Council, staff to work with LMC mediator

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

The Henning City Council will be seeking an outside source to work through issues between the council, as well as with city employees.

During its regularly scheduled meeting last Monday night, the Henning City Council approved moving forward with seeking assistance from the League of Minnesota Cities. 

Henning City Councilwoman Tammy Fosse told the council she spoke with Pamela Whitmore from the LMC who helps cities where there is tensions and tries to help the city work through the issues. Fosse said Whitmore has worked with other cities and suggested utilizing her services to navigate through some of the issues facing the city. 

“She comes into cities when there is this tension and these issues and she tries to help fix it. We have two years of doing all of this so my concern is we get too many people putting up barricades (and) we are never going to get anywhere. We are going start having communication issues,” she said. “I think we have shown we can’t resolve it on our own, but I would hope that maybe the league with Pamela we would be able to sit down and go through some sessions and get it figured out.”

Councilman Wes Johnson said the city needs to try something new as what is happening now is not working. 

“Well in order to get anything done we have to do something because right now it is not going to work. We have too many hard feelings in the whole group that needs to be fixed,” said Johnson. 

The council said it would reach out to Whitmore and see what dates would be available to meet over Zoom or online to begin conflict resolution. 

In other news

• Closed the meeting on two occasions to discuss allegations made against city employees. When the meetings were reopened the council said no wrongdoing was determined to have occurred and no further action will be taken regarding the allegations. 

• Heard update from Brenden Markuson on the utility department. Markuson said the city recently purchased a used truck to add to its fleet.

• A special work session will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 17 at 5:30 p.m. to discuss utility rates and budgets for the city.