Where are the names?

Back to Crystal River.

If you recall, a few weeks ago, I had covered the City Council's desire to fire their City Manager Audra Curts. The council members all submitted evaluations of Curts. Two of those reviews were bad, two of them were good. Mayor Joe Meek did not fill out a review, but rather spoke to Curts in person. He then let me know his opinion (as well as the Chronicle) on why the change was needed.

Heading into the October 27th meeting, it appeared that the council was set to fire her. After a somewhat heated discussion, Council member Chris Ensing changed his mind and offered to give Curts 6 months to correct the issues he saw. The council agreed and voted 4-1 to keep her. Former council member Cindi Frink was the lone objection.

So why am I still talking about it?

Something bothered me in this process. Everything was anonymous. All the conversations the council members had were "secret". They even acted on anonymous emails.

Let's jump in.

For me, this largely started with an anonymous email.

This email was sent to all council members and the mayor. There would be two other emails from the same email address that referenced several different issues within the city and why Curts needed to go.

Go back and read all about it if you need to catch up. I won't go into all that here.

Then I read the evaluations and something stood out.

Frink mentioned the anonymous email in her review and included it in her evaluation packet.

There is a separate email from City Attorney Robert Batsel that indicated the city cannot act on anonymous complaints.

So why is the anonymous email mentioned in the evaluation as something to be trusted and acted upon?

Further, there was another anonymous email. This one was sent by a different address and spoke of things happening behind the scenes.

But that one was not included in any evaluations? It was mentioned during the meeting, but this one does not have merit to be included in an evaluation?

I wanted to see how the emails were handled by the council members, so I did a records request for the email accounts. This is what came back.

What is interesting to me is how the emails were handled.

For instance, Frink forwarded the first anonymous email that bashed Curts to Batsel, but did not forward the 4th from a different person that expressed concerns about the effort to remove Curts. Both were from "staff members", so why not forward both to legal council?

Meanwhile, Council member Robert Holmes forwarded 3 emails to Batsel.

Another interesting observation, Frink replied back to two separate emails from the original anonymous sender, but does not appear that she replied to the second anonymous sender.

The records request did not show any other emails from council members to staff or replies to the emails that were sent, just those mentioned above.

So again, the question is why are they taking anonymous emails as something to be acted on, much less making part of the official evaluation... yet ignoring the somewhat positive one?

That brought me to another point. In the evaluations, City Council member Chris Ensing mentioned a few times that he received reports and whatnot from people regarding Curts.

That is a lot of conversations happening, so naturally, one would think they would be taking place over email, phone calls, text messages, etc, right?

So I did a records request.

For those that do not know, anything created in the official capacity as a council member is subject to records disclosure. It does not matter what device it is on, whether its personal or city, or what form of communication it was.

So all those things would be subject to disclosure if they existed. I got this as a response.

I noticed that letter A in my request was not addressed, so sent a follow-up

I got this as a response.

So the assumption here... If everything was face to face, then there would be no record of a phone call or anything, so nothing to disclose regarding call logs. Got it.

But now I am confused. Those were a lot of conversations referenced in the evaluation. None of those people called him on the phone or sent a text/email to set up a face to face meeting? That phone call and those texts/emails would be public record and subject to disclosure, but since none were disclosed, none of that happened?

He was just walking around town and people came up to him and started dishing their dirt on the city manager? Staff would approach him and have those conversations as well? Business owners as he is out and about? Not a single one called, texted or emailed that they wanted to talk to him about the city manager?

Hmmm... ok

Now, the same thing occurred with Frink and her evaluation. She mentioned similar reports and specifically mentioned telephone calls.

So I records requested her as well.

This is the response I received

Ok. So more anonymous conversations. Got it, but did not answer the records request in full. I asked for the call logs, simply telling me they were anonymous does not satisfy the request.

So I got this after a follow-up

Ok.. so two anonymous phone calls in July and August. I tested this out and Verizon will include the 999-999-9999 number for calls that used *67 to block the caller ID. However, per FCC regulations, the carrier would have access to the originating phone number, even if *67 was used... but requires a court order to get it.

The question I have now... is why all the secrecy? Why are they having anonymous phone calls and conversations? Why is there no record of any complaints? Everything is based off what someone told them, but no documentation to any of it.

Then they want to use all of that to terminate the contract of the city manager? This is one of those... "Just trust me" things with zero proof provided. They absolutely could have had those discussions, but it makes a far stronger case if they present the proof.

So why no names? I suppose you could argue that if the people were known, particularly staff, there could be fear of some type of repercussion... but as the attorney stated previously, they are protected from retaliation... at least staff.

Here is the thing with all of that. Staff had no problems in January 2024 writing letters about former city manager Doug Baber and his assistant. In fact, they put their names to them.

They made it very well known how they felt about Baber. You can read each of them below if you wish.

Why was staff not concerned about repercussions back in 2024, but now, so concerned about their current boss that they cannot write a similar letter expressing their concerns and using their names? They had to go behind the scenes in secret to two city council members? Only utilizing two *67 phone calls and in person conversations... no text messages or emails?

In fairness, Meek did tell me in an email he had conversations with staff. I had forgotten about that and had not done the records request for those conversations, so once I get that, I will update this.

But assuming he also had conversations, questions remain. Why would people talk to only those two council members and the mayor? Why not the other two, neither of which mentioned hearing any complaints during the meeting? Why not the attorney, which staff had reached out to regarding Baber? And why not put names to those conversations as they did the Baber letters?

All things that I am hoping to answer.