Decided before the gavel?

Every date and number below comes from the city’s own meeting minutes. The links at the bottom of this page hold every receipt.

• The quiet years
• Nov 2023

  A new board is seated, and it gets along

  Atwood, Brady, Glisman and Petrie join Swindell under Mayor Marquardt. Their first act together: electing a mayor pro tem, unanimously.

• All of 2024

  23 split votes the entire year

  Nearly half the meetings had no disagreement at all. When the board did split, it was usually one lone “no,” most often Petrie.

• Jan to early Nov 2025

  More of the same

  21 split votes in ten months, most of them routine. Budgets pass. Contracts get signed. Nobody is voting as a team.

• Nov 4, 2025

  Election night

  Jeramy Hing is elected mayor. Lynne McCarthy wins the seat Swindell held. The other four commissioners stay right where they are.

• The flip
• Nov 17, 2025 · 6:36 p.m.

  Sworn in, and split within minutes

  Before the commission reaches its first item of business, it divides 3‑2 four times. Same three names on top every time: Glisman, McCarthy, Petrie. McCarthy votes in lockstep on the first vote of her life, and the brand-new mayor’s first move is postponing three whole sections of the agenda, including the City Manager’s entire report.

• Dec 1, 2025

  19 split votes in one night

  Meeting two of the new era nearly matches all of 2024 by itself. Commissioner Brady is censured, 3‑2.

• Dec 15, 2025

  An outside law firm, 3‑2

  Bodman PLC is hired over the minority’s objection. The mayor later becomes the firm’s only designated contact, and a request to get its advice in writing fails 2‑3.

• May 4, 2026

  The mayor rewrites the report card

  The existing evaluation form fails 2‑3. The mayor’s rewritten form passes 3‑2 the same night. On it, he is the only evaluator who fails the City Manager.

• May 21, 2026

  An investigator, at a special meeting

  An outside investigation of the City Manager is approved 3‑1.

• Jun 1, 2026

  The minority pushes back, and loses

  Nine split votes in one night. A motion to censure the mayor fails 2‑3, and a resident is gaveled out of order at the microphone.

• Jun 15, 2026

  The record gets edited

  Debate is capped at 30 minutes per item, 3‑2. The minutes of June 1 are approved 3‑2 with the gaveling account edited. And “corrective findings” are adopted against both minority commissioners, citing the charter’s misconduct section.

• Today

  The question

  Michigan law says this work happens in public. The minutes show outcomes, not deliberation. If the plan was made in the open, where?

November 17, 2025. The meeting was called to order at 6:36 p.m., minutes after Mayor Hing and Commissioner McCarthy took the oath. What happened next is all in the official minutes and the published agenda packet.

• Vote 1Mayor pro tem, 3‑2. Glisman nominated Petrie; the vote split Glisman, McCarthy and Petrie against Atwood and Brady. It was McCarthy’s first vote ever as a commissioner. Two years earlier, the same board had elected its mayor pro tem unanimously.Minutes, item 264, Nov 17, 2025 · item 261, Nov 20, 2023
• Vote 2Atwood’s nomination, failed. The competing nomination went down 1‑4.Minutes, item 264, Nov 17, 2025
• Vote 3Three agenda sections, postponed 3‑2. The minutes record that “Mayor Hing proposed an amendment to the agenda, requesting that all items under Sections G, H, and J be postponed.” Petrie moved it. Glisman seconded it. Per the published agenda packet, those sections held the Steel Patriots special event, the zoning text amendments, appointments to city boards, and the City Manager’s entire report, including two public hearings waiting to be scheduled.Minutes, item 265 · agenda packet, Nov 17, 2025
• Vote 4The agenda itself, approved 3‑2. Four divided votes, four identical 3‑2 splits, before the commission had taken up a single item of city business.Minutes, item 266, Nov 17, 2025

A mayor sworn in minutes earlier proposed clearing three sections of the agenda. A mover and a seconder were ready. A commissioner serving her first night voted with the same two colleagues four times out of four. None of the four votes followed any debate recorded in the minutes.

Across the 83 divided votes since November 17: how often each pair voted the same way. In the two years before, no pair of commissioners cleared 80% agreement and no three moved as a unit. McCarthy had never held office before that night.

More than half of all divided votes since November are the exact same split: Glisman, McCarthy and Petrie over Atwood and Brady. The full vote-by-vote record for both eras is on the voting record and the prequel.

If the big decisions were being worked out live on the commission floor, the minutes would show deliberation producing them. What the minutes show instead is process being used to shorten, postpone and edit the public part.

• The agendaNine divided votes just to decide what gets discussed. On Dec 1, approving the agenda “as presented” failed 2‑3; the majority’s amended version then passed 3‑2.Minutes, items 272 and 277, Dec 1, 2025
• The clock“Call the question,” the motion that ends debate immediately. Carried 3‑2 twice on Dec 1, and again 4‑1 during the June 1 censure debate. On June 15 the majority went further and capped discussion of every agenda item at 30 minutes, 3‑2.Minutes, items 273 and 289, Dec 1, 2025 · item 150, Jun 1 · item 153, Jun 15, 2026
• The calendarEight divided postponement votes, from the three agenda sections on night one to the City Manager’s own evaluation, postponed 3‑2 over the minority’s objection.Minutes, Nov 17, 2025 to May 18, 2026
• The recordEven the minutes go 3‑2. Two minority attempts to correct the Nov 17 minutes failed 2‑3 before approval passed 3‑2. In January the commission voted to strip the December minutes down to actions only. In April, minutes were approved with commentary struck out. And in June, the account of the mayor gaveling a resident was itself edited 3‑2, striking the clause that characterized her remarks.Minutes, item 278, Dec 1, 2025 · item 07, Jan 5 · item 95, Apr 20 · item 155, Jun 15, 2026

The decisions below span personnel, legal spending and the city’s administration. Each passed on the same 3‑2 line. Each arrived as a finished product: moved, seconded and carried, with the reasoning happening somewhere the minutes do not reach.

• Dec 1Censure of Commissioner Brady, 3‑2, at the new era’s second meeting, the same night as 18 other divided votes.Minutes, item 290, Dec 1, 2025
• Dec 15Bodman PLC engaged as labor counsel, 3‑2, after motions to table it for a legal opinion failed. The mayor was later designated the firm’s sole contact, and a request for Bodman’s advice in writing failed 2‑3.Minutes, item 303, Dec 15, 2025 · item 55, Mar 2 · item 132, May 18, 2026
• May 4The City Manager’s evaluation form, replaced 3‑2. The existing form failed 2‑3; the mayor’s rewritten form was adopted 3‑2 the same night. On that form, the mayor was the only evaluator who failed the City Manager. We checked every document in the review that failed.Minutes, items 116 and 117, May 4, 2026
• May 21An outside investigator engaged at a special meeting, 3‑1.Minutes, item 135, May 21, 2026
• Jun 15“Corrective findings” against both minority commissioners, 3‑1‑1 each. Moved by Petrie, seconded by McCarthy, each invoking the city charter’s misconduct-in-office section.Minutes, items 164 and 165, Jun 15, 2026
• All alongThe gavel pointed the same direction. Fifteen of the sixteen out-of-order rulings since November landed on Atwood and Brady. The full log is in out of order.Compiled from the minutes, Nov 2025 to Jun 2026

“All deliberations of a public body constituting a quorum of its members shall take place at a meeting open to the public.” Michigan Open Meetings Act, MCL 15.263(3)

The Attorney General’s Open Meetings Act handbook allows a member to informally poll colleagues only where no decision is made during the polling and the intent is not to circumvent the Act. And in Booth Newspapers v. University of Michigan Regents (1993), the Michigan Supreme Court held that a public body violates the Act when it uses a series of smaller-than-quorum conversations to decide public business out of public view. The Court called that argument what it was: form over substance. Deciding things in private and ratifying them in public is exactly what the statute exists to prevent.

We are not claiming to have seen a private meeting. We are pointing at a public record that looks like the aftermath of one, again and again, starting on night one. So these are our questions, and they deserve on-the-record answers:

1. Who drafted the night-one motion to postpone agenda sections G, H and J, and when was it shared with the mover and the seconder?
2. How did a commissioner sworn in minutes earlier know to vote with the same two colleagues on four straight procedural votes, with no recorded debate?
3. Where, in any set of minutes, is the majority’s reasoning deliberated before the censure, the labor counsel engagement, the seating change, or the rewritten evaluation form was voted through?
4. Will the commissioners state, on the record, whether they discussed any of these matters with each other outside a public meeting before voting?

Commissioners’ communications about city business, including emails and texts, are public records under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. Any resident can request them from the city clerk. We keep every receipt on the pages below; read them, then bring your own questions to the next meeting. Public comment is your slot on the agenda, and as of this writing it is still there.