A BLACK SOCKS TYPE BETRAYAL: A BASEBALL ANALOGY
It’s that time of year. Baseball is back. It’s been called “America’s Pastime”. It represents the finest American traditions and has been a unifying influence in America since the 1800s. The rules of the game incorporated our national ideals of honor, hard work, fairness, and order. The first official baseball game was played in 1846 in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Over the years professional baseball has seen rule-breakers and dealt with them in varying degrees of severity. Pitchers throwing spitballs drew ejection from the game. Cork a bat and the hitter could find himself out of the game or suspended for a while. But, intentionally throwing a game drew banishment from the game forever.
In 1919 members of the Chicago Black Sox were banned from baseball for conspiring with gamblers to throw that year’s World Series. In 1943, William D. Cox, the owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, was banned for betting on his team to lose. Several others have been banned for fixing games.
The best-known recent example of rule-breaking in baseball is that of Pete Rose. He was banned from baseball for life for betting on games. While there is no definitive evidence that Pete Rose bet against his own team while he was a player or manager, some critics, including the investigator in his case, have suggested that his ability to control games as a manager raised concerns about the integrity of the game.
The funniest example of cheating occurred in 1987 when a minor-league catcher hid a potato in his glove which he threw past a runner at third base so the runner would attempt to score, and then tagged out the runner with the real baseball. The umpire ruled that the run counted.
The severest penalties in baseball are reserved for those who betray their team and the fans. So should it be for those on the Village Council who have betrayed us. It is no laughing matter.
- You’re Outta Here!:
There is little in this life as ugly as betrayal. Whether it’s a spouse, a friend, a team, or one’s fellow citizens, betrayal of the trust and confidence upon which a relationship is based is cause for outrage and action. Betrayal is an act of deliberate disloyalty. An act of violating or robbing someone by deceit and treachery. This has been the record of Bill Lewis, Denise Pyle, Carolyn Kelly, and Ben Moore in their roles as Trustees for the Village of Climax.
They all hold positions of trust with the residents of the Village. They have stabbed us in the back. They must all be removed from those positions. Lewis and Pyle by recall, Kelly and Moore by the voters in November 2026 since they are not subject to recall because they are in the last year of their offices. Their behaviors were and continue to be detrimental to the interests of the Village of Climax and its residents.
Here are some of the reasons why action must be taken.
- Trees In The Rights-Of-Way:
If trees in the rights-of-way were the responsibility of the Village to maintain under state law, there would have been no need for Lewis and Company (Pyle, Kelly, and Moore) to adopt an ordinance shifting that burden to the taxpayers of the Village. Or to create the position of “arborist” which looks like it might wind up being Bill Lewis’ son. But, they did just that. And they did it because three residents on Church St. supported Bill Lewis in return for the expectation that he would make the rest of us pay for cutting down trees on their properties.
The rights-of-way belong to the adjacent property owners. There is no dispute about that under state law. A right-of-way is merely an easement, not ownership of the property upon which that easement lies. But, Craig Rolfe, the current Village attorney, confused the language in MCL Sec. 560.253:
“When a plat is certified, signed, acknowledged and recorded as prescribed in this act, every dedication, gift or grant to the public or any person, society or corporation marked or noted as such on the plat shall be deemed sufficient conveyance to vest the fee simple of all parcels of land so marked and noted, and shall be considered a general warranty against the donors, their heirs and assigns to the donees for their use for the purposes therein expressed and no other.”
to mean that platted rights-of-way gives fee simple rights of those areas to the Village.
But this statute in which the word “dedicated” is used refers to private gifts and grants of land to individuals, to the public, or to corporations when noted in a plat. This conveys fee simple or absolute title to the donees named. And the Supreme Court of Michigan in Martin v. Beldean, 468 Mich. 868, 661 N.W. 2d 231 (2004) said so. Why didn’t Craig Rolfe advise the Council in accordance?
Mr. Rolfe goes on to say that:
“… all (or at least most of) the public streets and other public ways within the Village have been dedicated to the Village and are held in trust by the Village for the dedicated purposes.”
But they weren’t. The plat gives no indication that the roadways on the plat were marked or noted to be given to the Village in fee simple by operation of the territorial act of 1821 or its successors, including MCL 560.253.
Dedications or gifts in plats to specific donees conveys fee simple title just as a deed conveys title. Rights-of-way do not convey fee simple title but are a shared arrangement with the abutting property owners in which the right-of-way is merely a permitted use, an easement, along the properties in the rights of way. It does not convey ownership of the trees from the property owner to the Village. This would be hard for an attorney to miss?
So now the rest of us will pay to maintain and remove trees on the private properties of Lewis’ friends, supporters, and those who curry his favor.
- Incompatible Public Offices – An Ethics Violation:
State law prohibits Bill Lewis from holding office as Village President while employed as Library Director.
Michigan conflict of interest laws prohibit public officers, both elected and employed, from holding incompatible offices. MCL Secs. 15.181-15.385. Craig Rolfe concedes that the offices of Village President and Lawrence Memorial Library Director are regulated by this act. He knows that the act covers employees who do not vote such as Library Directors but makes a point of Lewis not voting on the Library Board as somehow excluding Lewis from operation of the law. Go figure!
If one of those offices is:
- subordinate to the other;
- or is supervised by the other;
- or causes a breach of duty to one or the other;
they are in conflict and are incompatible in statutory terms. They cannot be occupied by the same individual.
(1). Subordination Of The Village To The Library:
Bill Lewis has subordinated the office of President of the Village to the benefit of the Lawrence Memorial District Library. He has abstained to vote as a member of the Village Council three or four times on matters favoring the Library. One of those was a lease that he and Denise Pyle were behind which leased the Village’s building to the Library for $75 a month, a lease that clearly betrayed the Village in favor of the Library.
It is to be remembered that the Village and the Library are separate governmental entities with their own dedicated taxes supporting them. Their governance, in theory, is managed by separate independent boards, i. e., the Library Board and the Village Council. But the reality of their governance does not comform to the theory.
(2). Supervision Of The Library Board And Lease By The Village Council:
The Village Council picks three members of the Library Board. The Council picks replacements for those three board members. The source of the Council’s information about their performance as well as the suitability of their replacements is Bill Lewis. That information can and appears to have been colored to serve the interests of Bill Lewis and his continued employment as Library Director.
The Village Council also supervises the lease between the Library and the Village. The Council is the landlord and the Library is the tenant. Which entity’s interests does Lewis serve since he owes a duty of loyalty to each? See, NLRB v. Electrical Workers, 346 U.S. 464 (1953). He can’t serve two masters without betraying one of them.
(3). Breach Of Duty Of Public Office:
Lewis’ abstaining to vote as Village President on Library matters coming before the Council is in itself a breach of duty to the Village the Incompatible Offices Act. MCL Secs. 15.181-15.385; Oakland County Prosecutor v. Scott, 237 Mich App 419, 423 (1999).
Lewis could have prevented the lease of the Village’s building to the Library for the ridiculous sum of $75 a month. But he instead chose to abandon the interests of the Village and its taxpayers.
How could Craig Rolfe have concluded that Bill Lewis does not have a disqualifying conflict of interest?
- Planning Commission:
Bill Lewis is also the author of the fiasco that is the Planning Commission. This Village has been around since 1891 and has done just fine without a planning commission. The Village is virtually built out with only four or five vacant lots and a small parcel of land to the east of South Main.
That isn’t much to plan for unless Lewis has designs for the small parcel of land east of South Main. The citizens roundly rejected the idea of solar farms and energy storage units in the Village. It is likely that they would feel the same way about a data center by Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, or the other twenty or so companies wanting to build data centers and impose themselves on local taxpayers around the country.
Lewis sought advice from Craig Rolfe as to whether a Village planning commission was required under Michigan state law. Craig Rolfe, according to Lewis, determined that it was. But that’s wrong!
Planning commissions may make perfect sense in municipalities, townships, and counties that cover large areas and have large populations where mixed uses are the norm. But this is the Village of Climax, not the City of Kalamazoo.
Why is Craig Rolfe wrong that the Village is required to have a planning commission? Because the Michigan Planning Enabling Act says so. The Act is found at MCL 125.3801. In Section 125.3811 the Michigan Legislature wrote:
“A local unit of government may adopt an ordinance creating a planning commission …”
Notice the use of the word “may”. It is something a local unit of government can do if it wants to. It doesn’t have to. The Michigan Association Of Planning is in agreement.
Lewis obviously wanted to create this new bureaucracy with its attendant costs and burdens on Village property owners even though he had no legal or compelling reason to do so. Government is not a vehicle to make elected officials feel important, look like they are doing something, or satisfy some emotional deficit.
- Code Enforcement Contempt Debt:
This website has covered the fourteen month ever-evolving effort of Village President Bill Lewis and Trustee Denise Pyle to avoid collecting the code enforcement contempt debt that Lewis has repeatedly maintained is owed by Anthony Bates to the Village in connection with the property at 110 S. Main St.
As has previously been reported, Bill Lewis and four other Trustees refused to collect the debt of approximately $15,000 that Lewis said was owed to the Village by Anthony Bates. On March 3, 2026 Bill Lewis, Denise Pyle, Carolyn Kelly, and Ben Moore voted to enter into an agreement with Bates that the Village would not pursue the debt.
There was no reason for this and it appears to have been motivated solely by Lewis’ relationship with Bates. Craig Rolfe mistakenly said that there was a lien placed by the Village on the property. That gave Bates’ attorney an avenue to claim that somehow, someway, somewhere over the rainbow, a lien was wrongly lodged against the property and Bates might sue the Village and former Village officials.
Lewis and Pyle played along claiming righteous concerns about future litigation and its expense to the Village. But their motives appeared to be far less noble. They set out to deprive the Village of the money that Lewis said it was owed. And, they did just that. It sure looked like a setup.
Did Craig Rolfe miss the fact that no lien was ever placed by the Village on Bates’ property at 110 S. Main St.? It’s inconceivable that Rolfe would not know what a lien is and what it is not. Was Mr. Rolfe not aware that the Village pays insurance premiums to cover the costs and expenses of litigation? How did he not recognize that such threatened litigation was frivolous and would likely be punished by a court having jurisdiction should such a suit be filed?
E. Attorney’s Fees:
In fifteen months in office Bill Lewis has spent over $35,000 of our money on attorney’s fees to provide himself and Denise Pyle with cover for their actions. The new budget for the Village looks like Lewis will continue to waste our money in this way.
F. The Baseball Analogy:
Since it’s baseball season, let’s score this:
Final Score
Game 1 Tree Removal At Taxpayer Expense 1
Village of Climax 0
Game 2 Damaging Conflict Of Interest By Lewis 1
Village of Climax 0
Game 3 Planning Commission Fiasco 1
Village of Climax 0
Game 4 Code Enforcement Contempt Debt 1
Village of Climax 0
Game 5 Craig Rolfe 1
Village of Climax 0
No wins and five losses for the Village and its residents is not a good record. Over a period of just fifteen months of Lewis’ tenure as Village President he has demonstrated contempt for the Village and its residents, subordinated the interests of the Village to those of the District Library, and wasted our money to give his actions the appearance of being within the boundaries of the law. It’s time to fire team manager Lewis and cut players Denise Pyle, Carolyn Kelly, and Ben Moore.
There’s a movie line that goes:
“The appearance of the law must be upheld, especially while it is being broken.”
Such is the method of operation of Bill Lewis, Denise Pyle, Carolyn Kelly, and Ben Moore. We deserve better. We must fight to get it and remove them all from office.
END
