I’ve mentioned the letter to the editor from the “four former mayors” in other posts, but I wanted to add a response in this section to keep things together and provide a more thorough response.
These “four former mayors” apparently think their opinions are more important than yours, but I think you should know who they are before you lend any credence to their opinions:
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- Steve Arkwright is a guy who loves Clarkston so much he and his wife have made their home elsewhere. His wife was part of the now-defunct “Clarkston Matters” smear group organized by the city manager’s son-in-law several years ago. They claimed to be pro-Clarkston but the group was really formed to support a slate of candidates running on a fear campaign (just as the “Charming” group is running a fear campaign against the charter proposal).
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- Joe Luginski – another guy who loves Clarkston so much he’s made his permanent home elsewhere and yes, the same guy who is responsible for registering the “Charming” group. It’s apparently going to require a lawsuit to force his wife off the HDC since she no longer qualifies as a resident of Clarkston as has been defined by the city attorney when considering whether Laura Rodgers was eligible to be a candidate while she was living outside the city. Thus far, Luginski has failed to tender her resignation to allow the city council to replace her with someone who cares enough about the community to actually live here permanently.
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- Eric Haven – Weirdly, Haven has apparently developed a new-found respect for the charter. He could not have cared less about the charter provision that required him to resign his city council seat before running for mayor the first time (I wrote about that here.) Last year, Haven resigned as mayor in a snit when he figured out the residents weren’t going to allow him to trash Depot Park by filling it with kitschy garbage, and his actions caused the city to lose the Optimists grant. When he was mayor, Haven ignored resident complaints and supported reappointing abusive people to the HDC. And did I mention he doesn’t live in the historic district?
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- Sharron Catallo – Catallo regularly refused to recuse herself from parking votes that favored her son Curt’s businesses while sitting on the corporate board of a company that owned some of the businesses, which I’m pretty sure made her a biased, financially motivated politician, something the “Charming” group is supposedly against. Catallo has zero respect for the HDC rules she wants others to live by, and a recent example is her refusal to apply to the HDC for permission to take down a large tree next to her home. (Why should she care how the HDC treats residents? She’s a special snowflake.)
The “four former mayors” are clearly coordinating with the “Charming” group, since a longer version of their letter to the editor in the Clarkston News was published on the “Charming” group’s website.
Their letter to the editor makes the following false claims about the Historic District Commission (HDC) charter proposal:
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- Overrides the protections provided by the existing ordinance
- Allows for road widening
- Affects fair appeals
- Places unreasonable obstacles to serving on the HDC
- Serves only special interests
- Tampers with the charter on a whim
- Could affect the vibrant character of the city
That’s a lot of garbage to put in a 150-word maximum hit piece. But wait, there’s more! They expanded on the lies on the “Charming” group website, adding that they believe the HDC charter proposal is:
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- Inappropriate
- Bad policy
- Could irreparably harm Clarkston
- Threatens to nullify the historic district
- Could destroy the character of the community
- Risks losing local, state, and federal protections
- Uses misleading wording and misinformation
- Vindictive
- Guts the HDC by placing unrealistic requirements on commissioners
- May eliminate community opportunities for tax credits and grants
- Affects a legitimate educated appeals process
They even compared the HDC charter proposal to the marijuana proposal from a few years ago, because pot is totally the same as the HDC, right?
This was the first letter in what has obviously been a series of letters created by the “Charming” group. This letter also served as the “claims anchor” for the rest of their campaign.
Using dark words and phrases like “unreasonable,” “inappropriate,” “bad policy,” “irreparable harm,” “could affect character,” and “vindictive” are not things that can be objectively responded to. They’re just opinions from four uninformed people (and we all know what they say about opinions). So, let’s move past that and get to the unsupported allegations that can be responded to factually.
Among other things, I wrote about the federal protections and the road widening assertions in this post. The claim that the city could lose federal protection, or that the district could be “nullified,” refers to the entry of almost 200 historic district homes as a group on the National Register of Historic Places. As explained in the linked post, there is nothing in the charter proposal that would create a situation where the city’s place on the National Register could be affected. There are no state protections that I’m aware of other than the requirements of the Local Historic Districts Act that Clarkston adopted in its historic district ordinance, and you can see how the charter proposal compares to the state statute and the city ordinance in this chart. I have no idea what the former mayors are referring to with regard to local protection, since that suggests protection that Clarkston gives to itself which obviously wouldn’t change either. As for road widening, that was never a reality-based concern. I found no evidence the State of Michigan had (or has) any plans to widen M-15 through downtown Clarkston. While there is no guaranteed way to prevent road widening if that’s what the state wants to do, we are provided protection because of our inclusion on the federal National Register and that remains unchanged by the charter proposal.
I responded to the false claim that the HDC charter proposal affects tax credits, grants, and the appeals process here. This claim originated in a purported quote from some unidentified person at the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) supposedly provided to the HDC by Nancy Moon, the chair of the historic district study committee. This quote was inserted into the minutes by Nancy’s husband Michael, the HDC secretary. SHPO told Nancy Moon the tax claim wasn’t true between the time the draft minutes were posted and the final minutes approved, but neither she nor her husband corrected the false statement. I think this was a campaign finance violation (because the purported quote about taxes and appeals was false, misleading, and used a government vehicle to disseminate an advocacy position), and we’ve asked the Secretary of State to review the use of HDC minutes to advocate against the ballot proposal. Although the quote references appeals from HDC decisions, there is nothing in the charter proposal that concerns appeals, nor does the word “appeal” appear anywhere in the charter proposal language.
We are not trying to tamper with the charter “on a whim.” As I explained here, we’ve watched HDC resident abuse for a large part of the 22 years we’ve lived here. Complaints to the city council fall on the deaf ears of the majority, and in one case, the abuse was awarded with a reappointment of the abusive commissioner shortly after the complaint was made. The catalyst for working on the charter proposal now was an ordinance change proposed in April that would have established a procedure to allow the HDC to issue civil infraction notices and fine residents up to $5,000. If unpaid, these types of fines get attached to tax bills and could result in the loss of someone’s home. My husband spent a lot of time drafting the proposal, and we paid for an expensive election attorney to review the form of the petition to ensure everything followed state law. We had to circulate the petitions to obtain signatures of dozens of concerned citizens (and are truly grateful for the help in that regard). After the petitions were turned in, the city refused to tell us if it was going to timely certify the question to the Oakland County Clerk to place it on the November ballot and we had to sue to get that simple answer. We’ve dealt with an unbelievable amount of lies and attacks from the “Charming” group’s campaign, which includes lies in letters to the editors, postcards, flyers, website statements, and social media postings from their people associated with the “Charming” group. I would hardly call that a “whim.”
The charter proposal is written in plain English, contains no misleading words or information, and has been available to review on this website since June this year. You can find the full proposal here, an annotated charter proposal here, a brief summary here, bullet points here, and a chart comparing the charter proposal with the Local Historic Districts Act and the historic district ordinance here. There are discussion summaries of the different sections of the charter proposal in the green boxes on the top right-hand side of this website. We’ve had email addresses set up for questions and comments since June. Claims that the proposal is misleading or is filled with misinformation are simply designed to keep people from reading the charter proposal for themselves and making an informed choice. And, a simple review of the chart makes it immediately obvious the charter proposal certainly does not override the protections provided by the existing historic district ordinance (which is pretty much a cut and paste from the Local Historic Districts Act). If anyone has been misleading or providing misinformation, it’s been the “Charming” group. This is nothing more than a classic case of projection.
I think the reference to “special interests” concerns Bob Roth’s and Ed Adler’s companies (because it always does, doesn’t it?). Whatever Adler and Roth do is “bad,” but furthering the Catallo family’s development interests is always “good.” To that end, “Charming” group supporters put up a photo of a building on social media that purportedly represented a planned development at Waldon and Main on property owned by Ed Adler and Deanna Olson. They urged people if they didn’t like the photo, they should vote “no” on the charter amendment. Yes, it’s gotten that stupid. There is nothing in the charter proposal that would assist any developer, and I addressed that whopper of a claim in this post.
The claim the charter proposal places “unreasonable obstacles” or “unrealistic requirements” on HDC members is a joke. The state statute and the historic district ordinance encourage an architect to serve on the HDC, but I’m aware of only one who was ever on the commission (and he was attacked because the same group of people who are associated with the “Charming” group didn’t like him). Other than that, state law only requires that members of the HDC have a demonstrated interest in or knowledge of historic preservation. What does that mean? Well, the last appointee liked living in the historic district and had work done on her home. That was the extent of her “qualifications.” The charter proposal requires three members (not all five) show something more to satisfy the statutory requirements for membership, which could be a class, a certificate, books read, etc. Since this group of hobby preservationists can start lawsuits that would allow them to forcibly enter onto private property and do repairs against the property owners’ will, it would be nice if their qualifications went beyond “gosh, I love living in the historic district.”
We love questions! Unlike our opponents, we’ll give you honest answers with lots of evidence to back up what we say. Feel free to send questions to: ClarkstonCharterProposal@gmail.com.
(And if you’re tired of HDC abuse and favoritism, then please consider voting yes on the proposed HDC charter amendment on November 5! And because I’ve just said that and even though I haven’t spent any money, I’m going to add the following text though I’m not sure I have to:
Paid for by Susan Bisio, P.O. Box 1303, Clarkston, MI 48347 with regulated funds.)