Four Felonies. One Misdemeanor. $125. Gone.

Frances McMullan used her city-issued credit card like a personal account for years. The Finance Department missed it. The prosecutor took four felonies down to a disappearing misdemeanor. The judge called the case repugnant — then wiped her record clean. The city got nothing back. McMullan got two pensions.

Ypsilanti is not a rich city. It never has been. A city of roughly 20,000 people — population down 18 percent from its peak — with a 27 percent poverty rate, a downtown that has been trying to come back for two decades, and a 38-acre riverfront property that has sat empty and contaminated since the late 1990s while the city carries $30 million in debt from buying it. When the city manager charges approximately $20,000 in personal expenses to a city-issued credit card, that money doesn't come from a rounding error in a billion-dollar budget. In Ypsilanti, $20,000 is real money. It's road salt. It's water main repairs. It's the $250,000 the city has scraped together toward a bridge replacement that will cost $7.4 million.

Frances McMullan was Ypsilanti's city manager from 2019 until August 2023 — but she ran city operations in various senior roles for approximately 14 years before that. She knew the city's finances. She knew the city's limits. She charged to the city credit card anyway.

In June 2025, the Washtenaw County Prosecutor's office charged her with four counts of felony embezzlement. By July, those four felonies had become one misdemeanor. The judge deferred the sentence and waived all fees except $125.

Six weeks later, McMullan emailed the Ann Arbor Independent and asked them to write a story with the headline: "Judge vindicates former city manager of all charges."

The Credit Card

The City of Ypsilanti issued credit cards to its City Manager and City Clerk for the first time in April 2019 — the same month the City Council voted to make Frances McMullan the permanent City Manager.

According to records obtained by The Ann Arbor Independent through Freedom of Information Act requests, the first charge McMullan made on her city-issued card was $896.37 to Delta Vacations. Within her first eight months, she had charged more than $14,500 in personal expenses — clothing, shoes, beauty supplies, prescriptions, artwork, cash advances, and what appears to be a charge to a church directory service. The Ann Arbor Independent characterized her use as "almost daily."

In July 2019, she wrote a check back to the city for $6,275.57 — a partial repayment that suggests someone, at some level, had noticed something. But the charges continued. Michigan State Police eventually investigated for nearly two years before charges were filed. The Ann Arbor Independent's reporting indicates city auditors had spotted the problem years earlier.

Over the course of her misuse, McMullan charged approximately $20,000 in personal expenses to the city account. The City of Ypsilanti — which is currently drawing down its reserves by approximately $800,000 per year and faces a fiscal cliff by 2027 — never got that money back. Not one dollar was ordered in restitution.

The Whistleblower Nobody Acknowledged

In March 2023, Joe Meyers — then the city's Economic Development Director — filed a formal complaint against McMullan, alleging she was "defrauding the City of Ypsilanti financially." City Attorney John Barr investigated. Barr dismissed the complaint. Meyers resigned shortly after.

Two years later, four felony counts confirmed that Meyers was right.

He has not been publicly acknowledged. No city official has said his name in connection with the case. The man who saw it, said it, paid for saying it, and was proven correct has received no recognition from the institution he tried to protect.

Meyers told the truth. The city's own attorney dismissed it. The city's own finance department missed years of charges. The Michigan State Police had to come in from outside to do what the city's internal systems did not.

The Charges That Weren't

On June 4, 2025, Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit's office charged Frances McMullan with four felony counts of embezzlement. The city issued a press release the same day. City Manager Andrew Hellenga — who had served as City Clerk alongside McMullan during the entire period of documented theft, and who stepped into her job after her departure — wrote that "these events underscore the importance of transparency, accountability, and a robust system of checks and balances."

When WEMU sought comment from Hellenga at the time of the charges, he did not return calls.

On July 17, 2025, McMullan entered a no-contest plea to a single misdemeanor count — "purchasing goods for private use as a public official." Maximum penalty under Michigan law: 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.

Judge J. Cedric Simpson said he "didn't think the case should have been brought" and called it "repugnant." He deferred the sentence for one month, waived all fees except a $125 state assessment, and ordered no jail time, no probation, and no restitution to the city. After one month, the conviction disappeared from her record entirely.

McMullan's Own Words

She is correct that it went away. What did not go away: the approximately $20,000 charged to a city credit card that the city never recovered. The two pensions — one from her 15 years at the City of Ann Arbor, one from her years at Ypsilanti — that she continues to collect. The fiscal hole she helped deepen in a city that is now drawing down reserves at $800,000 a year.

Frances McMullan did not respond to requests for comment sent to her publicly available email addresses.

The Mayor's Role

When McMullan departed in August 2023, Mayor Nicole Brown voted to allow her to retire early rather than be terminated for cause. The exit package, according to reporting by The Ann Arbor Independent, included a guaranteed positive work reference.

The Michigan State Police investigation into McMullan's credit card use was confirmed publicly in September 2023 — one month after her departure. Whether Brown was aware of the MSP investigation when she provided the guaranteed reference at departure is a question that has not been answered publicly. The Ypsilantian requested comment from the Mayor's office. Mayor Brown did not respond by publication time.

What is documented: a mayor under whose watch a city manager charged approximately $20,000 in personal expenses to a city credit card over four years, who then allowed that city manager to retire early rather than be fired, and provided a guaranteed positive reference enabling her to seek employment elsewhere. Brown is seeking re-election in the August 4 primary.

The Man Who Sits in Her Chair

Andrew Hellenga became City Clerk of Ypsilanti in April 2019 — the same night Frances McMullan was made permanent City Manager. For the next four years, Hellenga was McMullan's institutional peer, occupying the second most senior appointed position in city government while the documented theft was occurring.

When McMullan departed in August 2023, Hellenga became interim City Manager. In February 2024, he became permanent City Manager — the same job McMullan held, obtained the same way McMullan obtained it: by already being there.

His own performance evaluations — covering the period when he was City Clerk alongside a city manager who was stealing — have been the subject of a months-long public records dispute. According to a formal appeal submitted to the City Council in June 2026 by Ypsilanti resident Kairos VanDeCar, the city produced evaluations that are unsigned, undated, contain comments from multiple unidentified individuals in different text colors, and lack input from the Mayor and City Council members who were supposed to provide them. The city has closed VanDeCar's records portal request without producing complete documents.

The evaluations of the man who occupied the City Clerk's office while $20,000 was being charged to the City Manager's credit card — the man who now runs the city — remain, for all practical purposes, invisible. Hellenga did not respond to The Ypsilantian's request for comment by publication time.

The Fiscal Picture Nobody Connected

McMullan's theft did not cause Ypsilanti's fiscal crisis. The city's structural problems predate her and are larger than any individual. But they share the same soil.

The city draws approximately $800,000 per year from its reserves to cover operating expenses — a pace that exhausts its financial cushion by 2027 if nothing changes. The Cross Street Bridge needs $7.4 million in repairs; the city has set aside $250,000. The Water Street parcel — 38 acres of prime riverfront property the city bought in the early 2000s — remains largely undeveloped after 27 years and approximately $30 million in total costs, generating no tax revenue.

Against that backdrop, the city's top financial steward was using her city credit card for personal purchases, the finance department wasn't catching it, the city attorney dismissed the one complaint that named it directly, and the prosecutor's office ultimately accepted $125 and a disappearing record.

In a city that cannot afford to fix its bridge, accountability for the person who stole from it cost $125.

What The City Said

The City of Ypsilanti issued a press release on June 4, 2025, the day charges were filed. City Manager Andrew Hellenga wrote in part: "Our residents place great trust in their local government. That trust comes with a profound responsibility — one that we take very seriously. These events underscore the importance of transparency, accountability, and a robust system of checks and balances."

He is right. It's just that in Ypsilanti, the checks didn't catch the charges for years, and the balances came up $125 short.

The Washtenaw County Prosecutor's office did not respond to The Ypsilantian's request for comment by publication time.