Meta description: Livingston County’s water table is dropping. One meeting: a dying well, a disputed campaign video, a contract no one read.
Livingston County’s water table is dropping under at least one Howell Township home, and the county’s own board meeting couldn’t manage to explain why. At the January 26 meeting of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners, a resident showed up with a printout from a state environmental website and the most concrete, checkable story of the night. Everything else on the agenda got more attention: a legislative video that played like a campaign ad, serious allegations against a sitting judge, a multi-year contract nobody in the room had actually read. None of it got resolved. Here’s what happened, thread by thread, and why the quietest story in the room might be the one worth watching.
45 Feet to 65 Feet: What One Well Is Measuring
Charles “Chuck” Smith, who lives in Howell Township, told the board that the water table under his home has been dropping since he bought the house in 2004. He didn’t have hard numbers until 2022, when his water turned “nasty, gray, silty” and started clogging his filters. He called Brown Drilling to replace his pump, and the technician who pulled the pipe showed him the readings directly: the well sat at 45 feet below the surface in 2004 and approximately 65 feet below the surface in 2022.
That technician also told him what fixing it would cost. If the water table keeps dropping, Smith will eventually need a new well drilled to roughly 165 feet, at a cost of about $12,000, or as deep as 200 feet, at a cost of about $24,000, if the decline continues. It’s a five-figure bill for water that was already his.
Smith tied the decline to the county’s draft master plan, a 220-page document he said he’d read in full, and to an unnamed development he believes the plan anticipates. He was careful not to name it:
“If you put anything out there, I’m not even talking data center… it’s going to take the water away from the 200 people that live in that area.”
That hedge is worth preserving exactly as he said it. Smith and his neighbors are speculating about what kind of large water user might be coming, not reporting a confirmed plan. No commissioner or staff member confirmed, denied, or even addressed what project he was referring to. The board moved on without answering him.
Smith also submitted printouts he said came from EGLE (Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) showing groundwater contamination in wells throughout the surrounding area, with one exception: his own. He returned during the meeting’s second public-comment period with additional maps showing drains in the area and the same underlying question: something is pulling water down faster than roughly 200 residents and one large farm operation can account for, and whatever comes next needs to answer for it. “I want to know who is going to reimburse me for you taking my water,” he said.
None of this is proof of causation. Smith is describing what one contractor told him and what one set of public data shows. It’s not a hydrological study. But the numbers are specific, they’re attributed to a named contractor and a named state agency, and they’re still unanswered on the public record. A 220-page master plan with no groundwater-impact discussion entered into the meeting record, regardless of what eventually gets built there, is a gap the county created for itself. No commissioner confirmed or denied what’s coming. The vote on the evening’s business moved on anyway.
A Legislative Report With a Soundtrack
State Representative Jason Wolford couldn’t attend the meeting in person, so the board played a pre-recorded video in his place, billed as his legislative report. It ran through his first-year accomplishments in Lansing: unemployment-fraud oversight findings, tax cuts, school funding increases, gun-law changes, a meeting with Robert Kennedy at the White House. Then it closed with “God bless you and God bless America” over background music. Those figures, including the claim that Michigan taxpayers will save “nearly $500 million,” come directly from Wolford’s self-produced video. They haven’t been independently verified here and shouldn’t be read as confirmed by anyone but his own office.
Two residents who called in on Zoom during the second public-comment period objected to the format itself. Cindy McNevich, of Hamburg Township, put it flatly:
“I don’t know what I just saw with Jason Wolford… Pretty much it was a campaign ad.”
She asked whether Wolford’s opponent, Jennifer Conlon, would be given the same platform. Dan McNevich, of the City of Howell, made a similar point about the video’s campaign-style production before raising a separate, more serious claim: that Wolford’s nonprofit, Mission Cry, received roughly $40,000 in forgiven PPP loans during COVID, and that Wolford later charged a $400 dinner with his mother to the nonprofit’s credit card. That is a single, uncorroborated allegation from one Zoom commenter, with no receipts, records, or documentation entered into the meeting record. No board member responded to it. It should be read as an allegation, not a fact, and nothing more should be inferred from it here.
An attorney identified in the meeting audio as “Commissioner Drake” answered the campaign-ad complaint on the board’s behalf. That name doesn’t appear anywhere on the board’s roll call. He’s most likely county corporation counsel rather than an elected commissioner, though that identity isn’t confirmed on the record. Drake said agenda item 14 reflects a standing board policy, framed as an obligation under Michigan’s Campaign Finance Act, to let any candidate for office address the board, and called it “a 100% defense” against any complaint to the Secretary of State.
What didn’t happen on the record: nobody read the actual policy language into the meeting, confirmed when it was adopted, or said whether Jennifer Conlon has in fact been offered the same video slot Wolford received. That’s a testable, follow-up-able claim, not a settled one. The county asserted an equal-access policy exists without demonstrating it was applied evenly. Until someone checks, “a 100% defense” is just something a lawyer said out loud.
The Contract Nobody Had Read
Buried in the night’s block of routine resolutions was the meeting’s only real moment of board-level scrutiny. The board took up a contract for a BRIC-funded (Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities) EMS station alerting system. Commissioner Gross noted that when the item was first discussed, there were questions about legal terms, and asked what had actually changed in the renegotiated contract to protect the county, since the version presented that night wasn’t redlined and gave no indication of what had been revised.
The exchange that followed is the sharpest two lines in the whole meeting:
“I don’t have a red-line copy.”
“Nor do I.”
“Commissioner Drake” then described the change from memory: a move from a 3-year contract with annual CPI increases to a 5-year agreement with two 1-year options, paired with a freeze on fees and maintenance pricing for up to seven years. Those terms are plausible, and they were offered in good faith. But they came from a verbal summary of a negotiation, not a document anyone in the room had actually reviewed.
The board agreed to request a comparison document after the meeting. Then it voted to approve the contract anyway, unanimously, before that document existed. It’s the least dramatic story of the night, and the most damning, because the board’s own words made the case against itself. Nobody accused anyone of hiding anything. Two officials just admitted, back to back, that they’d voted on a multi-year financial commitment they hadn’t actually read in its final form.
Allegations the Board Has No Power to Address
Two speakers used their time at the podium to describe an ongoing family-court custody dispute involving a judge identified as Judge Longsworth. Hannah Sudds, of Hamburg Township, said she filed for divorce in 2024 after what she described as an abusive marriage, was initially granted a protective order and custody, and alleges the judge repeatedly disbelieved her, jailed her without a release date, and declined to act even after being shown photos of her child’s injuries. According to her account, the state ultimately intervened, a different judge reviewed the case, her sentence was rescinded, and her children were returned to her. She said criminal charges have since been filed against the children’s father. Not against the judge.
Steve Williams, of Marion Township, speaking about a separate custody matter, echoed the pattern Sudds described and raised his own account of unaddressed safety concerns and a lawyer-guardian ad litem he says failed to act on reports of unsafe living conditions. He returned in the second public-comment period to argue that the county’s next judicial election is the most consequential race on the ballot, and to suggest the judge may be politically motivated against him.
These are serious claims, made by name, about a sitting judge, in an open public meeting. They are also one-sided. This is testimony from parties to contested, ongoing family-court cases, offered without the judge present or any opportunity to respond, and without independent documentation entered into the record. None of it should be read as an established finding of misconduct. It’s an account, not a verdict.
What’s notable is the board’s response, which was silence. Livingston County commissioners have no jurisdiction over a circuit court judge’s conduct in an individual case, and no commissioner offered comment, referral, or acknowledgment of either speaker’s allegations. That’s likely the legally correct posture. But for two residents who used their three minutes to make some of the most serious allegations a public commenter can make against a sitting official, an on-record silence is also part of the story.
The Rest of the Agenda
The remainder of the meeting was standard county governance. Appointments to the Materials Management Planning Committee, the Airport Zoning Board of Appeals, and the Community Mental Health Authority Board all passed without discussion. The board approved a special-assessment district for repairs to the Long Lake Dam, a 2026 memorandum of agreement with MSU Extension, and routine claims and payables. A FOIA appeal from a resident identified as Mrs. Reed was denied 9-0 after neither she nor anyone representing her appeared to argue it.
Follow Your Own Local Government
One meeting. A well going dry with no explanation on record, a legislator’s video that blurred into a campaign ad, allegations against a judge the board can’t touch, and a contract two officials admitted they hadn’t read before voting yes. Most residents will never watch the 46 minutes it took to produce all four. That’s the case for showing up, or at least reading closely.
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