City deals with meetings issue
Official says man was 'boorish'
Comments (...)MORRISON – A top city official says he had a police officer remove a Morrison man from a public meeting last year because the man displayed “boorish and inappropriate behavior” earlier in the day.
The man, Richard Ayres, filed a complaint with the attorney general. A decision could be made soon.
On July 12, City Administrator Jim Wise asked Ayres to leave a meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission. Ayres declined, so Wise got an officer to order him out.
On Aug. 28, Ayres filed an Open Meetings Act complaint with the state attorney general’s office, saying he had been illegally removed from a public meeting. On Sept. 8, the office informed Ayres that the matter warranted further investigation.
In his response to the complaint, Wise said he was approached in the early afternoon of July 12 by an employee who expressed concerns with Ayres’ behavior.
“The [employee] advised she felt threatened by his actions and that his conduct impacted her emotionally and had caused her to break down and cry,” Wise wrote.
Wise said that he was responsible for the health and safety of employees and that he immediately investigated.
“From my investigation, I was able to determine that while Mr. Ayres was present in City Hall, he was perceived by employees of the city as acting belligerently and condescending,” Wise said. “Further, the female employees had felt threatened by his behavior.”
Ayres showed up again at City Hall later that afternoon. Wise said he was upset about Ayres’ previous unprofessional treatment of city employees, asking him “politely” to leave the building.
Wise called an officer, who told Ayres to leave. Ayres did so without any problems.
Wise said it was his perception that Ayres entered the meeting “for the sole purpose of evading my request to leave City Hall.”
Wise didn’t give details on what Ayres said or did to cause employees to feel threatened. He declined to elaborate during an interview Tuesday.
In his statement, Ayres said he was in City Hall on July 12 when the employee in question was interrupting his conversation with Mayor Roger Drey. Ayres said he asked why she was so rude to him. She said it was because he was rude to her, he said.
Ayres said he responded that he didn’t think he was rude to her, but “I guess that is where we stand then.”
When Ayres was speaking with the employee, his friend, Alderwoman Marti Wood, was nearby. Both said Drey, who is a sheriff’s deputy, and Police Chief Brian Melton were there, but neither said anything. That suggested that neither believed Ayres was threatening to the employee, Wood and Ayres said.
Drey has publicly backed Wise’s actions in the matter.
In an interview Tuesday, Ayres said Wise’s letter made it seem as if he should undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
“There was no hollering or shouting,” Ayres said.
Wood said Ayres wanted to go to the Historic Preservation Commission meeting. When they arrived at the meeting at City Hall, Wise pulled her aside, she said.
The administrator asked Wood to request that Ayres leave the building, she said. She asked why. He said he had sent her an email about the issue, but Wood hadn’t seen it yet.
“I told him if he had a problem with Rich, he needed to address Rich himself since he was here,” Wood wrote in a statement to the attorney general’s office.
The attorney general probably will release a decision on the case this month, Assistant Attorney General Tola Sobitan said Tuesday.
She said she has written her opinion and submitted it to a supervisor for approval.
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