By Megan Kelley
Review Writer
LAKE ORION — The Lake Orion Village Council met on Monday and had a back-and-forth discussion over several proposed items, including amendments to the council’s rules and procedures as well as a drafting of an ethics ordinance.
Councilmember Michael Lamb requested the two items be taken down from the consent agenda for further discussion citing the council’s lack of money for attorney fees.
“I had some discussion with the village manager (Darwin McClary) over the current state of the village budget and we came to an agreement that we have expended our budgeted amount for the attorney for the year now, almost completely, as of the beginning of February,” Lamb said. “I believe we have another quarter left and numerous expenditures on the attorney’s docket.”
Essentially, the council does not have enough money budgeted for additional attorney fees at the current moment. Therefore, it cannot pay its attorney for additional work, which includes both drafting an ethics policy and making amendments to the council’s rules and procedures, according to Lamb.
Lamb added that he didn’t see a need to change any of the rules of procedure but that if another council member felt otherwise, they could propose that change on their own without getting the village attorney involved.
President Pro-Tem Teresa Rutt disagreed that the rules did not need to be changed, pointing out that members of the public have come forward to tell the council that their rules are vague or unclear at times.
Rutt said she would be fine with the council making suggestions rather than have their attorney do all of the work but noted that she would like the attorney to review any changes before the council adopts them.
Council President Jerry Narsh agreed that the council should review the rules but would rather “base it off of structure” by having the village attorney draft the rules.
“Our rules and procedures need help. It needs to be reviewed and redone, if you will. We have had the public, as Mr. Narsh said, say that we have no rules,” Councilmember Ken Van Portfliet said. “One of the cases of the high attorney bills is partially due to that; no rules. We need to be able to look at what needs to be debated and entered into a legal consideration from our attorney as opposed to just throwing it out there or calling the village administration and saying ‘I’d like to have this done.’ We need the rules.”
Lamb, as well as Councilmember Sarah Luchsinger, disagreed, saying that there are rules but the rules have either simply not been followed or numerous people have had different interpretations.
“We’ve had rules. I have a copy of them and I’ve used them to effect. The problem has been administration in this village. We’ve had a weak administration that didn’t follow the rules. We’ve had councils that didn’t follow the rules. I think now that we have people that follow the rules, and a public who are aware that we have rules and have questioned the rules; I don’t think an expensive rewrite of our rules is in order,” Lamb said. “I think a very soft, group approach would be most effective. Instead of pushing this off to our attorney – I don’t care for our attorney’s opinions half the time – why would I want their opinions on our rules? They don’t dictate to us. The village manager, he works for us. Why should he suggest procedures to us? We’re in charge, we should set the rules. If we don’t think we’re qualified to set the rules and write them, we should, perhaps, not be here.”
Lamb made the motion to create a rules committee consisting of Rutt, Luchsinger and Councilmember Nancy Moshier.
The council voted 4-3 in support of the motion with Narsh, Van Portfliet and Councilmember Carl Cyrowski voting no. The committee is expected to bring forth a recommendation to council by April 30.
Regarding an ethics policy, Lamb said he didn’t feel the council even needed an ethics ordinance and had concerns about the lack of budget for additional attorney fees to draft an ordinance.
“The village council is governed by the charter, the Open Meetings Act, state laws regarding elected officials behavior and just all kinds of stuff. I don’t understand why we would want to spend money to create an ethics ordinance and who that would be applied to,” Lamb said.
Lamb went down the line pointing out that nearly everyone on the board is governed by state licensed ethics in their professional life and wondered if there was something going on ethically that he should be aware of.
He then made the motion to table the agenda item until the next council meeting in order to understand why they need an ethics ordinance and why they should spend money on it.
Luchsinger questioned where the village is in their ordinance review, saying that since they’re past the deadline for deliverables, they should just have an ethics ordinance lumped into that review.
Moshier agreed with Lamb, saying she and at least three others on the council have gone through ethics training.
While Lamb and Moshier didn’t feel an ethics policy was necessary, Narsh pointed out that nearly every other municipality in the state has one.
“Just about every community in Michigan has an ethics policy. Most employees of a municipality…there’s ethics policies built within their contracts, within their personnel manuals. But appointed and elected, there are no ethics policies that our public could say, ‘You guys should be operating within this standard of operation,’” Narsh said.
Luchsinger added that without the ordinance review update, and without budgeted funds for additional attorney fees, the council should table the item and discuss it at a different meeting.
“I really think we should wait until we get the ordinance review update because they might have suggested this already,” Luchsinger said.
Van Portfliet said that he would like guidelines because he can’t, at this point, state if they are in violation or not because they don’t have an ethics policy. “I would like to be able to have that for a time when needed. All too often, we’ve been accused of not having guidelines, not having rules, not having policies and procedures.”
Moshier added that she would like to see documentation and research showing that the council is not ethical.
“I think having the foresight to put a policy in place for the future is smart because it helps guide us as we move forward. And yes, most of us, if not all of us have probably taken professional ethics courses or something, we have professional guidelines in our places of employment, but job specific ethics are different across different professions,” Rutt said.
Rutt also said that she felt the ordinance discussion would be relatively straightforward and she was not interested in “kicking the can down the road.”
Lamb amended his motion to postpone the item for the next council meeting and to have McClary provide the council with three examples of ethics ordinances from other municipalities.
The motion passed 6-1 with Narsh passing the lone nay vote.
Three residents spoke during public comment to encourage the council to draft an ethics ordinance, stating that the council needs to have one even if all of them are currently acting under the highest form of ethics.