Public Criticism
This was read into the record during Persons To Be Heard at the February 13 city council meeting:
Dear Mayor and council,
I am here is response to the February 8th article in the Wrangell Sentinel. I am very disappointed in the way the article was written. I understand the need to sell papers but to misconstrue what a person says to make an article more appealing is distasteful in my opinion. First, I have never denied involvement regarding the WSI contract. That just doesn’t make sense; my name is after all on the contract. In my own defense, I was out of town until the end of January and have been working on getting all delinquent accounts noticed. Along with trying to finish all Government reporting and complete any unfinished projects before I leave the electrical department and move to a new city department. It is not easy to completely change the administration of a total department in 2 ½ months and I have been very stressed with this task. I do believe Lisa did a very good job of trying to pit department/employee against the council. Mayor McCandless is correct in saying that there is a misunderstanding. I did not say that it had been turned over to her or to any council person. I did say that there had been workshops and that I was not sure what was going on with everything. I admit, I did lose my patience with Lisa, her constant hounding and trying to put words in my mouth did not set well with me and I probably did not make the best impression. I have always had great pride in my job and to cause problems or embarrassment to the city or anyone serving the city is not my goal and I truly apologize if this was the case. I did follow up on the situation and found what direction needed to be made. I then made contact with WSI that day both written and verbally in regards to the past due payment and worked with them on getting the correct contract amounts for payment. They promised to make the payment by the end of the day. I passed all this information on to our City clerk and hoped everything was back on track. It was unfortunate that both I and Julie from WSI have been out of town, it’s not an excuse just inconvenient.
I was not informed that Lisa was interviewing and I told her the first time that she called that I did not have the information she was asking for at the time and to contact City hall. This office does not make a habit of discussing people’s account with people not involved with that specific account unless it’s working with public assistance offices. I did not feel I wanted to discuss this with the media and made that known. People do deserve a certain amount of privacy when it comes to their finances and I have always tried to respect this no matter who they are.
Once again I am sorry that this turned into a circus. It was not my intention but clearly it was the intention of the newspaper.
Respectfully,
Terri Henson
Electrical department
Below is the link to the article Terri Henson is referring to:
http://www.thewrangellsentinel.com/Stories/020807wsi_payments.htm
Dear Mayor and council,
I am here is response to the February 8th article in the Wrangell Sentinel. I am very disappointed in the way the article was written. I understand the need to sell papers but to misconstrue what a person says to make an article more appealing is distasteful in my opinion. First, I have never denied involvement regarding the WSI contract. That just doesn’t make sense; my name is after all on the contract. In my own defense, I was out of town until the end of January and have been working on getting all delinquent accounts noticed. Along with trying to finish all Government reporting and complete any unfinished projects before I leave the electrical department and move to a new city department. It is not easy to completely change the administration of a total department in 2 ½ months and I have been very stressed with this task. I do believe Lisa did a very good job of trying to pit department/employee against the council. Mayor McCandless is correct in saying that there is a misunderstanding. I did not say that it had been turned over to her or to any council person. I did say that there had been workshops and that I was not sure what was going on with everything. I admit, I did lose my patience with Lisa, her constant hounding and trying to put words in my mouth did not set well with me and I probably did not make the best impression. I have always had great pride in my job and to cause problems or embarrassment to the city or anyone serving the city is not my goal and I truly apologize if this was the case. I did follow up on the situation and found what direction needed to be made. I then made contact with WSI that day both written and verbally in regards to the past due payment and worked with them on getting the correct contract amounts for payment. They promised to make the payment by the end of the day. I passed all this information on to our City clerk and hoped everything was back on track. It was unfortunate that both I and Julie from WSI have been out of town, it’s not an excuse just inconvenient.
I was not informed that Lisa was interviewing and I told her the first time that she called that I did not have the information she was asking for at the time and to contact City hall. This office does not make a habit of discussing people’s account with people not involved with that specific account unless it’s working with public assistance offices. I did not feel I wanted to discuss this with the media and made that known. People do deserve a certain amount of privacy when it comes to their finances and I have always tried to respect this no matter who they are.
Once again I am sorry that this turned into a circus. It was not my intention but clearly it was the intention of the newspaper.
Respectfully,
Terri Henson
Electrical department
Below is the link to the article Terri Henson is referring to:
http://www.thewrangellsentinel.com/Stories/020807wsi_payments.htm
posted by Siapiau | 10:12 AM
2 Comments:
Intense story. I do not envy you one bit for having to cover such a tangled up city. Reading your stories really makes me appreciate how on top of things the city of Petersburg is. It makes covering council meetings so much easier.
And here I thought that City Council meetings were a place to discuss the business of the city, not the feelings of an employee of a business.
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