Council addresses employee complaint against council member

At a special meeting Oct. 17, the Prairie City City Council approved city attorney John Judisch to conduct a review of a city employees complaint. A 4-1 vote, with councilman John Lee casting the lone no vote, directed Judisch to look into the complaint first brought before council at its regular October meeting.

“Based on the nature of the complaints and having employee personal issues to consider, we believe it is the best course of action to refrain from discussion tonight and give direction to our attorney to do a full review of the complaint that was made and matter that pertain to it,” acting city administrator Joe Bartello said. “To meet individually with the parties involved to here any statements they have to make, review the situation in its totality.”

At the regular meeting a week earlier, public works director Carl Van Der Kamp addressed the council about comments he had heard from a fellow EMS volunteer. The comments, which he said came from councilman Lee “was very disturbing to the Van Der Kamp family.”

“Two weeks ago I was approached by a fellow ambulance volunteer that Councilman John Lee had told him the Van Der Kamp family was a cancer to the ambulance department,” Van Der Kamp said. “There have been additional comments that have been made over the past couple of years that I have chosen to ignore but I feel the recent comment needed to be addressed.”

Van Der Kamp detailed the decades of volunteerism his family has provided to the city and asked the council to remedy the situation in a timely fashion and see that these comments cease.

“I refuse to have myself or my family bullied by a council member or anybody in a city leadership role,” Van Der Kamp said.

As an independent third party, Judsich said he would meet individually with all of the primary parties involved, gather information and present a report to the council. He would not make any recommendations or draw any conclusions, only report his findings from the review.

“As I understand it, the goal is to kind of get everyone’s head wrapped around this, present it to the council and then hopefully people can come together and move forward and do whatever is necessary that everyone works together and moves forward in a seamless manner. I am not doing this to make recommendations or identify punishments,” Judisch said. “As I understand it, to be an independent, neutral party to gather all of the information. I represent the city, I don’t represent anyone here. The council will then review the information, and then the council will then take whatever action they deem appropriate.”

Lee also addressed the council with concerns he had about the review. He asked what legal basis does the city have to conduct the review and what would keep an employee from lying during the process.

“What would keep an employee coming in and just flat out, bold face lying to you and another one backs up behind him and follows up. When you bring it to the admin team, they say ‘oh, this individual is guilty of this’ but he does not have any recourse because under the attorney client privilege we can’t find out what was said, how it was said and how it was done. I have real issues with this,” Lee said. “They don’t have to tell you the truth. It could be hearsay, it could be half-truth, it could be all truth.”

He suggested the city undergo sensitivity training so “we have a line drawn in the sand, you have been taught, you have been trained, you go over that, then there are some recourse.” Bartello said while no one is ever under any real obligation to tell the truth, they act under the assumption that people will be honest while also backing it up with supporting evidence.

“We’ll have to make an assessment on the information that is presented,” Bartello said. “We have the complaint that is made by the employee. We want to ensure that as a city we take any complaint seriously and we show that we are taking action to address the complaint,” Bartello said. “By having essentially an independent review of the facts and circumstances that contributed to and were a result of the incident, I think that is the best way to address the complaint and find a way to move forward.”

Lee asked why this is now coming before the council, just a couple of weeks before the next election.

“Are we really blowing this whole thing out of proportion? If you take the five words that were said. If I didn’t self report myself, then it is here-say, because it is his word against my word. Where the issue is here, is I self reported it, I have openly said that I regret using those terms and that I was wrong. I was punished for it, I was punished. Going forward where else does it have to be? When you look at this era we live in and you look at me, there is not a person around that has not said things about people all the way around. I’ve had an employee, a city person walk into a meeting area and said ‘if John gets elected, I’m quitting.’ Now wait a minute, what degree do you start and say this whole thing, one is worse than another. You can sit there and do what you want to do with this interview because I am not going to be involved in this interview. There is nothing technically you can do for me. I want this issue to be settled and I think the only way it is going to be settled is through training.”

The report is due to the council by noon Nov. 6, ahead of the council’s workshop that evening.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com