By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Ortonville- During a special meeting on Wednesday night, the village council discussed the findings of an IT committee investigation into minutes on Documents on Demand and emails sent from and to the past village clerk.
“So as you recall, council tasked IT to go ahead and research the Personnel Committee meeting minutes as well as Documents on Demand deleted minutes and uploads,” said trustee Coleen Skornicka, also the trustee on IT committee. “The clerk sent numerous emails to Tonja and Larry indicating that there were issues beginning from Sept. 2019 and leading up to her resignation on July 30, 2020. There were several emails that were sent to Tonja and Larry reaching out for assistance, and to some replies and to some no reply and this to me, I mean this clerk was begging for assistance right, wrong or otherwise, she was begging for assistance from them.”
Council president Tonja Brice and trustee Larry Hayden are members of the personnel committee along with the office staff. The past clerk resigned on July 30, her reasoning being the current personnel committee and the current village manger as she stated a previous public meeting.
“In looking at the documents on demand, one of the questions was about the personnel committee meeting minutes,” said Skornicka. “It does not appear that there were any deleted personnel committee meeting minutes deleted out of documents on demand other than the one that appears it was in error.”

While the findings of the investigation were presented by Skornicka, the other council members were not given the investigation information in their packets for the meeting, nor were they available to the public as they are being reviewed by the village attorney to see if they are able to be released to the public. Attorney Mike Gildner stated that while he had reviewed some of the emails, he received other packets of information Wednesday afternoon, which he was not able to review in time for the meeting.
“So without any of us having that information in front of us, we have no way to verify, some of those are assumptions, some of those may be facts and some of those are interpretations,” said Brice. “To say that the clerk was not responded to with those emails is incorrect, there are phone calls, there are in-person conversations and there are texts, so those assumptions cannot be made. And without the information in front of at least 9 of us, there’s no way we can look at this information and take it apart and respond with the correct information with those assumptions.”
The attorney expressed he would discuss with Skornicka and Brice the documents and emails he was asked to review, and determine parts that may not be able to be released to the public or may need to be redacted, though he said there were only a few instances he has seen so far that were of concern for public release.
“We tried to do the best we could in a very difficult situation. Could it have been handled better? I believe so. Could the communication between personnel and council have been done better, I believe so also. Was there any intentional wrong-doing on the part of personnel committee? I believe absolutely not,” said Hayden. “I’m hoping that instead of trying to argue who might be to blame or at fault, I would much rather focus on facts.”
Hayden, as well as other council members, expressed a desire to take this experience and figure out what could be done differently in the future.