By Brenda Erdahl
The Maple Lake City Council has hired a third-party investigator to look into allegations concerning conduct toward an individual on the Maple Lake Fire Department.
The council held a special meeting, Wednesday, Nov. 8, to discuss the matter. Mary Tietjen, an attorney with Kennedy and Graven was in attendance to explain the situation.
“Over the course of the last several months, some information has come to the attention of the city administrator and city attorney about some concerns within the fire department related to the working environment,” she said, adding preemptively that she would be speaking very generally because of the subject matter.
She stated that while no one has been named, an individual has come forward with allegations that they have been the target of questionable behavior within the department. Although Tietjen didn’t go into specifics, she did call the allegations “fairly serious.”
“As city attorney we want to make sure you are doing what is necessary to protect The City. If there are things happening within a department of the city that are inappropriate or that rise to the level that has been addressed, we want to make sure we are taking steps to address that.”
The first step, she said, is to find out if there is any validity to the claims. To do that, she recommended hiring an investigative attorney. The attorney’s job would be to speak with the person that brought the allegations forward and others within the fire department and city that may have knowledge of the situation.