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Resident alleges coordinated staff text-message attacks against local worker
Summary
At Rice Lake’s council meeting, resident Tara Al presented text-message exchanges she said show city officials and staff mocking and targeting a city worker and his family; the council took no formal personnel action during the meeting.
Tara Al (stated address: 482 Arnold Road) used the public-comment period to allege that private text messages from April 2024, obtained via a data request, show city officials and staff coordinating derogatory remarks about a city employee she identified in the messages as Justin Alshire and members of his family. She named the mayor (appearing in the excerpts as “Jamie”), former mayor Suzanne Hurststead, the city administrator (Tony), and public works supervisor Shane Downing as participants in the threads she presented.
Al told the council the texts include discussion of disciplinary history, references to family members and children, and what she described as improper or selective redactions in records. “They’ve gone after Justin until he was fired,” she said in a repeated charge during her remarks, and she urged the council to read the messages she distributed. She also said she received a cease-and-desist letter after attempting to raise the issue at a prior meeting.
Council members who spoke during the meeting largely did not open a formal personnel discussion on the floor. One council member defended the city administrator’s record, saying state authorities would already be involved if there were widespread misconduct. No motion to open a formal investigation or to place personnel matters on a future agenda was recorded in the meeting minutes.
The claims in the public comment were not answered with detailed denials or corroborating evidence on the record; several names and spellings in Al’s account and the transcript vary (for example, variants of Justin’s surname appear in the record). The council did not vote on any personnel action at the meeting.
The council’s clerk and city administrator later confirmed that specific personnel and medical information is considered private in personnel files and would not be discussed in open session. The meeting record does not show any staff report that substantiated or refuted the allegations during the meeting.
The council did not announce next steps regarding the allegations at the meeting. If the council moves to investigate, Minnesota open-meeting and personnel-records rules will determine what can be discussed in public and what must be handled in closed session.
