The City of Crookston held a code of conduct and Ethics committee meeting Wednesday night at City Hall. The committee is working on developing the said codes for elected officials, city employees, boards, and commissions. Mayor Guy Martin, Councilmembers Dale Stainbrook, Don Cavalier, Cindy Gjerswold, and Clayton Briggs all attended the meeting.
The committee continued to review the code of conduct with City Attorney Charles “Corky” Reynolds. Reynolds recommended the removal of the city employees from being required to sign the new code of conduct so that it would better comply with what the city could ask of employees legally. Reynolds further stressed that code of conduct is legally enforceable while emphasizing that the code of conduct is meant to set expectations for the behavior of elected and appointed City officials. Sanctions were also discussed by the committee which noted that voting privileges of an elected official couldn’t be stripped. However, both elected officials and appointees could be reprimanded with removal from committees. “It’s not looking for people that are misbehaving,” noted Don Cavalier. “It just gives us all a guideline with how to manage these meeting and how to behave as professional people.”
Don Cavalier expressed his enthusiasm for the new code of conduct stressing it wasn’t meant to punish elected officials, but rather encourage appropriate behavior as elected or appointed representatives of Crookston. Cavalier led the meeting running through the table of contents and the entire code of conduct while taking feedback from the rest of the committee. Conflict of interest was another subject Cavalier readdressed with the committee, with city attorney Corky Reynolds reiterating that ultimately the state of Minnesota recognizes that in smaller towns a conflict of interest is more likely to occur, but that elected officials should be cognizant and use there better judgment when discussing topics that may present a conflict of interest. Overall, Cavalier was pleased with the direction this code of conduct is heading, “we’re kind of excited about this. It’s a positive move, I think. I think its a good deal, and we needed to just make sure we had some guidelines for conduct.”
Cavalier led the committee through the code of conduct line by line, allowing each member to express any concerns or request clarification. After over one hour of discussion, the meeting concluded with the committee agreeing to review the new code of conduct independently before proposing further updates to the document. Once the code of conduct is updated and each council member reviews it, the new code of conduct will be addressed at a Ways and Means Committee meeting.
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