Councilors: Time for Galesville to move past issues, but legal fees a concern

A Galesville city council member hopes the elected board has put its previous personnel issues in the past after legal fees have piled up.

Council member Jean Wallner spoke at last week’s meeting, saying it is time for the council to move past the public disagreement between councilor Tory-Kale Schulz and Mayor Vince Howe.

The council approved paying more than $5,000 in legal fees at the meeting as part of its agenda.

City-contracted law firm Arndt, Buswell & Thorn SC was paid $4,065.50 for its work related to Schulz’s restraining order against Howe.

The city also paid $1,182.32 to Arcadia law office Kostner, Koslo & Brovold, LLC related to Howe’s citizen request to remove Schulz from his elected seat on the council, which required a planning hearing, according to bills in the council documents.

“I feel a little bit uncomfortable just approving it because we’ve been advised by you, sir (Howe), over the years how we are not to call the attorney for unnecessary guidance because we run up a bill,” Wallner said at last Thursday’s meeting.

“And yet when you proceeded with the petition, especially, you sought no counsel from anyone on the council, and we’re the ones that are in charge of the purse. So, I know we have to pay them, but I just want to say I feel that that should have been thought out a little bit more by you and also you should have maybe gotten some better advice from someone on the council, preferably the finance committee.”

Wallner was not the only council member to take issue with the bills, as representative Dave Carlson also commented on the high attorney fees.

Carlson asked that the finance committee or the council look at its policies to see how it can protect the city from any future situation where legal fees can climb quickly for city officials.

“We’re trying to heal and we don’t want to rehash all this, so I’m going to try to keep this brief. But a couple of months ago my expression was that we need to develop some kind of a policy so that in the unlikely event, hopefully, that something like this transpires again and we’re entering into where an official — either a council member or the mayor — is facing litigation in performance of their duties that the council would have an opportunity at the front end to understand what that is and maybe set some guardrails and some limits so it’s not a blank checkbook, because I feel like that’s what this became.”

Both of the legal bills were approved by a 5-0 vote, with councilor Diane Redsten absent.