Advertisement Over the course of a four-hour board meeting, a standing-room-only crowd heard about dysfunction in the town hall, board members being locked out of the hall, allegations of harassing e-mails and general disdain at town business being aired in public.
Although every seat was filled in the small town hall and a dozen residents stood in the back, only five citizens directly addressed the board during the citizens’ concerns portion of the meeting. Many of the comments addressed interoffice conflicts that emerged in the town hall since the hiring of Paul Kitzman as town administrator and peaked this weekend in a flurry of rumors and accusations.
“To get all this publicity that we’ve had in the paper is just pathetic,” said Francis Brown, commenting on stories that ran in last week’s Courier-Life and La Crosse Tribune, as well as an interoffice e-mail that was published on the Courier-Life Web site. “(Kitzmann) should be allowed to make a few changes and request a few things, but to read what I read in the paper was just disgusting.”
According to Town Clerk Sue Schultz and Peg Hanson, the town’s longtime secretary who quit abruptly last week, Kitzmann has shaken up office duties since being hired as administrator in January. Many attendees at the meeting held copies of a three-page e-mail between Kitzmann and Hanson acquired by the Courier-Life that listed at least 16 different ways Hanson needed to change the way she worked.
According to Schultz, most of Kitzmann’s complaints came in the form of e-mail, despite the three employees’ sharing a small office. But Kitzmann responded that he just wants to keep an official record of interoffice communication.
Monday’s meeting was the longest Onalaska Town Board meeting in at least 18 months, and several sighs, emotional outbursts and curse words could be heard from the crowd.
“The communication between you and Sue and whoever replaces Peg has to be raised to a level of ‘let’s discuss this,’” board member Howard Kelly told Kitzmann during a protracted discussion of one resident’s tax bill. “That’s what is supposed to happen. It’s not to wait until the meeting to discuss a whole bunch of stuff because you guys don’t want to communicate throughout the course of the day.”
The communications breakdown was brought up later when Kitzmann was asked why the town hall locks were changed Friday afternoon, a development that kept some board members locked out of the town hall and prompted even more chatter from town residents.
When asked, Kitzmann explained that the town’s fireproof safe, which is used to store voting records, was unable to be opened on Friday. That was the only day a specialized locksmith could make a call to the town hall, so Kitzmann explained that he had the external locks changed at the same time.
“There’s no reason why one e-mail shouldn’t have gone out to everybody,” said board member Shane Davis. “But that wasn’t put out there. That wasn’t said, and I’m getting calls (from residents).”
Although the board heard explanations on many subjects over the course of the evening, one issue that was not fully explained was the surprise resignation of Hanson, who served as town secretary for the previous 12 years. Board members said it was a personnel matter that needed to be handled in closed session, much like a March 17 meeting that is currently being investigated by the La Crosse County District Attorney for violating open meeting laws.
Although official citizen comments were split between support and opposition of Kitzmann’s job performance, the board meeting contained many snide comments and outbursts from the gathered citizens.
“This is the biggest bunch of bull crap I’ve ever heard,” a standing Carl Berringer exclaimed before removing himself from the meeting. “This is a bunch of garbage. … Why don’t you deal with the real issues?”
Monday’s meeting could have been the final gathering of the current Onalaska Town Board, as Town Chairman Stan Hauser and board members Joe Schaller and Warren Booth are all up for re-election April 7.
Taking care of business
Over the course of its four-hour meeting Monday, the Onalaska Town Board:
Consider This wrote on Apr 2, 2009 9:08 PM:
wrote on
Apr 1, 2009 6:25 AM:
" consider this
with your considerable experience in HR matters, perhaps you could step in as a write-in candidate and lead the way for me...I have a year left on my term.
Howard "
Yep, only one more year, I'm counting down the days. "