The record · Nov 2023 to Nov 2025
For two years the same faces filled the Lapeer City Commission, and they mostly agreed. Then a new mayor and a new commissioner arrived in November 2025, and the 3‑2 warfare began. This is the record from before.
A divided vote is any motion where at least one commissioner votes no. For two years under Mayor Marquardt, the board split less than once a meeting, and more than half its meetings had no split at all. When it did divide, it was usually one lone no, most often Petrie. Then a new mayor and a new commissioner were seated in November 2025. Same four returning commissioners, and the fighting took off.
The cast
Mayor Marquardt ran the meetings but, under the city charter, only voted to break a tie. The five commissioners decided everything else. Four of these five still sit on the Commission today.
Elected or seated for the November 2023 term. Swindell held the fifth seat that Lynne McCarthy won in November 2025.
The calm
Each bar is one meeting: the regular sessions plus every special meeting, budget workshop and joint session. The taller the bar, the more contested votes that night. More than half the meetings, shown as flat marks, produced no divided vote at all. Nothing here looks like the near-nightly conflict that followed.
Divided votes at every meeting, Nov 2023 to Nov 2025. Two nights tie for the most: Dec 2, 2024 and the Apr 24, 2025 budget workshop.
Who got outvoted
Across every divided vote: how often each commissioner landed on the winning side, and how often each stood alone as the only dissenter. There was no faction. There was a board that usually agreed, and Petrie, who usually did not.
Winning-side rate and lone dissents across all 48 divided votes.
When the board split, how often did each pair vote the same way? Darker means they agreed more. Tap or hover a square for the count.
No clean two-cluster split. The closest pairs were Atwood with Swindell and Atwood with Brady, both at 79%. At the bottom, Petrie and Swindell agreed just 6% of the time. The tidy 3‑2 line came later.
Then, and now
Compare this record with the months since November 2025. What changed? Two seats. Mayor Hing replaced Marquardt, and Commissioner McCarthy replaced Swindell. The four commissioners who stayed did not keep their old roles. They traded places.
The receipts
All 48 divided votes, straight from the official minutes. Unanimous motions are left out. “Lone” means one commissioner stood alone. A filled square is a yes, an outline is a no, a dot means they sat that vote out, and a dash means they were absent that night.
| Meeting | Item | What was decided | Topic | Atw | Bra | Gli | Pet | Swi | Result |
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