Despite what city manager Jonathan Smith told you in public meetings and his weekly email, Clarkston taxpayers have been royally ripped off by a combination of the Independence Township Board of Trustees and the collective negligence of our current (and some of our former) city managers and city treasurers for the last 14 years. The largest percentage of that blame, timewise and loss-wise, goes to the current city manager and treasurer for not understanding the way our police and fire services bills were calculated for 8 of those 14 years. Fortunately, we were able to stop the overcharges in 2024 in the 8th year of Smith’s term as the Clarkston city manager. My husband deserves the bulk of the credit for recognizing and bringing the issue to the city’s attention, allowing taxpayers to recover 6 years of overcharge payments plus interest.
Smith has raised shirking responsibility – for things he’s ultimately responsible for – to an art form. He never apologizes when he effs up (even though apologizing, providing an honest explanation, and taking responsibility when he’s wrong would engender far more respect, at least from me and probably most of us). Instead, you can get whiplash trying to follow his finger-pointing, but as my mama used to say, when you point your finger at someone else, keep in mind that three fingers are pointing back at you (so you better make sure you’ve addressed your own culpability before you start blaming others).
I think Smith’s conduct concerning this issue has been entirely unacceptable. I know the underlying facts because my husband and I got the ball rolling on this issue, I’ve made several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on this subject, and my husband put the pieces together and notified the city about this huge problem. To be crystal clear, our city employees would still be blithely overpaying for police and fire services without our involvement.
You’re welcome, Mr. Smith.
Let’s begin at the beginning of this debacle, shall we? Because ironically, it all started with Smith providing bad information at a city council meeting. (Please note that in my discussion below, I’m going to be referencing the loss numbers used by Independence Township and Clarkston to resolve the dispute that I’ve linked to here).
At the January 22, 2024, city council meeting, councilmember Ted Quisenberry asked Smith a straightforward question – and got the wrong answer:
Quisenberry asked if we are paying for police services to Independence Township for kind of subcontracting, what they contracted the Sheriff for, or do we have a separate contract with the Sheriff’s office? Smith said we have a separate contract with the Sheriff’s office directly.
Did Smith simply misspeak to Quisenberry? Or hadn’t he looked at the contract in the city’s files? At the May 28, 2024, city council meeting, Smith admitted that “police and fire are always one of the bigger line items in the budget, if not the largest.” This is true. The 2023-2024 budget numbers presented on May 28, 2024, for the year we just finished on June 30th, allocated $148,862 for law enforcement services (police) and $176,343 for fire services. The total expenses for that same budget year were projected to be $990,970, so the police and fire service fees accounted for almost 1/3 of the city’s expenses. (And the amount we pay for fire services will be even more for at least the next four years because Independence Township voters just approved a fire millage increase last Tuesday to raise the current millage rate for fire and emergency services by up to .5 mills for a total of 3.8716 mills for each $1,000 of taxable real property value. We don’t get to vote on this, but we will have to pay more because Independence Township’s charge to Clarkston is calculated based on Independence Township’s millage rates.)
If Smith had read the police contract, he would know: 1. we contract for police services with Independence Township, not the Oakland County Sheriff, 2. the city didn’t have a complete (or current) police services contract in the city’s files, and 3. The contract that was in the city files was sufficient to explain the method Independence Township had agreed to use to charge us for police services. Not knowing how the fees were calculated just cost Clarkston taxpayers $84,497.66 that we will never get back, and $11,792.21 of that lost overpayment amount occurred during Smith’s tenure. (The amount of overpayments we were able to recover [$87,301.93], plus interest [$8,917.64], also accrued under Smith’s employment as city manager.) The mandatory bond the city carries for the treasurer doesn’t cover this situation, so we can’t even file an insurance claim to get any portion of that $84,497.66 back. It’s gone for good.
After Smith’s claim that the city contracts directly with the sheriff’s department for police services, we wanted to see that contract because this was news to us. We were pretty sure the city’s contract was with Independence Township, not the Oakland County Sheriff. To confirm that, I sent a FOIA request to Clarkston asking for the current police services contract. I was given a nine-page contract between Clarkston and Independence Township signed and effective on September 1, 2010. The contract stated it included a copy of the agreement between Independence Township and the Oakland County Sheriff, which the Clarkston contract incorporated by reference, and Independence Township was supposed to send a copy of future renewals or new contracts to Clarkston. Not only was the referenced contract missing, but there were also no other later dated police service agreements in the city files. I honestly wonder if anyone at city hall ever opened the police services file to look at the contract after someone stuck it in the folder back in 2010.
The most important part of the 2010 contact was that it established the fee calculation Independence Township agreed to use to charge Clarkston for police services:
In consideration for providing law enforcement services, Clarkston shall pay to Independence an annual amount determined by the formula of multiplying the number of mills Independence assesses its citizens under its Police Millage, times the Taxable Value of all property assessed in Clarkston for real property taxation purposes as of January 1 of each year. Independence shall annually advise Clarkston of the number of mills assessed. (Bolding and underscore added by me.)
There are two types of city property taxes Clarkston collects – real property taxes and personal property taxes. Real property taxes are collected on vacant land or a lot with a building on it. That’s what you and I pay. Personal property taxes are taxes that business owners pay on tangible personal property, such as office equipment. Does Smith know the difference between real and personal property taxes? Yes, he does, and he discussed them both in his 2023 and 2024 budget presentations.
I forwarded the city’s response to my FOIA request for the police services contract as an FYI to my husband on receipt. He noticed that Clarkston charges were supposed to be based only on the real property taxable value, not the real property and personal property taxable value. He thought it was odd the contract didn’t state we should be charged using both real and personal property taxable values, and he was curious whether our current charges were calculated correctly. This is nothing different than any city manager or treasurer could have done after reading the contract.
Why was the distinction important? Because using the real and personal property taxable value as the multiplier to establish the charge for our police and fire services, rather than just the real property taxable value alone, meant we were overcharged to the extent that personal property taxable value was added to the calculation. As you can see, that additional charge added up over the years, totaling $171,799.59.
I sent a FOIA request to Independence Township asking for a copy of the current contract between Independence Township and Clarkston, between Independence Township and the Oakland County Sheriff, and the current billing. To her credit, the previous clerk also made a follow up request to Independence Township for similar information and forwarded it to me after she received it to supplement her response to me. (She was also concerned the city didn’t have the most recent contract on file.)
After reviewing the information, my husband was concerned enough to send a letter to the city council explaining the police services billing issue and asking them to investigate the matter further. He also encouraged the city to explore the fire services calculations to determine if there was a similar problem with that billing since I’d only asked for the police services contract (because Smith’s response to Quisenberry pertained only to police services). And, as it turns out, the city was also overbilled for fire services.
How was this received by the city manager? His formal response in his March 11, 2024, city manager’s report was to make a special point to credit resident Cara Catallo for offering minor suggestions to a draft city council brochure (correcting grammar and a misspelled employee name, discussed at the February 26, 2024, city council meeting). On the other hand, someone who’d just pointed out what turned out to be a $171,799.59 overpayment of taxpayer dollars, the majority of which occurred under his management ($99,094.14), was simply referred to as “a [no name] resident.” In addition to not crediting someone he clearly despises for identifying a potentially significant problem, maybe it was starting to dawn on Smith that perhaps he had some culpability in this matter.
As it turns out, Independence Township apparently hadn’t read the contract either, since the fee it charged Clarkston was calculated in the same manner as the amount charged to its own residents for police and fire services (because real and personal property taxes were also included in the calculation for Independence Township residents). Yet, even if Independence Township sent an improperly calculated bill to the city, the onus was on the Clarkston employees paying it to double check that the bill was accurate before paying it.
Following my husband’s suggestion, Smith determined that Independence Township had overcharged Clarkston taxpayers for years for police and fire services because the charge factored in personal property value, contrary to the contract terms, just as my husband feared it did. Unfortunately, Smith had to trust Independence Township for the total overpayment calculation. Why? Because, as I learned through a FOIA request, Clarkston has destroyed records older than 7 years, and our city employees have been overpaying Independence Township for 14 years, resulting in a total $171,799.59 in overpayments.
I know from information I’ve received through FOIA requests that Smith had a meeting with Jose Aliaga, Independence Township Supervisor, on Monday March 25, 2024, and he followed up with a letter to Aliaga asking for the full amount of the overpayment. Smith’s email to council states that Independence Township confirmed the overbilling for 14 years and that the Township’s official position was to stiff Clarkston taxpayers by only reimbursing Clarkston for the last 6 years. I’ve attached that correspondence here.
Why 6 years? Because the overpayments relate to a contract, there is a 6-year statute of limitations period that applies to contract claims. That means if we were to sue Independence Township, we would be limited to 6 years of overpayments. Independence Township, our ostensible “friends,” knew they could legally keep 8 years of overpayments ($84,497.66) and there wasn’t jack Clarkston could do about it except to beg and rely on their purported goodwill to repay all of it.
Were you under the impression Independence Township could be relied on to voluntarily return money that didn’t rightfully belong to it if there was no legal mechanism to force them to repay it? Then I have a bridge to sell you, because the Independence Township trustees ultimately decided to take full advantage of the statute of limitations period and stick it to Clarkston taxpayers.
I’d also note Smith’s statement to Aliaga in his March 25, 2024, letter that Clarkston acknowledges the overbilling was not intentional. As I said, we think Independence Township was applying the formula it uses to charge its own residents because the Township’s billing officials believed it was correct, so I would agree with Smith that it probably wasn’t intentional. But, as they say, it takes two to tango and our Clarkston employees had an obligation to make sure the bill they were paying was correct. That didn’t happen, and the incorrect bill was paid over and over and over for 14 years. (Jonathan Smith has been the city manager since January 23, 2017, and we’ve had the same treasurer since March 13, 2017.)
Is that how our city managers and treasurers run their personal lives, or is this kind of negligence reserved only for when they handle tax dollars? The “not intentional” theme has been repeated throughout this whole matter – golly gosh gee, no one should be held responsible for a $171,799.59 overpayment of Clarkston taxpayer dollars because it was totally unintentional. That’s a big comfort, isn’t it? (That money could have been used to fix a lot of roads and sidewalks.)
As Smith correctly noted, my husband is a resident. Therefore, it’s not his job to ensure taxpayers aren’t getting ripped off – it’s Smith’s and the treasurer’s job to do that, along with everyone who has come before them for the last 14 years. Smith and our current treasurer are responsible for approximately $99,094.14 of the $171,799.59 loss, and that $99,094.14 does not include the cost of any interest. Anyone could have read the contract and asked the same question that my husband did. They didn’t.
At the May 28, 2024, city council meeting and in response to councilmember Laura Rodgers question about the effect on the budget of receiving reimbursement for some of the then-confirmed huge overpayment, Smith said he didn’t know what to expect, but “suffice it to say, it’s all good news.” Good news? At the end of the day, taxpayers lost $84,497.66 (before interest). What exactly would be bad news? Would Smith believe it’s good news if he personally lost $84,497.66 with no way of recovering it?
But now that our city employees’ negligence had come to light, the city did what it always does – it handled the matter in secret. On June 10, 2024, the city council held a closed session at city attorney Tom Ryan’s request to discuss the police and fire services overpayments. This was followed by a resolution to allow Ryan to talk with Township attorney Dan Kelly about the issue – even though Ryan had already billed Clarkston for spending an hour on phone calls with Kelly and Smith over a week before on June 3, 2024.
At the July 8, 2024, city council meeting, with no advance notice to the public, Ryan asked the city council to modify its published agenda and hold another secret meeting regarding police and fire overpayments. (Because we all know the very best way to deal with a $171,799.59 overpayment of taxpayer dollars is to meet in secret, right?) And asking for a closed session at the last minute so that only people sitting in the meeting room or watching online were aware of it just added to the secrecy. The meeting attendees were told they could hang around until the closed session concluded, but even the mayor didn’t think there would be much more for them to hear when the council returned to open session (beyond adjourning the meeting). After looking at the meeting video, it appears no one except the Independence Television videographer stuck around to hear what happened after the closed session. Why would they?
But that’s not what happened that evening. The council apparently deliberated about settling the entire overpayment matter in closed session even though the Open Meetings Act requires that all deliberation be done in an open meeting. Once they returned to open session in front of a now-empty room, the council voted on an oral motion to “accept the township attorney’s offer and ordering our attorney to contact them regarding that . . .” What was the offer? We weren’t told what it was, and the council never voted on a resolution that authorized a specific settlement amount (and I sent a FOIA request and asked the city to confirm that). How then does a July 8, 2024, oral city council resolution – the only one they have – give formal authority to Ryan to resolve the dispute in any amount?
To recap, Clarkston taxpayers overpaid $171,799.59 because no one at the city apparently read (or understood) the contracts, we didn’t get notice that settlement was being discussed to allow us to ask questions or express objections, and we didn’t get to know how much of our tax dollars were going to be lost on overpayments over the years after the council decided they were done with the matter and settled in secret for a secret amount.
When I asked for communications between Ryan and Independence Township or between Ryan and Independence Township attorney Dan Kelly to try to learn what the secret offer from the Kelly was, Smith initially stonewalled me and refused to provide these records, claiming they were all covered by the attorney-client privilege. Sorry, no. Attorneys aren’t magical little elves who can waive a sparkly wand over everything they touch and claim it’s subject to the attorney-client privilege (yet I know from the five-year FOIA lawsuit that Ryan believes he can do that).
For the attorney-client privilege to attach to a communication, the communication must take place between an attorney and a client, involve legal advice, and no unauthorized people can be involved in the discussion. Independence Township and the attorney representing Independence Township are not Ryan’s clients. Ryan is the Clarkston city attorney, and his client is Clarkston. Independence Township is the bad guy in this scenario because they are legally getting away with keeping $84,497.66 that doesn’t belong to them under a contract they voluntarily signed (and this amount doesn’t consider any unpaid interest for the use of that money) – but it is not a client. There is absolutely zero attorney-client privilege between Ryan and Independence Township and/or the Independence Township attorney.
Rather than immediately suing over Smith’s privilege claim in response to my FOIA request, I sent a follow up to ask for a privilege log containing a description of each record the city was claiming privilege for (or just the top part of a privileged memo if it was easier); non-privileged portions of communications that did not contain client advice; and if there really were no non-privileged materials, then I asked for a certification of no records from the person in the Office of the City Attorney who’d performed the search. FYI, a privilege log simply lists the people a communication was addressed to, who sent it, who was copied, the date, and a description of the contents. I used to just provide the top portion of client memoranda in response to FOIA requests for communications. It’s easier than being forced to prepare a separate privilege log if a judge orders you to do it if there’s a lawsuit.
Surprise! I received a lot of documents that were not actually privileged after that follow up, despite being originally told they were. I honestly don’t know if Ryan set Smith up for criticism by telling him to claim the attorney-client privilege or if Smith did this on his own. But since my husband and I had to litigate whether Ryan’s slapping a privilege label on a non-privileged document was enough to close a public meeting or whether Ryan could hide Clarkston-related correspondence with other attorneys in his office and claim they aren’t public records, Ryan and Smith should know that I’m not going to blithely accept a blanket claim of privilege as an excuse to withhold records under the FOIA.
What records did Smith claim shouldn’t be produced because they’re privileged, presumably after a discussion with Ryan? Quite a few of them, and these records shed light on what happened after the June 8th city council resolution authorizing Ryan to speak with Independence Township attorney Dan Kelly.
On June 12, 2024, Ryan emailed Kelly and sent him a purported “Attorney-Client Privilege Memorandum.” Ryan’s memorandum title claimed it wasn’t subject to production under the Open Meetings Act or the Freedom of Information Act. That is complete bullsh*t and Ryan knows better. (If it were otherwise, he wouldn’t have folded like a house of cards when I pushed back on the purported claims of attorney-client privilege.)
If you want to get an idea what was discussed in the closed session on June 10, 2024, Ryan’s June 12, 2024, memo spells it out. Essentially, Ryan threw the city on the mercy of Independence Township for full repayment; “the secondary position” was reimbursement only going back 6 years ($87,301.93) in light of the statute of limitations with the addition of interest as calculated by the treasurer in an attachment (in consideration of Independence Township’s use of money they weren’t entitled to under the contract), bringing the total to $96,220 (which was a round up from the actual number of $96,219.57 with interest); or pretty please give us all the rest of the money as a 10% credit against our police and fire bills until the full amount is paid. (Great negotiation strategy.) And who knows why our treasurer chose the interest calculation he did. Did anyone run the numbers using the pre- and post-judgment calculation formula that would be used if there were a lawsuit to determine whether treasury interest rates were the most advantageous to Clarkston taxpayers? Only our city officials know the answer to that.
On July 8, 2024, Kelly emailed Ryan and said sorry, Independence Township is only going to give you 6 years with interest ($96,220). On July 8, 2024, Ryan held that second secret closed session with the city council where he apparently got approval for the $96,220 amount, but that settlement number was kept secret from the taxpayers. He communicated the Clarkston city council’s approval by email to Kelly on July 9, 2024.
As of July 23, 2024, Ryan apparently reached out to Kelly to tell him I’d asked for their emails. This could have been in response to my July 19 follow-up request because of Smith’s original claim these communications were privileged. It also could have been because Kelly had been made aware that I’d sent a separate FOIA to Independence Township to obtain correspondence from Ryan that had been copied or forwarded to Independence Township employees or officials (since Clarkston was stonewalling production of the emails using inappropriate attorney-client privilege claims). While I think it’s perfectly fine to let someone know their emails were requested under the FOIA, it appears that Ryan may have asked Kelly for permission to release Ryan’s communications with Kelly. Kelly didn’t object but claimed pursuant to their previous discussion, there was some unnamed “legal basis” to withhold them. (Ah, puffery. No. Mr. Kelly, there isn’t, but I would be interested in testing any of your very interesting legal theories in court someday.) Clearly, the emails between Kelly and Ryan are exactly the type of records the transparency laws were intended to bring to light. This is especially true where the city council went along with Ryan’s desire to keep all the details of a huge taxpayer loss from the public by discussing it in secret closed sessions.
If you were ever under the impression that Independence Township government views you as “family,” watching the July 23, 2024, Independence Township Board of Trustees meeting should correct that notion. Independence Township officials were terribly, terribly sorry for what happened to us poor Clarkston taxpayers, but they are definitely going to keep $84,497.66 of our tax dollars that were overpaid under our contract. Why? Because they can. Treasurer Paul Brown went further and called for a renegotiation of the contract that included an additional “administrative fee” because the Township has payroll expenses, for example, and Township residents pay for employees to do that. I suppose that’s a reasonable consideration, but it certainly sounded more like “hey Clarkston, eff you for asking for your money back; we’re going to make it worse and we’re still keeping $84,497.66 – because we’re bigger than you – and because we can.”
If you do take the time to watch the Board of Trustees recording, I think you might agree that two people stand out. The first is Trustee Sam Moraco. He is regularly criticized on local social media for this and that, but he was the only person on the Independence Township side who thought that keeping our overpayments was the wrong thing for the Township to do to people it claims are “family” – just because the Township can legally get away with it. He suggested giving everything back but not paying interest to recompense the Township for any inconvenience. (All the others on the Independence Township side were just fine limiting the repayment to 6 years plus interest and pocketing the balance of the money – because they can and eff you if you don’t like it.)
The other person who stood out was city manager Smith, who brought his “golly gee whiz” persona to the meeting to tell the Trustees the city objected to anything less than a full reimbursement. Well, thank you for that, Mr. Smith. I guess that’s the next best thing to do after eight years of overpayments on your watch.
During his public comment at the July 23, 2024, Independence Township Board of Trustees meeting, Smith denied the overpayments were Clarkston’s fault. He held up a quarterly invoice for police and fire to show that it wasn’t specific regarding which millage rates or taxable values were used in the calculation as proof of that claim.
I don’t think that’s the “own” Smith thought it was. Our affected city treasurers and city managers didn’t read the contract they had in the file at city hall. My husband did that. Our 2010 contract for police services only requires Independence Township to advise us annually what the number of assessed mills are; the Township is not required to attach something to each quarterly bill. Clarkston employees never asked for the detail behind the invoices, something that would have undoubtedly been freely given. If Clarkston employees didn’t feel like picking up the phone, they could have reviewed the annual Oakland County Equalization Department report, available on Oakland County’s website, showing the assessed and taxable values for real and personal property for each assessing unit in the county (which includes Clarkston), something my husband did when he advised city officials that he thought there was a problem with police and fire overpayments. In other words, the information was there to be seen, Clarkston employees didn’t bother to look, so therefore it must be Independence Township’s fault. 🙄
Smith also noted my husband was on the city council at the time the contract was negotiated. So? I can assure you my husband isn’t the one in the family with the greatest memory. (I am.) My husband didn’t have any personal notes from 2010 to check and no specific recollection of the contract details. He read the contract the city sent me through my FOIA request, checked the published millage rates, thought about the issue, and raised an intelligent question for the city council to consider. I think it’s a reasonable expectation that every new city manager and new city treasurer would ask to review agreements that accounted for such a huge part of our city budget and go through the same thought process. They obviously didn’t.
The finger-pointing came full circle in Smith’s July 26th city manager’s email to residents:
Reimbursement from Independence Township
In Independence Township’s Board Meeting this Tuesday, I again requested that the City be reimbursement [sic] for overbilled charges for police and fire services for the past 14 years. After discussion, the Board voted to only reimburse the City for the past 6 years (plus interest), totaling $96,220, rather than the full $171,800 requested. Subsequent to the meeting the Township apologized for not previously providing the calculation details that would have allowed us to verify the quarterly charges, but will change this going forward.
Got that? Smith is a hero because he asked for all the money back. In Smith’s version of the story, Smith, the treasurer who reports to him, any previous city manager, and any previous treasurer are all blameless for what happened. It’s the mean Township’s fault because they didn’t provide backup for their invoices (that Clarkston never asked for and could have found in published Oakland County Equalization Department reports). Clarkston employees simply pay whatever bill is presented to them without questioning any of the details, and shame on you if you suggest they should do otherwise.
Smith is never going to publicly apologize for his part in the screw up, nor will he ever thank my husband for doing Smith’s and the treasurer’s job for them. In a weird way, Smith started the ball rolling by giving councilmember Quisenberry the wrong answer to a question about something that he should have known (and would have known) if he looked at the police services contract. It’s really a Catch 22 for him – if he admits he read the contract, then he also must admit he was aware of the billing multiplier and never asked questions about the billing or insisted that the treasurer (his direct report) also read the contract. If he admits he never read the contract, even though he publicly stated he knows police (and fire services) are a huge part of the city’s budget, then he must admit he wasn’t doing his job. He’s the city manager. If the responsibility doesn’t ultimately lie with him for things that happen under his management, where does it lie?
This issue went on for 14 years, and 8 of those years were under Smith’s watch. But according to Smith, you shouldn’t focus on that. No, you should just accept the loss of $84,497.66 taxpayer dollars and shut the heck up. You aren’t entitled to know about Smith’s and Ryan’s discussions with the Township. You aren’t allowed to learn about the details of the issue, whether accountability for the overpayments was ever discussed, or how the overpayment issue was resolved – because those discussions were had in secret closed city council sessions rather than in an open and transparent way.
The city council doesn’t have to agree to have a closed session just because Ryan asks for it, and Ryan should be fully capable of speaking in a way that is appropriate to an open public meeting without violating attorney-client privilege. Yet secret closed sessions and FOIA roadblocks were the ways our city government chose to handle this debacle. We’re just supposed to shut up and pay our tax bills. If we want to know what’s going on in our own city about such a significant issue, we apparently need to go to an Independence Township Board of Trustees meeting.
Are you kidding me?
As I said, Smith is sticking with his claim this whole thing was totally unintentional. He claims it only happened because the awful accounting clerks at Independence Township didn’t send an explanation with each invoice (that they weren’t required under the contract to send and no one from Clarkston ever asked for), and apparently, no Clarkston employees should have any responsibility to read the contracts and double check anything.
But I think they do have that responsibility. And here is an example of that. That is the Independence Township quarterly invoice for police and fire services that was due on June 30, 2024. You’ll note our treasurer was quite capable of calculating the correct amount – $83,842.53 – for three months of police and fire service for the second quarter of 2024. The amount is verified and initialed by the city treasurer, using the correct real property value and township millage rates in the computation. He was apparently able to get the necessary numbers to do the computation even if they weren’t provided on the invoice.
Are you shocked at how big that number is for three months of service? Don’t you think someone on the city side had the obligation to double check the numbers for such a huge bill, every time, for each quarter, for the last fourteen years? I do.
I’ve given you the chance to see behind the curtain and watch how our city manager, a master at blame deflection, has managed to avoid any responsibility for an $84,497.66 loss to taxpayers, even though he shares most of the blame since 8 of the 14 years of overpayments happened under his watch. But now that you know what happened, I’ll let you decide how blame should be allocated.
It’s fair to disclose at this point that on the same day the city manager was trying to minimize my husband’s contribution as a no-name “resident” in his March 11, 2024, city manager’s report, mayor Sue Wylie reached out and expressed her personal gratitude to him for doing something that had the potential to be a great financial help to the city. She asked if he wanted his name mentioned at that evening’s meeting or if he preferred to wait until everything was resolved, and my husband said he was content to wait until the matter was concluded.
I hope my husband does get a public thank you from the city for his efforts. I also want to express my gratitude to the mayor for reaching out to recognize his efforts at the beginning of this process.
You should have gotten a commission for collecting what you could. Great work and I am reminded about the lack of journalists who should have pursued this.