5.3. SR 02-08-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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To; Elk River City Council From ;John Dietz Re: Ron Touchette investigation Date; January 18, 2010 Qn November 28, 2009 (the day after Thanksgiving} I received a message from Ron at my home, I was not home at the time but returned his call that same day. He was calling because the Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission had sent him a letter saying that if he didn't pay the back electric bills for waterfront East by that day that the power would be turned off, Previous to the phone call, Ron had met with City Attorney Peter Beck and Peter informed the Commission that he thought that Ron had agreed to pay the deposits for new accounts for the waterfront East buildings and would put the ~ 13,000 past due amount for those buildings into an escrow account with ERMU until the dispute over that amount was settled, Ron was very much on the offensive in that 1112$ call. He told me he had not agreed to an agreement with Peter Beck and that Peter basically didn't know what he was talking about. He kept telling me that I needed to take care of this immediately or it would make the City, the Utilities and Peter Beck look bad. He would spread the word around town about our incompetence and make sure that information got to the Star News, A111 promised him that day was that the power wouldn't go off until I had a chance to set up a meeting between Ron and Peter. I said the power still might be turned off but that at Least there would be one more meeting before that happened, we then had a meeting at the ERMU office on Dec.1, 2009 at 3 p,m. Ron was there as was Lori Johnson, Peter Beck, Troy Adams, Theresa Slominski and myself, Peter kept stressing to Ron that it said in his receivership papers that he was responsible for all bills necessary to keep the businesses in waterfront East open, Peter asked Ron to supply some case law or precedent to show why he didn't owe the back bills, Ron got very belligerent with Peter and atone point threatened to sue Peter and the City for slander. Ron gave no proof to back up his case. He said he was just right because that was the way it was. Ron's actions were very unprofessional, He kept threatening to "expose" the Utilities for its mistakes, basically telling us that if we didn't see it his way he would make us pay through negative publicity and a possible lawsuit. Peter told him we were simply following our policies and that if the money was put into escrow Ron would have to sue to get it back otherwise ERMU was keeping it. Ron constantly showed a lack of respect for the City attorney. There were several times I almost broke into the conversation to tell him that but I let Peter do the talking.