OPINION: Galesville Council Member Kreger Deserves Some Props

For much of last week Tuesday’s special Galesville city council meeting on attorney fees and a records request to the city police department by councilor Tory-Kale Schulz, Kelly Kreger was quiet as she followed along with conversation between the rest of the council, city employees, the public and anyone else who felt like speaking up.

There was plenty of discourse throughout the meeting, including unsolicited comments from members of the public in a meeting with no listed public comment, conversation regarding items not on the agenda and ongoing discussions that seemed to spin around in circles with occasional raised voices and hurt feelings the result.

In a meeting that needed somebody to step up and take control in a responsible manner, Kreger did so.

Kreger waited almost an hour for the very end of the meeting when she first spoke on the attorney bills. She asked the council to stay focused on the reason for Tuesday’s meeting.

“What’s on the agenda is the cost, and the reason was not necessarily to debate all of this,” Kreger reminded the council.

“We’re letting you know, ‘By the way, we are again above our budget. We’re letting you know that that’s what happened and that’s where we’re at so that you don’t get your packet and say, ‘Oh my goodness gracious. They didn’t tell me again that this happened.’ So here we are. Here I am, telling you that it’s happening and letting you know some of the reasons why.  … We really can’t talk about all the rest that was discussed. It really didn’t have a lot to do with the simple, this is what’s going on with the legal fees.”

City attorney Dan Arndt also told the council that they needed to get back to the reason they were all at City Hall for the special meeting, and I thought he did so in a responsible manner as an involved but outside voice.

Sometimes it is the municipal attorney’s job to step in and steer an elected board in the right direction to keep them on track and follow open meeting laws, and I thought Arndt did a fine job of that last week.

“There’s been a good discussion here. Some of it’s the substance of should we have as many policemen? That’s a perfectly legitimate policy decision for you to debate and decide. … really what we’re here for tonight is how do we pay Arndt, Buswell & Thorn less money—which would be great with me—and how do we resolve getting over this current bump in the road?”

“There’s really nothing that justifies all this problem, anxiety that we’re going through. And that, quite frankly, again, has been the pattern for the last year and a half that there’s a lot of boiling going on that isn’t leading to any substantive policy discussion,” Arndt said.

I give full credit to them, as well as councilor Dave Carlson, who volunteered to bring the issue at hand to committee in an attempt to avoid further legal fees, for trying to resolve an ongoing issue. 

As Arndt pointed out on Tuesday, Galesville’s council meetings over the last year or so have become steaming pots filled with arguments and personal issues that can’t be left aside by some elected officials and result in residents and employees laughing from the audience because meetings have become shows that could sometimes call for popcorn.

If I were a citizen sitting in the room on Tuesday, those people would have earned some respect for caring about following open meeting laws, sticking to the agenda and getting work done that hopefully impacts the future in a positive way.

Galesville could use more of that opposed to the mess it has been through.