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Resident disputes mayor's account of PEIA investigation, urges council to correct statement
Summary
A resident told the Ravenswood City Council they cooperated with a PEIA investigator and denied conspiring to "manufacture" controversy, saying the mayor's recent city statement contained "disingenuous information" and urging the council to correct it rather than let it stand.
A resident addressed the Ravenswood City Council to dispute the mayor's recent public statement about a PEIA investigation, saying the mayor incorrectly suggested the commenter had conspired with PEIA to undermine the mayor.
The resident said they were contacted by a PEIA investigator and cooperated, arguing that "cooperating with an investigation does not amount to some illicit conspiracy. It's simply the right thing to do." They said the mayor's statement was "filled with disingenuous information" and urged the council to correct that account.
The speaker outlined steps the mayor could have taken before providing city-paid insurance to the recorder: contacting PEIA to clarify eligibility, seeking the city attorney's legal opinion, assessing budgetary impacts, and bringing the matter to council for debate and vote. The resident also asserted that enrollment documents misrepresented the recorder's employment status, noting the recorder had been a council member for more than 10 years but was recorded as a new employee.
The resident recounted that the first public discussion of adding the recorder to the city's insurance occurred in late 2024 at the home of Kip Price and that they had a similar conversation with the recorder in May 2025, after which PEIA contacted the resident. The resident said they did not initiate the investigator's contact.
The council did not record a formal response from the mayor during the public-comment exchange, and no motion or vote on the matter was taken during this meeting. The resident asked the council to take action to correct the mayor's statement so that the city does not implicitly accept it.
Next steps: No formal action or referral was recorded in the transcript. The council may choose to request a written clarification from the mayor or place the item on a future agenda.
