12-11-20 fdl city manager responds to emails released under open records request

Recently released emails following an open records request shows the Fond du Lac city manager was concerned early on about the lack of  involvement city staff had regarding a controversial alternative Lakeside park master plan.   A business group had pledged millions of dollars to help build a restaurant and amphitheater at Lakeside Park, asking the council to halt it’s previous decision to build a new park pavilion.   A memo from Fond du Lac city manager Joe Moore to councilmember Ben Giles last January questions why Giles never asked him or the public works director for their input?Moore told Giles  “…it appears  you don’t want our input, just our support, and I’m unclear why?”  Moore told Giles in his email that he was concerned the council may not be given the latitude to propose changes to the plan.   Earlier this week Moore talked about that correspondence on AM 1170 WFDL’s Between the Lines program.   “There were comments made that it was introduced in the way it was because the city staff was probably not going to welcome something that was different than the plan we had already worked up,”  Moore told WFDL news.  “So there was always that friction between why it had been introduced without any coordination.”   “I was concerned because I knew that the 90 day period from when this had been introduced was going to come due in the middle of February and so I knew that meeting with the council in February was going to be pretty significant and I worried that the proposal, the council didn’t have any flexibility in it.”  Less than a day later Giles sent an email to a Lakeside Forward member about his conversation with Moore, stating his fear that city staff may not be “fully supportive of the new park master plan”  and asking for   “thoughts on how to proceed.”  Moore says he was concerned there because he says he wasn’t sure when city staff members were communicating  “where our communications were going.”  “I was unclear at the time that email was being reviewed and staffed outside that private circle.”   Several months later, a lawsuit has been filed against the city,  and Giles faces an Ethics Board hearing.  The hearing scheduled for Friday has been postponed until after the first of the year.