03-21-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MINUTES OF THE ORONO CITY COUNCIL MEETING March 13, 2023 6:00 o’clock p.m. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Page 20 of 21 Walsh said boys hockey had an exciting game coming back from three zip and one of those goals bounced off the back of the glass and then hit the goalie’s back and fell in the goal. So that was one of the three goals. If they wouldn't have gotten that we would have beaten Warroad. That would have been unbelievable, but fate was not with us that day. But they should be proud. They did a great job. Boys Basketball is also in the section championship. That's either tomorrow or Wednesday. If they win that they'll be going to State too. So a lot of a lot of good stuff coming up. April 10, I think Adam mentioned we do have our groundbreaking, so I invite the public, if you want to come out to the public works facility and grab a shovel over there off Crystal Bay Road. As Councilmember Benson was also at the Northwest Hennepin League of Municipalities, I was also there and did bring up the issue about the inappropriate conversations and no one disagreed that was not inappropriate. And now there's a very big kerfuffle in that organization about who should be coming as guests. That's an issue they're wrestling with now because of the issues that have been created there. I did have the first Coffee with the Mayor on the second Wednesday of the month this last Wednesday. We had some good conversations and I see some people who are in the audience that were there. One of the sad things that happened is a Carter Anderson was there and got into disagreement with Mr. Erickson and it just turned into Mr. Erickson saying we want to take the south side. It was on video. On video, I'm talking. I'm talking. Carter Anderson was there and it's on video. So, it's sad. It's sad that that comes up. Speaking of the Benson letter, it's ironic that Benson's biggest financial supporter in the election is Mr. Brad Erickson. I think it’s a good time to address some of these issues. And she had to meet Mr. Erickson here at City Hall with our City Administrator in attendance because she was afraid to meet with him by herself. So it's definitely ironic that is going on being your biggest supporter. Walsh continued, there's a letter that Benson wrote, and I'm gonna address it. November 28, just keep talking or we can sit here all night. We can sit here all night, because as far as I'm concerned, both have serious credibility issues. We're gonna talk about the issues here. Let's start with Brad Erickson. Back in April, Brad Erickson came out for the first time. I hadn't seen him in a long time, and he came and yelled at us about taking care of his friend Jay Nygard’s garden and if we didn't, well, then I wouldn't be here. So we have manufactured anger with manufactured victimhood and trying to support each other. Let's start with the lie number one with credibility issues. Remember, Brad Erickson came back here in May and June and talked about the secret videos of me that he had that he wanted to show staff. This was his manufactured anger. And he finally admitted after a couple of months, his attorney finally admitted to Soren as he was trying to meet with staff that it was a lie. So that was manufactured anger, manufactured victimhood, lie number one. So now let's talk about the next manufactured anger and manufactured lie, that he decided to come and say that somehow I forced him to remove his wind turbine when he voluntarily took it down from his property in 2020. And even his lawyer called me to say that Brad was wrong that we never said anything like that. But he came and said that this was an issue why I should resign. And that's big lie number two, manufacturing a lie to be angry about. It’s manufacturing victimhood. So what you're seeing, in my opinion, is a pattern of deception, rage and victimhood to try and create rage in the City Council room. Now there's a current video that he has decided to say that supposedly I sent him in 2020, of which I have no recollection and I've got lots of phishing bots that send me links to send all the time on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, AOL, Gmail all the time. But it's interesting, because during the summer of 2020, I was conversing with Brad many times because we were friendly. And he was saying I could throw signs up in his lawn as long as they weren't Democrats. And I mentioned that there was one Democrat and he said I'm going to take it down immediately. And then he