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Fire Board Takes No Action over Alleged Improper Closed-Session Disclosure

Southern Door’s Fire Board decided July 13 to move on and not take any action involving what the board chair alleged was an improper disclosure by another board member of what the board discussed in closed session.

Loren Uecker, the board chair and one of the two Town of Forestville representatives on the board, accused Bill Krueger, a board member from the Town of Nasewaupee, of including information the board discussed in closed session in a letter Krueger presented April 19 at Nasewaupee’s annual town meeting.

Uecker brought up the matter before the Forestville Town Board during its June meeting, when the board urged him to contact the Door County District Attorney’s (DA) Office.

“I just asked for their opinion, what they thought, [the Forestville Town Board],” Uecker said. “Their jaws dropped, and they couldn’t believe it. They said, ‘Approach the DA.’”

Following the town board meeting, Uecker said he obtained forms from the district attorney’s office for him to file an open-meetings-law complaint, but he would leave it up to the fire board as to whether to submit the complaint.

During the annual meeting when Krueger presented his letter, Town of Nasewaupee residents passed an advisory motion to urge the town board to leave the Southern Door Fire Department (SDFD) and form the town’s own department.

The four municipalities in the SDFD include the Village of Forestville and the towns of Forestville, Nasewaupee and Clay Banks. Each municipality is represented by two people on the eight-member fire board. The department is funded by a tax levy, based on equalized value, with Nasewaupee covering more than two-thirds of the overall cost.

The SDFD has a north station in Nasewaupee and a south station in the Village of Forestville. Krueger’s letter claimed that firefighters at the south station received preferential treatment, based on a series of incidents. Krueger said he doesn’t believe he violated the open-meetings law with what he included in the letter.

“I just strictly mentioned two comments that were made that I thought were improper, because it showed total disrespect for the two firefighters from the north that had some concerns,” he said. “Other than that, I didn’t mention anything.”

When board members discussed whether to give Krueger a verbal warning, he said he wouldn’t have accepted it, had he received one, because he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.

“If you’re that convinced that I did something wrong, I’m willing to go the legal route, if that’s what you want to do,” he said.

In response to Uecker stating at last month’s Forestville Town Board meeting that he has been “under pressure” to remove Krueger from the fire board, which would take a three-fourths vote of all eight members, Krueger said he is not going to resign.

“I’m going to do what I think is right, and what’s fair,” Krueger said. “If that doesn’t sit good with the board, they’re going to have to do what they want to do down the road.”

Forestville Village President Terry McNulty, one of the village’s two fire board representatives, said Krueger’s letter aired matters that were not proper to bring out in public, but McNulty said the board should move on from that and set an example of working together in the future.

“We move on and come together,” he said.

SDFD Chief Rich Olson said he would like to see forgiveness on the fire board, whether or not there was any wrongdoing with what Krueger disclosed in his letter.

“The only way to let [the] waters calm is to let the waters calm, and let’s just move on,” he said.