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Letter to the Editor: New Spirit of Cooperation?

When the Granary was moved to the East side of the city, supporters placed an encouraging message on it, “A New Spirit of Cooperation.” Perhaps we could move on with some normalcy in our city, but sadly recent meetings of the newly elected City Council have damped my hopes. On July 3, after the council meeting Kelly Catarozoli, sister of a litigant in the original West side law suit, in a statement to doorcountydailynews.com that she planned to “file a motion to terminate” the City Administrator. She offered no basis for this decision.

At the July 17, council meeting council person Laurel Hauser indicated she had negative material to bring forth but did not elaborate. During the public comment portion of the meeting a citizen complained about the administrator’s work performance. For your information, his place of business is next door to the Catarozoli B & B.

Prior to moving to Sturgeon Bay as Campus Dean at NWTC, I was a senior manager at the Little Golden Books Company (Western Publishing) for nearly 25 years. I believe this is relevant because some in this community believe that since Wisconsin is an “at will state” in employment matters, the above actions of certain council members is completely legal. My fellow managers and I were trained in employment matters and were cautioned by HR professionals that you needed to follow a well-defined course of action when terminating an employee to avoid serious legal($) consequences. Some but not all include having a job description for the employee; having an active performance review system in place; having a multi-step corrective action process in place for those deemed to be underperforming. All this needs to be in place and functioning before you consider firing a person. I believe that many of these items are in place, and thus the actions of some on the council is nothing more than retaliation because the administrator followed the directions of prior city councils. [Editor’s note: the city does not have a performance review system or corrective action process in place. See more on this topic in this week’s article “City Leaves Administrator Hanging in the Wind.”]

I feel it important to point out that council members Catarozoli, Hauser and Allmann were found to be in February 2018, in violation of Wisconsin Open Meeting laws.

In conclusion, if you feel that the city administrator is being treated unfairly, call your council representative and tell them to put an end to this miscarriage.

 

Robert Loss

Sturgeon Bay, Wis.

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