Oitzinger conducts session on lawsuit against city

MARINETTE — Alderman Doug Oitzinger promised to reveal what transpired during what has been ruled an illegal closed session of the Marinette Common Council on Oct. 7, 2020.

He delivered on that promise at a town hall meeting Tuesday at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Marinette. About three dozen people attended. Oitzinger, who represents Ward 3, presented a 51-page PowerPoint that detailed the history of his lawsuit against the city and where it stands. He then took questions from citizens.

Oitzinger said during the closed session meeting of Oct. 7, 2020, there were no handouts provided and there was a virtual presentation without graphics by the engineering consultants of Ruekert-Mielke of Green Bay. He said the engineers were hired to evaluate eight different alternative drinking water solutions for the town of Peshtigo in April 2020. Only two of those alternatives involved the city of Marinette as a water source, he said.

“The closed session meeting involved the engineers providing their phase one evaluation of all eight solutions during a virtual meeting with the City Council, mayor, utility manager and attorneys,” Oitzinger said. “There was no discussion of negotiation strategy with the town of Peshtigo in the closed session. There were technical pros and cons of each alternative water solution presented by the engineers.”

“The mayor (Steve Genisot) then stated that he didn’t want to spend any more money to even have their information turned into a report because the town of Peshtigo hadn’t asked the city for water,” Oitzinger said. “He wanted to wait until we were contacted by the town before proceeding any further.”

Oitzinger said Genisot was contacted by the town prior to that meeting and a report from the consultants did exist, also before that meeting.

A couple of ‘bombshells’Oitzinger, calling it Bombshell No. 1, said a written report dated July 9, 2020 had been kept hidden from the City Council on Oct. 7, 2020. He said during discovery for the case, it was determined Genisot authorized payment for that report prior to the Oct. 7, 2020 meeting.

“Once the report became public, we learned that the report stated that the city was the most cost-effective and best long-term solution for safe drinking water for the town of Peshtigo,” Oitzinger said.

Genisot, contacted Wednesday, said neither the council nor his office received the report prior to the Oct. 7, 2020 meeting. “The attorneys and consultants had discussions about it and then they formally presented the highlights of the report at closed session,” he said. “There were a lot of players as far as discussing what we should do.”

The mayor also said the most viable option isn’t always the most practical. “There are so many variables,” he said. “What’s the long term (ramifications)?” He said everything was discussed in closed session.

“Doug voted to go into closed session,” Genisot said. “He heard the same presentation I did for the first time. We did not have a physical report.”

Regarding payment for the report, Genisot said it’s common for pay requests to be submitted throughout a contract.

“The council continually approves contracts,” he said. “There’s always pay requests on any contracts. It’s nothing unusual. If you don’t know what that means, the assumption is that it’s something evil or terrible.”

Genisot said Oitzinger, as a former mayor, knows the routine. “He sat in this seat just as long as I did,” he said. “You do pay requests every month. You pay based on 20%, 30%, 40% complete. I think at that point we were at about 50% complete (with the consultants) before we met with council. That’s when we decided not to complete the contract because we would have to spend just as much.”

He said also at that time, the city was negotiating with Tyco and there were a lot of moving parts.

In what he called Bombshell No. 2, Oitzinger said Genisot was not truthful when he stated the city had not received a formal request from the town of Peshtigo regarding providing water to the town.

Oitzinger said the mayor was careful to use the word formal when answering questions about the subject. He then presented a letter from the town’s hired law firm, dated July 10, 2020, stating the town board had authorized it to begin discussions with the city regarding possible extension of city water to the town.

“Apparently, a letter from an attorney representing the town asking to begin discussions with the city didn’t qualify as being ‘formally’ contacted by the town of Peshtigo,” Oitzinger said.

Genisot said the letter provided from a law firm came from a firm that the town had already fired.

The background and beyond

Oitzinger said the city had a pattern of secrecy and he found other meetings that potentially violated the Open Meetings Law but the Marinette County District Attorney’s Office would not investigate citing conflict of interest.

He said he filed the lawsuit on two of the complaints that had the biggest impact on the community on Nov. 17, 2021 in Oconto County. The first meeting, Oct. 6, 2020, dealt with Tyco/Johnson Controls’ “donation agreement” to purchase to dry and compress PFAS contaminated biosolids for shipment to a landfill. The second meeting, Oct. 7, 2020, involved the presentation by Ruekert-Mielke who had been hired by the city to study alternatives for clean, safe drinking water for town of Peshtigo residents that were suffering from PFAS contamination in their wells.

Oconto County Circuit Judge Jay Conley, on Dec. 11, 2023, ruled in favor of the city for the Oct. 6 meeting, but against the city for the Oct. 7 meeting. Both rulings have been appealed. Oitzinger doesn’t expect anything to be resolved until mid to late 2025 or later.

Was it worth it?

Oitzinger said he has seen things change for the better regarding the city. He said there were seven closed sessions in 2020, one in 2022 and four in 2023. He also said the listing of agenda items is showing some progress.

He added that there is more open government in the form of council meeting discussions.

“However, there continues to be frequent closed door discussions between the mayor and his key allies on the city council to predetermine outcomes of those meetings,” he said. “So, it is a legitimate question if anything has really changed. I know in my heart I tried to do the right thing for our citizens.”

Oitzinger said the entire process has been draining on him.

“Most disappointing is how petty politics interfered with potentially helping out neighbors in the town of Peshtigo get safe drinking water,” he said. “We’ve also allowed Tyco to get the better of the city in negotiations over the damages they have caused and continue to cause to our taxpayers.”

Genisot said the matter has been draining on everyone involved, not just Oitzinger.

He agreed that this process could have been settled long ago. “He could have stopped this early on,” he said of Oitzinger. “We had the League (of Municipalities) up here to talk about open meetings law. We proposed possible options. It was never enough. He continued to sue and we couldn’t settle on any terms, and frankly, he appealed now because he didn’t like the results. We’re trying to be reasonable.”

The mayor said with all the good things happening, this is a “black eye” the city has to handle.

Following the meeting, Oitzinger explained his purpose for the session.

“I promised the community I would explain this because I couldn’t while we were in litigation,” he said. “This was my time to come out and say, ‘here’s what happened, here’s what we learned.’”