By Patrick Wood
Publisher

Dear De Pere Taxpayer,

Recently Lawrence Delo, De Pere City Administrator, and the De Pere Common Council contracted with the Green Bay Press-Gazette for printing legal notices. This contract is projected to cost you, the taxpayer, about $6,000 more than you would have paid to run the same notices in The Press Times.

I have a few questions about this situation, which I would like to share with you.

City Clerk Carey Danen emailed us May 27 to clarify whether the bid covered council proceedings. We explained that it did – state statute classifies council proceedings as legal notices, so a separate bid was not required. We heard nothing back other than “Thanks. I appreciate it!”

Resolution 20-58(B) sent from the city to The Press Times June 4 states the bid from The Press Times was “nonresponsive” because of this very issue. None of the other communities for which we print legal notices required a separate bid for council proceedings; during the week after sending us the denial, Mr. Delo told Ben Rodgers, editor of The Press Times, that this is a requirement for Class 3 cities like De Pere.

Let’s think about this for a minute.

Let’s say you were remodeling your kitchen and you had two people bidding on it. One of them submitted a bid that
had the lowest cost but was missing the price for new cabinets. Would you tell them, “Thanks. I appreciate it!” and then reject the bid because of the missing price, resulting in a $6,000 increase to the price for the project? Or would you explain to them that they needed to have the cabinet price in their bid?

Put another way, are the city’s coffers so overflowing with taxpayer dollars that saving an estimated $6,000 isn’t worth a follow-up phone call to clarify that a bid is missing a price that has to be included?

It is impossible to know Mr. Delo’s motivations as city administrator, or the motivations of the various council members. But consider this: Over the last two years The Press Times has published roughly 60 articles on the De Pere city government. In the same time period, the Press-Gazette published about a dozen articles on De Pere.

One can’t help but wonder: Does the close attention of our reporters bother them?

Our newspaper is part of a family-owned business based right here in Brown County going back to 1953.

The Press-Gazette, meanwhile, is

• Owned by GateHouse Media;

• Which is owned by New Media Investment Group;

• Whose two largest shareholders are Norges Bank, the central bank of Norway, and Sonora Investment Management, a portfolio management firm in Arizona; and

• Is operated by Fortress;

• Which is owned by SoftBank, a conglomerate based in Japan.

Got it? So, is this where we want our tax dollars to go – Norway and Japan?

Think of it another way: What could the city do with an extra $6,000?

Spruce up downtown a little more? Establish scholarships for high school seniors who are more challenged than ever by college tuition?

We believe the city over-spent on legals. Which raises another question: Are there other projects on which the city is over-spending?

Consider this the start of the conversation. Feel free to email us your comments at thepress@mmclocal.com, or send a letter at 400 Security Boulevard, Suite 2, Green Bay, WI, 54313.

We welcome all input and will respond as appropriate, remaining transparent as a community government watchdog.