The Fond du Lac city manager is clarifying his remarks made at a city council meeting last month that exiting a contract with a business group that had pledged money to build a restaurant at Lakeside Park would have a “catastrophic” impact. “Anytime your have citizenry suing a municipality that’s certainly not a good outcome,” City Manager Joe Moore told WFDL news. “…so that’s why I used that word catastrophic because, there are things worse that can happen, but in terms of having conflict with the people you’re serving that’s not a good outcome.” Moore made the comment just before the council voted four to three to terminate the agreement with Lakeside Forward. On AM 1170s Between the Lines program Moore said going back to last summer he would use the same adjective to describe the impact the issue had in dividing the community. “Hundreds, if not thousand of signs in peoples front yards, ten thousand plus signatures on petitions about direct legislation or advisory referendums, a lawsuit. We could eliminate the adjective. That was not good. That was kind of not bad. That was about as bad as it could get.” Moore says now it’s the donors who are upset. “There’s a similar unwinding going on right now because you have a number of people in the private sector who signed up to either donate or participate in this project. They had a contract with the city and so they have concerns about what that looks like going forward,” Moore said. “As far as any litigation, I don’t know, it’s way too early to tell.” In the end Moore says it’s fair to say the councilmembers who voted to terminate the contract felt they were listening to the public and that the outcome of that vote can be both good and difficult at the same time.
