UPDATES AND QUESTIONS ANSWERED Part 1

275. Welcome all to Blog 26.

Today I'd like to revisit the results of my many inquiries to the City, the Chief, the City Attorney and of course, the Mayor. As you know, in many of my Blogs, I say “I will get back to you when I hear something” or something to that effect. Well, today, I have all those results. Some are good, some are not so good and some are, let’s just say “questionable.

276. I’d like to start off with city council. As you know I sent them an email on Sept 18, 2023 to start an investigation into Mayor Paine's actions (see Blog 19, Point 236). I then sent another email on Sept 27, 2023 to investigate these bogus “bar checks”(See Blog 19, Point 253). I heard nothing back.

277. On October 12, 2023 I sent the following email to city attorney Frog Prell (See below).

From:brian noel 

Sent:Thursday, October 12, 2023 8:13 AM

To:Prell, Frog 

Subject:Procedure question

Hi Frog,

I recently sent two letters to city council, excluding the Mayor and his wife. They were both posted on my Blog. I have not heard anything back. An acknowledgment letter would have been nice, but my question to you is, what is the procedure when someone like me, sends a letter to them.

Thanks,

Brian

Good morning Mr. Noel, 

There really isn’t a procedure when it comes to sending correspondence to members of the common council. Just as you and I have First Amendment rights to free speech, the individual councilors have a right to be non-responsive. I hope that answers your question.

Have a good day, 

Frog Prell 

City Attorney, City of Superior

From:brian noel 

Sent:Thursday, October 12, 2023 11:59 AM

To:Prell, Frog <prellf@ci.superior.wi.us>

Subject:Re: Procedure question 

Let me ask you then, if you have concern like I have, how does one address it.

Brian

Mr. Noel, since I represent the city, I cannot give legal advice to citizens who look to have the city or any of its various employees or elected officials investigated. It would be a conflict for me to give any such advice. For what it’s worth, I think your letter(s) to the councilors (minus the Mayor and Councilor Van Sickle) were a reasonable outlet for you to express your concerns. But no councilor is obligated to request that an investigation be started or to otherwise act on the letter.

Frog Prell

City Attorney, City of Superior

From:brian noel 

To:Prell, Frog 

Sent:Monday, October 16, 2023 at 10:32:43 AM PDT

Subject:Re: Procedure question

So, am I to understand that the city has no process or procedure if someone has a concern with any city official.

Brian

Let’s start with Frog’s response. When he starts with “There really isn’t a procedure“ and “First Amendment rights to free speech”, I don’t know about you, but all I wanted to know was, how does council deal with a complaint. I wasn't thinking about taking away anybody’s “First Amendment rights to free speech”. I guess the proper question here would be “Why the hell do we even have a city council”. Frog, as well as city council work for us, the taxpayer. But after reading Frog’s explanation, the system seems to be set up to protect their behinds, not the taxpayer. It’s a system that is set up to fail the taxpayer. 

280. Remember this from the very first blog (See Below)

On May 20, 2022, someone we know said that councilman, Mark Johnson, would like to speak with me about the bar. I said that I would be happy to speak to him since I had not yet spoken to anyone from the city. Mark said he would be out of town for the weekend and to call him the following week. 

On May 23, 2022, I called Mark Johnson and left him a voicemail.

On May 25, 2022, I received a telephone call from Mark Johnson in the morning. Mark stated that he had to speak with someone at the city in order get permission to speak with me. I was not sure what that meant but it sounded weird to me. After all, he does represent the district where I live. However, he sounded like a pleasant and reasonable guy and whilst we were getting acquainted, he said he had to take another call and would call me back later that day. Our call lasted approximately 20 minutes, but we had yet to discuss the bar. I have not heard from him to this day. This makes no sense to me as he was the one who reached out to speak to me.

281. Well, that was over a year ago and I never did hear anything. So, who did he have to talk to get permission to talk to me. I will just have to assume it came from Frog’s office, and Frog, if you are reading this and I’m wrong, let me know who it was and I will make the correction. So, you see ladies and gentleman how the system is stacked against you. It needs to be changed, but in order to do that, you have to have a Mayor and city council that is committed to that. I'm not sure the current cast has the stomach for it. Earlier this year, I read this article (See below) in the Las vegas Review Journal. Maybe it’s something Superior should consider.

282. Did you know that a city councilor makes 7,000.00 a year. That’s about 135.00 a week. So, I have to think that money is not the motivator. A kid could make that much selling lemonade over the course of the summer. So what motivates someone to take this job. If sitting through city council meetings and being told who you can talk to isn't bad enough, then why would someone want to do this? And what exactly do they do? Well in my case, pretty much nothing. I can’t express how disappointed I am that after sending a total of 27 emails to 9 council members, I did not get a single response. I am sure that almost all people who have read my blog, would think that an investigation would be a reasonable request. But unfortunately the only 9 people that don’t seem to feel that way happen to be city councilors. If Melissa Hyatt sent council 27 emails, how may responses do you think she’d get? Just the fact that they seem under some kind of “gag order” makes this whole situation even more suspicious. I worked very hard to get my facts straight and truthful. In fact most of them came from the city itself, so for them to completely ignore my emails feels very disrespectful.

That’s it for now and thanks for reading,

Brian