Collusion Where?

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I had the rare opportunity to be off of work (mostly) for the last 4 days. Being a small business owner (including this) means that I am running almost non-stop... and the winter season in the photography world is the most busy with the Christmas deadline.

So it is rare to get multiple days off and usually only happens during the holiday. Thankful for the short break.

But the break is over... back to work we go! (Although we are off to Epcot for the day to hang out with my brother and sister in law).

The plan for the next two days is to recap things we covered in 2025... but this will not be a list of just things we talked about. We will talk about changes that we helped usher in.

We will jump into those things Tuesday and Wednesday before we kick off the new year with a challenge for everyone. More on that then.

Today, we are going to address a comment that was made on the Facebook page the other day by the Chamber CEO, Josh Wooten. I suppose I should be honored that he has taken such an interest in what I am doing... but the question I have is... is this the proper role for the Chamber CEO? A topic for another day I suppose.

Here is the comment for all those interested.

It was in reference to the post I made about Leslie Bollin being assigned back to her original position.

Where did this come from and what is he talking about?

Well it started from this.

It is a public records request that was made to City of Crystal River the day after the Council selected Mindi Hastings for the spot to replace Cindi Frink. It was done using an anonymous email. FYI, state law does not require a real name or email to ask for public records.

While I have no way of knowing for sure who sent the request, I have a speculation... but will keep that to myself for now. However, it is clear that Josh Wooten is aware of it and may have even seen the records that were provided, or at least, was told about them from the person(s) asking for them.

In any case, the records request is wanting emails, text messages, etc from city manager Audra Curts to several people (including myself) as well as from Councilmember Gabrielle Satchell and several people.

While no reason was given, nor required to be given, I presume part of it is related to the surprise motion brought by Satchell to name Hastings to the council. No one expected that to happen at the last meeting. I have heard rumblings of some in Crystal River not being too happy about it as they wanted another person to be selected. I suppose the goal is to find out how that vote happened.

Again.. those are assumptions by me... and you know what they say when you assume...

What is all this about collusion? How am I (and others) retaliating against the city attorney, council members or staff as Josh speculated to?

First, let's define collusion. From Oxford Dictionary:

Collusion - secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.

Now, we go to the records. Since these are now public record and can be asked for by anyone, I will supply them here. These are ALL of my text messages to Audra Curts, which she also supplied for this request.

For the record, normally I would not put out text messages like this with a regular person. If you have texted me in the past, do not think you will see them on here one day. I am including these because they are with a public official who supplied them as part of a records request. They are now public record. Remember, those not in government are not required to comply with public records laws. I do not have to disclose any texts, emails, call logs, etc and no one can ask me to disclose them

I am the gray boxes in this exchange.

So... let's get into it.

The first contact I had with Audra was on October 23rd. I had been tipped off by someone else that Audra may be fired by the council at the meeting the next week. I asked that person to get me in touch with Audra so I could hear her story.

We chatted for a bit that day and I told her what I tell everyone...

"Thank you for the information. Before I do anything, I will need to verify what you told me and I will go from there. I may reach back out with questions or more information as I find it".

It is very important that I verify things before writing about them. It is not that I do not trust the person telling me something... but I need to verify it myself. I started to do that. I provided my email if she wanted to email me anything.

You can read about all that here or here or here.

The next day, Audra was to meet with Mayor Joe Meek and city attorney Rob Batsel. I had asked her to call me after that meeting to give me an update. She sent me the Chronicle article that had already been written by the time she called me an hour or so after her meeting. She told me she did not tell the Chronicle... so someone in that meeting told it to them... hence the texts about it.

Interesting.

Over the weekend, I started to look into all the records I could find about the city manager, the evaluations, etc. I went through meeting minutes to see what was said, watched videos and so on. I reached back out to Audra for verification on a few things.

I went to city hall on Monday to ask to see if there were any disciplinary letters or anything in her personnel file. Nothing was found.

Later that night, I did the records request for former Councilmember Cindi Frink at the meeting in the open to public section. I had noticed she was texting that entire meeting and I asked to see those text messages.

I presumed she would tell me they were personal in nature and I relayed that to Audra. During that time, I had been told by someone else that Batsel is a close friend with the Frinks and that perhaps he would try to help Cindi navigate the records request.

Fun fact... Batsel has made exactly ONE contribution to a candidate running for office that I can find.... That was $500 to Ken Frink for his school board run. Certainly does not suggest anything, other than to confirm friendship, but found it interesting.

In any case, I got confirmation from the city that Cindi did not have an texts from the meeting and that they were all personal in nature. I then fired off this email to Batsel.

I received this response.

I followed up with this question.

And not surprising, I did not get an answer to that question. I did not really need one because I already knew the answer. The answer is yes, those messages would be considered public record. So why could he not answer that in the affirmative via email?

Further, why is the city attorney involved in this to begin with? This is the responsibility of the records custodian, Mia Fink. She does not need to go to Batsel for these messages. She is also responsible for reviewing text messages in person to determine if they are public record or not... just as she would for email and other records. This was in the handbook Batsel sent me in the email referenced above.

She did not do this. She sent an email to Cindi asking for her to send the texts. This is also the reason I asked to review them the night of the meeting, so that I could be there when they were reviewed, but Cindi left very quickly after the meeting.

Then in follow up texts, I find out the city devices are being used by staff to send text messages but the city has no records of these texts. I begin to research the city policies regarding technology and cell phones.

I provide that information to Audra to help her gather text messages and to address the pushback from Batsel that I presumed would happen (it did).

Remember, I also heard staff making comments during this meeting, so I could tell that they were unhappy with the results of that meeting. I had been told that they were texting with Cindi that evening and prior to the meeting... by people other than Audra.

All this led me to believe that there was an effort to exclude some things from the records request as "personal" in nature.... and to my knowledge, none of those messages were viewed by Fink to determine if they were in fact personal or not.

I certainly do not think that Batsel (or Fink) broke any laws, nor am I suggesting that they did... but I do feel they advised that personal texts are not public record... which is the "cover" I mentioned to Audra in the texts. It was then claimed they were personal texts in the records response regarding the texts from the meeting.

I then begin to look into the history of the city attorney and found out that Batsel was not the original city attorney. He was brought in after Ken wanted to see the previous one fired. Batsel was #2 in the previous RFP, so when it was suggested by Ken to fire the Hogan firm, it was recommended to award it to Batsel. In that research, I then found out that his contract had expired and was never renewed.

During this entire exchange, I share things as I find them and ask a few questions for more information on various topics. I point out to her issues with the city's records retention of texts messages on city devices (it didnt exist). I point out issues with the city attorney's contract. And so on.

What you do not see here are all the other public records requests I did in the research phase of all of this... where I asked for records related to the anonymous people in the evaluations... records related to issues raised in the evaluations and so on. As I said before, I looked into all of this before I wrote anything and then updated as I found out more.

Maybe this person should ask for all those records.

So there you have it... there is the "collusion" being referenced by the Chamber CEO trying to imply that I am directing her to get rid of the city attorney, staff and so on.

First of all, nothing here is "secret". I am texted a government employee. I know everything in those text messages is public record and will be subject to disclosure. That is the furthest thing from a secret conversation.

Where is the deception? I put out what I find when I find it. These texts share what I have found as I started looking into it. Am I deceiving anyone? It is all there for you to see and also why I screenshot things and link to references.

Is any of this illegal? Nope... Is any of this cheating someone out of something? Nope..

So again, where is the collusion and why is the Chamber CEO accusing me and others in colluding with one another and/or Audra/Gabrielle?

For the record, I also reviewed all the other texts that were provided by Audra for this request and do not see any collusion going on there either... I havent gotten the emails sent to me yet, so maybe someone found something there or something I missed in the texts, so I will be waiting on the edge of my seat for that to drop.

Enjoy your day. I'll rejoin you all tomorrow after taking a tour of the world and colluding with all the world leaders at Epcot today!