2023, during budget discussions, former city councilmember Bruce Fuller specifically asked Smith about hiring a staff person to help the clerk handle FOIA requests. Smith told Fuller he’d slipped $7,500 into the legal services budget to keep someone on retainer that he could bring into the office to help with FOIA requests when necessary. The council approved the budget and this request. Six months later, Smith asked the council to approve applying that $7,500 to retain a specialized FOIA attorney rather than using the money for in-office help (that he apparently hadn’t explored after getting approval for the funds for the in-office help). The council approved the new request. Councilmember Quisenberry remembered the request for in-office FOIA help at the August 12 meeting but forgot that Smith took that money and allocated it to keep an attorney on retainer, demonstrating that, despite all the lip service, Smith doesn’t give much of a damn about the clerk’s workload.

And now Smith and the council are complaining that the clerk doesn’t have enough help to respond to FOIA requests – again. The answer is apparently to charge for all requests and use the outside attorney to handle FOIA lawsuits. That’s not going to be the help everyone thinks it is, and it pretty much guarantees there will be more lawsuits. Win or lose, the city must pay legal fees to defend against lawsuits, and as long as the complaint doesn’t ask for damages, the legal defense isn’t covered by the city’s insurance policy. Fortunately for the city, we don’t treat the city the way the city treated us, driving up legal fees and costs just for funsies.

If Smith or the council really cared about providing FOIA help for the clerk, they’d look at obtaining a part-time clerical support person. The $7,500 that has been allocated to the FOIA attorney could have paid for a $12/hour clerk to come in a day and a half every week. Bump it up to $10,000, and the city could have $12/hour clerk two days a week. It would actually cost a little more because the city has mandatory costs, like social security matches, for example, but this isn’t a big expense, and it would help a lot.

Or maybe the root of the problem lies in the fact that we have a city manager who doesn’t know what he’s doing but wants to use FOIA requests as an excuse for not working on sidewalk and road repair issues, as he suggested at the August 12 city council meeting.

Elections

Catherine told me the city was paying Karen (our previous clerk) to help out with some of the election work. I think that is perfectly fine, and I’m glad Karen was able to help. Smith did not disclose this to the public, choosing instead to let everyone think Catherine was on her own with no help other than Cara Catallo et al. while being beaten up with FOIA requests.

Catherine said she was warned about taking food donations while doing elections work because someone might FOIA the food. (Cara, was that you?) I have no idea how one would go about “FOIA-ing the food” (since the FOIA is a statute designed for obtaining records, not food), though I did explain to Catherine that the genesis for the comment was probably my objection to all the free advertising Cara’s brother Curt Catallo received in exchange for providing pastries and sandwiches on election day to election workers – it was mentioned on the city’s Facebook page, more than once at city meetings, in a newsflash sent to city announcement subscribers, and posted on the city’s website. It was an unfair use of city resources to advertise and elevate the Catallo restaurant business over the other businesses in the city – when a thank you note from the clerk to Catallo would have been sufficient. No one explained the backstory to Catherine; they just made her nervous about eating a pastry.

More gaslighting.

On July 2, my husband hand-delivered to Catherine the petitions for the Historic District Commission charter proposal. He did so as counsel for the ballot question committee that organized the proposal, indirectly representing the 54 Clarkston citizens who signed the petitions. His cover letter asked to be advised when the canvass was complete, and he emailed a copy of the letter to city attorney Ryan and city manager Smith. “Canvassing” the petitions meant that Catherine needed to double check the names and signatures on the petitions against the registered voter list for Clarkston. She told me this was unexpectedly difficult because changing over to new computers created some difficulty accessing lists that are password protected. All the more reason to take the statutorily-allowed 10-day extension to respond and also to ask for even more time to respond to FOIA requests – except Catherine didn’t feel she could do that because our “friendly and kind” city staff led her to believe I wasn’t a good person and wouldn’t extend any courtesies to her, no matter how much difficulty she was having trying to do the rest of her job.

More gaslighting.

My husband emailed Smith and Ryan on July 15^th and asked them to forward the email to Catherine so she could provide him with a status on the canvass of the petition signatures (because Catherine’s city email wasn’t posted on the website yet). He forwarded the email to Catherine directly on July 18^th after her email address was posted on the city’s website. On July 22, Catherine responded to my husband saying: “Your Petion [sic] that was filed and hand delivered to me on Tuesday July 2^nd @ 4:30pm is in process per MCL 117.25(3)” – even though she’d finished her work on July 10, almost two weeks before.

Why did she do that? Catherine said she looked at the statute, determined the statute didn’t require her to answer the specific question about the status of her canvass, and she decided she wasn’t going to give any more of an answer than she was required to give – because she was angry with Richard (after all, she’d been repeatedly told we weren’t nice people). I give her credit for admitting this to me, and I attribute the anger toward us to the gaslighting.

But it wasn’t just Catherine who ignored the request about the status of the canvass. Ryan could have responded separately or provided a copy of his email to the governor and attorney general when he advised them the canvass was complete. Smith could have responded as well. Both of them also chose not to share that information with counsel representing the proponent of the proposal and with the Clarkston citizens who were seeking to place a question on the ballot. Apparently, the city administration’s hatred of the Bisios trumped any consideration of the concerns of city residents and constituents.

Based on their comments to the city council, I think it’s fair to infer that Bihl and Smith were fully aware why Catherine gave the “in process” non-response to the canvass question – because she probably told them what she planned to do. When mayor Sue Wylie asked Smith why the city couldn’t just answer the question that was asked three times, Smith said the city had 45 days to do the work. Smith knew exactly what Wylie was asking and avoided answering the question. (That’s why I think he knew.) At the August 12 city council meeting, Bihl claimed my husband was unkind because he didn’t just call Catherine to ask the same question that he’d asked in a letter and two emails about the canvass – and for which he’d received a nonresponsive answer. Bihl admitted she knew that we’d received Catherine’s email saying it was “in process,” and I also think she knew why Catherine had sent it. (And FYI to Bihl – if you’re as busy as you say you are, then stay off the phone and use email. It’s more efficient.)

I don’t think Catherine expected the response to be a lawsuit but given the tight deadlines in the election law and the city’s history obstructing the last charter amendment proposal two years ago, there wasn’t any other choice. Catherine said Bihl made it a point to tell her that I’d written a blog post about our difficulties with city hall and the reasons for filing the lawsuit – even though the blog post factually explained everything that had happened. Why did Bihl do that? I’m sure it totally wasn’t to add on to the gaslighting – oh no; it was probably just attributable to the “kindness” Bihl thinks we lack.

It was city attorney Ryan’s job to explain to Catherine that she had zero personal exposure because of the election lawsuit, to explain why it was filed, and also what would happen next. Instead, Catherine said Ryan yelled at her and told her that she’d brought the lawsuit on herself. I can imagine how that went, because I watched Ryan inappropriately yell at my husband when he was on city council after my husband challenged Ryan’s conduct and the council’s violation of the open meetings act in 2015.

Ryan is a lawyer. With a client. Catherine worked for that client. I think lawyers owe a special obligation to non-lawyers to put their minds at ease because they don’t understand all the legal gymnastics, nor should they. It’s always improper to yell at a client or the client’s employees. And how did Ryan think that would make Catherine feel? Yes, the “in process” email was the last straw, but as I said, I think Smith and Bihl were also aware of what Catherine said in her email and thought it was an entirely appropriate response to give to people you don’t like (even when “those bad people” are paying your salary). Smith and Ryan could have answered the question as easily as Catherine could have for almost two weeks before the lawsuit was filed – and didn’t.

Ryan could also have agreed to a court order on behalf of Clarkston that would require that the clerk perform the two functions she had to perform anyway – the canvass and certification of the ballot language to the Oakland County clerk. Rather than do that, he asked Catherine to sign a statement saying she would do those things. She refused. I don’t blame her. Signing statements like that isn’t her job, and that refusal was one of the last things she did on July 31, her final day on the job.

The Weird Clarkston Creeper

Despite what the city claimed in the five-year FOIA lawsuit (that I’m my husband’s puppet, incapable of thinking on my own), neither my husband nor I control each other’s thoughts or comments. The clerk’s resignation letter attacked me, and to a lesser extent, my husband. It’s safe to say my husband was probably as irritated with both the original and revised resignation letters as much as Catherine’s husband was likely irritated with the lies his wife believed about us because of the gaslighting efforts of our “kind” city employees.

Former resident Cory Johnston posted a notice of the August 1 special city council meeting on his Village of Clarkston Facebook page with a comment: “It seems the brand new city clerk is already resigning. Her letter of resignation, and reasons, are in the linked meeting information.” My husband attended the city council meeting and made a comment to that Facebook post afterward. You can look it up if you want to; the comment was made to Cory’s 8:25 p.m. July 31^st post. In summary, my husband provided unvarnished and direct comments about what he thought about the clerk quitting with no notice, her two resignation letters, the refusal of the council to accept the clerk’s resignation, and the creation of a new deputy clerk to handle things in the clerk’s absence. It was one of two separate comments he made to that particular Facebook post (the second was about the lawsuit).

Here’s where the weirdness comes in.

Someone took the time to copy my husband’s response to Cory’s Facebook post, likely pasting it into a Word document (but only the post about the clerk, not the lawsuit); print it out; look up city council members’ home addresses; address mailing envelopes by hand; pay for first-class postage; and send the printed comment to the councilmembers with no context and no return address, in time for the councilmembers to receive it before the August 12 city council meeting. I think this was deliberately designed to give the impression that my husband had personally sent these comments to the individual councilmembers when that wasn’t the case (and neither of us would ever be so rude as to bother councilmembers at their private residences with city business – without being expressly invited to do so).

This was totally not the work of a creepy weirdo, right? It must have been disappointing to the creepy weirdo that only councilmember Laura Rodgers was stupid enough to take the bait and comment on it at the August 12 meeting. 😂

Mental illness is real. And we seem to have a goodly share of it right here in our small town. I have my suspicions about who might have thought it was appropriate to send an anonymous letter to our city councilmembers’ private homes, but I don’t care enough to explore it. However, I do hope the person who took the time to do this gets help with his/her mental health issues.

Cara Catallo

It wouldn’t be a city council meeting without an unnecessary comment from Cara Catallo. Catallo has developed a weird obsession with councilmember Peg Roth lately, but before that, she often focused on a former mayor or former resident Cory Johnston.

Some recent examples:

August 22, 2022 – One of Catallo’s justifications why she should receive a $1,000 taxpayer contribution for her business group (Main Street Clarkston) to help them get a charitable tax designation was because the city spent $1,000 on cake and ice cream to celebrate a historic city milestone anniversary.

October 10, 2022 – Catallo objected to a vote on Depot Park paid parking to raise much needed revenue for road and sidewalk repair as unseemly and “a little bit campaign-ey.”

October 24, 2022 – Catallo accused a former mayor of being disgraceful, reckless, self-centered, lazy, ignorant, and selfish. (He was one of several votes in favor of paid parking in the Depot Road lot as an alternative to raising taxes, but Catallo oddly fixated only on him.) Later in the meeting and focusing on one out-of-context word (diversity), Catallo made an outrageous and not-so-subtle suggestion that the former mayor is a racist. (Perhaps consulting an online thesaurus would have been more constructive?)

March 13, 2023 – Catallo claimed the selection of parking committee members was peculiar, odd, and perhaps done quietly on the inside.

May 22, 2023 – in the context of a discussion regarding paid parking in the Depot Road parking lot, Catallo alleged city council members didn’t “do their homework” because she claimed the Depot Road lot was created solely for business employee parking (and apparently should stay that way so her brother’s employees could continue to park for free?).

July 10, 2023 – Catallo claimed a former mayor made appointments to the Historic District Commission under cover of darkness.

November 13, 2023 – Catallo claimed FOIA requests emailed on election night were a deliberately-timed attempt to interfere with the election.

January 22, 2024 – Catallo suggested the input of hard-working volunteers can be discounted if they don’t live in the city. She also said she was a good choice for the election commission because people don’t like her. 😐

February 12, 2024 – Catallo said councilmember Quisenberry’s words expressing irritation over the city’s loss of a grant from the Optimists for Depot Park were shameful and misdirected. She also claimed a former mayor was wheeling and dealing with groups behind the scenes.

March 25, 2024 – Catallo claimed councilmember Peg Roth should not be on the city manager performance review committee because she wasn’t elected. (Roth has been elected several times to the city council but was recently appointed to an opening.) Catallo said that because Roth’s husband’s company has been involved in lawsuits with the city, this apparently means Roth herself has animus toward the city. Finally, Catallo alleged Roth has a bias against Smith because way back in 2015, Roth supposedly suggested a different applicant for the position. (Smith was recommended by a four-person hiring committee that considered 24 resumes, Roth was not a member of the hiring committee, and Roth was not on the city council when Smith was hired and took no part in the hiring decision.)

June 24, 2024 – even though the city attorney said a 90-day moratorium on Depot Park fee waivers was his suggestion, Catallo claimed it was really councilmember Roth’s doing because Roth supposedly doesn’t like the Clarkston Community Historical Society, and the Society would be affected by the moratorium. (City manager Smith is the Society’s president and treasurer.)

August 12, 2024 – even though my husband was personally responsible for the city receiving $96,219.57 of the $171,799.59 that was negligently overpaid by our city employees for 14 years, Catallo falsely stated my husband “was on council at the time when that formula was decided so that, you know, maybe it would have been caught sooner.” She also gestured toward councilmember Roth and said “and maybe those of you who are friends with the people who don’t like our community, maybe we can find a way to come together.”

Catallo also claimed she is not a conspiracy theorist at the August 12 city council meeting.

Catallo was in close contact with the clerk as the elections were occurring. She’s on the election commission, and she’s a regular paid election worker. I would not be surprised if Catallo was also responsible for some of the gaslighting, yet she suggested that it’s a shame that there’s such cruelty in the city, and it’s intimidating to be sued almost immediately. (I agree there’s cruelty in the city and would point to the Catallo comments I listed above.)

I feel some sympathy for Catallo. She seems to be pining for the old days when her family played an important role in the city. I think she misses all the attention but making bizarre and unsubstantiated comments at city council meetings garners the wrong kind of attention.

My Message to Catherine

There’s a reason why employment lawyers tell people to keep their resignation letters simple and to the point, such as: “I’m tendering my resignation, and ____ will be my last day.” Say what you want to your manager’s face, but don’t put it in writing. Better yet, keep your comments to yourself and always try to leave on good terms.

Catherine, I doubt you expected all the attention, but your resignation letter is a public document. It’s attached to Clarkston meeting records. It was published on a Facebook page with over 12,000 readers. The Clarkston News wrote about it, and I understand it was a front-page story. You aren’t going to be able to drop this one-month job from your resume and hope someone doesn’t find out. Your letter didn’t hurt me, but it probably did hurt you.

Future employers will be able to easily find your letter, as well as my response to it, in an internet search. If you are asked to list all your employers, sign at the bottom of the form that you’ve done that, but omit your time with Clarkston, you can be fired for falsifying your application. You’re going to have to have an answer ready explaining why you left a job with no notice after only 30 days and wrote such an inflammatory letter in parting. If you say you wrote it because you were angry, then a future employer will wonder why you wouldn’t do the same thing to them. Thirty calendar days (and 17 workdays) isn’t a lot of time to form a reasoned opinion about a job or the people around you.

I worked in human resources for years and hired hundreds of people. I’m sad to say that I had to fire people for falsifying information on their applications. I would be the one doing that internet search, and I would want to hear your answers to those questions.

Catherine, I truly wish things would have turned out differently for you in Clarkston. I’m sorry you believed you were hearing the truth from the people immediately surrounding you. While I doubt they expected feeding you so much poison would result in an early departure from your job, they certainly did you no favors.

I wish you well.

Our Message to the City About Transparency

I leave you with my husband’s comments to the city council, which were loaded with fire and truth. Honestly, I could not have said it better.