Makoski Told the Assessor He Moved Out of Warren. Warren’s Water Meter Didn’t Get the Memo.

In June 2022, Eastpointe magistrate Mark Makoski certified under penalty of perjury that he no longer lived in the Warren house he had claimed as home since 1994. He became Judge Kathleen Galen’s part-time magistrate that same year. Every water reading since has told a different story about both houses.

When I published the first piece on Mark Makoski’s residency on September 27, I had two water meters, a voter record and a rental next door to Judge Kathleen Galen. What I did not have was anything Makoski himself had signed about where he lives. Now I do.

It is a one-page Michigan Department of Treasury form, filed with the City of Warren assessor in June 2022. On it, Galen’s magistrate told the assessor, under penalty of perjury, that he had stopped living in the Warren house he had called home for 28 years. The water meters at both houses have been answering that statement every month since. The redacted records are here.

What He Signed

Michigan Treasury Form 2602, the Request to Rescind Principal Residence Exemption, is the form a homeowner files when a house stops being the place they live. Makoski filled it out by hand. He listed himself as owner and his wife as co-owner. In the section asking why the exemption should come off, he checked one box: he owns the property, but he no longer lives there as his principal residence. He did not check the boxes for selling the house, renting it out or converting it to commercial use.

He wrote the effective date of the change as March 23, 2022. In the next section, which asks who the rescission applies to, he checked owner only, leaving out the co-owner. He signed on June 14, 2022, beneath a certification that the information is true under penalty of perjury. The co-owner’s signature line is blank. The City of Warren Assessor’s Office stamped the form received on June 16, 2022.

The statement at the center of it is short. He told the assessor “I no longer occupy the property as my principal residence.” Michigan law required him to say so within 90 days of moving out, and he did, on day 83.

Twenty-Eight Years of Calling Warren Home

The rescission ended a claim that began in February 1994. That month, Makoski and his wife signed a state Affidavit for Homestead Exemption on the same Warren house, certifying under penalty of perjury that they owned it and lived in it as their principal residence. The City of Warren’s assessing system logs that exemption as effective March 1, 1994.

The system’s year-by-year table shows the exemption at 100 percent for every year it displays, from 2006 through 2022. Beginning with 2023, every column reads zero, through the 2027 roll already set up in the system. The rescission record lists the original tax year as 1994, the rescind date as March 23, 2022, and the rescinding party as the owner.

Warren also appears in what Makoski filed on Galen’s behalf. When the Committee to Elect Kathleen G. Galen formed on April 24, 2020, its Statement of Organization named Makoski as treasurer, and the personal mailing address he gave was the Warren house. Clutch Justice reported that filing in “The Wine Bar Clause.” Two years later, he told the assessor he no longer lived there.

The Same Year, a New Job

In 2021, Makoski represented Galen personally in her dispute with the City of Pleasant Ridge over the Cork Wine Pub liquor license, a relationship the city’s outside counsel documented in a July 2022 letter. In 2022, he became a part-time magistrate of her court.

That appointment carries a residency rule. Eastpointe’s 38th District is a district of the third class, and under MCL 600.8501 a magistrate appointed there must be a registered elector of the district. Since 2016, the statute has allowed an elector of an adjoining district to serve if the appointment is made under a concurrent jurisdiction plan. Warren, the 37th District, adjoins Eastpointe. Macomb County’s administrative order index lists a 2005 multiple-district plan covering the 37th, 38th and neighboring courts. Whether Makoski’s own appointment rests on the ordinary elector requirement or on that exception is what the appointment order will show, and it has not been produced.

The tax form fixes one side of that question. By his own sworn account, Makoski stopped living in Warren on March 23, 2022, the same year Galen put him on her bench.

What the Meters Said Next

Both cities bill water in units of 100 cubic feet, about 748 gallons each. The September piece laid out the 2026 readings month by month. Put them against the date on the tax form and the picture gets longer.

The earliest Eastpointe reading Clutch reviewed is December 15, 2022, nine months after the move Makoski certified. The meter stood at 4. It reached 8 in December 2023, 14 in December 2024, 18 in December 2025 and 21 by August 15, 2026. That is 17 units across 1,339 days, about 12,716 gallons, or 9.5 gallons a day for the entire household at that address.

The Environmental Protection Agency puts average indoor use at 82 gallons per person per day. At that rate, one person living alone over the same 1,339 days would use roughly 110,000 gallons, close to 147 units. The Eastpointe meter recorded about 12 percent of one average person.

What 9 Gallons a Day Looks Like

Averages hide how little that is, so here it is in ordinary terms. In 2026, the Eastpointe meter recorded 3 units between December 15, 2025 and August 15, 2026, about 2,244 gallons over 243 days. That works out to 9.23 gallons a day. Federal efficiency standards cap new showerheads at 2.5 gallons a minute, toilets at 1.6 gallons a flush and standard dishwashers at 5 gallons a cycle. Measured against those caps:

A single five-minute shower uses more water than that house records in an entire day. A person who lived there and showered nowhere else would blow past the daily average before breakfast. Strip the day down further: five ordinary flushes take 8 gallons, which leaves about a gallon and a quarter for everything else. That gallon would have to cover hand washing, teeth brushing, cooking, coffee, dishes and laundry, every day, for eight months. That does not look like a frugal household. It looks like an empty one.

The Warren house, the one Makoski swore he had left, never went quiet. Its history shows regular residential consumption across the years Clutch reviewed, with heavier use in warm months. From December 30, 2025 through August 31, 2026 alone, it recorded 89 units, about 66,572 gallons, or about 273 gallons a day.

A water meter does not say who is drinking from it. Travel, vacancy and household size all move the numbers. What the meters do show is which house has been lived in like a home since March 23, 2022, and it is the one Makoski certified he no longer occupies.

One Owner Out, One Owner Still In

The form’s scope matters. Makoski rescinded for himself. His wife, who has co-owned the house since at least 1994 and signed the original homestead affidavit beside him, did not rescind and did not sign the 2022 form.

The assessor’s table shows the exemption falling to 0 percent anyway, and nothing in the record reviewed shows the co-owner claiming it after 2022. Since the 2023 tax year, the household has paid the non-homestead school operating tax on the Warren house, up to 18 additional mills a year. The records reviewed do not show why a one-owner rescission removed the entire exemption, or whether anyone at the assessor’s office asked.

What they do show is a household that gave up a tax break it had held for 28 years, on the strength of one spouse’s sworn statement that he had moved out, during the year that spouse took a job requiring him to be an Eastpointe voter or to qualify under an exception.

What the Next Records Have to Answer

The voter registration FOIA is the next piece. It will show when Makoski registered at the Eastpointe address, whether he was registered in Warren before that, and what he certified when he changed it. If the registration change lands on or near March 23, 2022, the tax form and the voter file describe a single move made on paper in two places, during the year he took a job that depends on one of them.

The appointment order and any governing-body approval will show what residency information supported his place on Galen’s bench and whether the court relied on the adjoining-district exception at all. The Eastpointe rental file will show who the city recorded as occupying the house next door to Galen and when that began. Readings at the Eastpointe address before December 2022 would show whether the meter ever moved like a home after the date Makoski gave the assessor.

Why This Matters

A magistrate sets bonds, signs warrants and decides cases. Makoski holds that authority at the pleasure of the judge he once represented, whose campaign he served as treasurer, and whose house sits next door to the address he uses in Eastpointe. The question I raised on September 27 was where he actually lives. The question now is narrower and harder to wave away: whether the sworn statement he gave the City of Warren in June 2022 was true.

Every record that has come back so far points the same way. The assessor’s file says he left. The Warren meter says the house kept running. The Eastpointe meter says almost nobody arrived. An absentee ballot for the November 3 election has already gone out to him at the Eastpointe address. I will report what the voter file shows the day it arrives. If you know something about this arrangement, send it through Clutch Intel.