After Much Effort, Alderperson Del Toro’s “No Mow May” Slide Presentation Is Located And Made Available To The Public In Unredacted Form

I have finally obtained a copy of the slide presentation that Alderperson Israel Del Toro (District 4) gave during the 04/10/2023 Municipal Services Committee meeting. This was the information he used to present support for the benefits of No Mow May and to respond to the criticisms regarding the retracted study he had authored which had been used to support placing No Mow May permanently into Appleton’s Municipal Code.

This presentation was uncommonly difficult to obtain. In the afternoon of 04/11/2023 I emailed Alderperson Del Toro directly and asked him for a copy of the presentation along with a question about where I could read the updated 2021 study he had referenced in his presentation. I received no response.

The minutes for the meeting were posted, but the presentation was not attached even though it is normal procedure for presentations given at committee meetings to be posted with the minutes.

On 04/13/2023, I followed-up with Alderperson Del Toro by placing a request through the online contact form just in case the direct email I had sent him ended up in the spam folder. To this he responded, “Id rather not share them at this time as they contained data that is currently being prepared for publication. I will notify you when the pre-pint is available online.”

In response to this, I submitted a formal open records request for the slides and CC’ed City Attorney Christopher Behrens on the request. [Unfortunately, Attorney Behrens was out of the office, otherwise I suspect this would have been resolved a little more quickly.]

Alderperson Del Toro responded by asking Attorney Behrens, “What is the formal process for an open records request. Can you clarify which items need to be shared. I have unpublished data in those slides that must undergo the peer review process before dissemination to the public. Also how long to I have to comply with this request?”

He then sent a follow-up email several hours later informing me that “I will be providing you the slides you demanded with the exception of any scientific data currently embargoed until our work is in the peer review process. You can expect this on or before the 27th of April.”

I responded to his email by asking him on what basis he had determined that he could redact the slideshow. He did not respond.

I made efforts to get copies of the slides from other people.

• I reached out to Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) assuming that, as the chairperson of the Municipal Services Committee, he would have been provided a copy of the presentation. He had not been given a copy.
• I reached out to Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) assuming that, as the author of the resolution this PowerPoint presentation was responding to as well as the person Alderperson Del Toro accused of defamation in the presentation, he would have been given a copy of the slides so he could review the data and evidence. He had not been given a copy.
• I reached out to Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3) assuming that he would have had a copy of the slides to review, given the fairly strong statement he had made accusing Alderperson Doran of having been aware of the information presented at the committee meeting and that, because of that, Alderperson Doran’s reasons for introducing the Resolution To Eliminate No Mow May were suspect. Alderperson Firkus never responded to my request.
• I reached out to the city clerk who did not respond [but I would note I don’t think that lack of a response indicated the clerk’s office wasn’t working on the issue.]
• I reached out to the IT Department. IT Director Corey Popp could not find a copy and after doing some investigating told me that Alderperson Del Toro was the only person who had a copy of the presentation.
• I also asked Alderperson Del Toro and Professor Relena Ribbons in a thread on the NextDoor app to please provide a copy of the slides. Alderperson Del Toro did not respond to my request and Professor Ribbons urged patience saying, “I appreciate your dedication to understanding the issue, but there are some elements of this process that require patience. As soon as the data is available in a pre-print it will be made publicly available.”

In the middle of this process, Alderperson Del Toro reached out to me via private message on NextDoor. He expressed dissatisfaction with the objectivity of my post recapping the discussion during the 04/10/2023 Municipal Services Committee meeting and stated, “Off the record. I will no longer be interacting with you.” [Admittedly, I have never been to journalism school, but I’m fairly confident in saying that it would be almost impossible for a politician to send an unsolicited written message of this nature (one with a digital footprint that pertains specifically to their work as a politician) to another person, even if that person is a reporter or journalist, and have that message be “off the record”. Public record laws alone would prevent that from being a possibility.]

After exhausting all of those other options, I sent an email to Mayor Woodford and Council President Katie Van Zeeland (District 5), explaining the situation, asking them if they supported Alderperson Del Toro’s actions, and asking them what changes would be made in the future to meeting processes to ensure that publicly given report and visual presentations do not get lost. Alderperson Van Zeeland was very helpful, and once she took over the reins the slideshow was found within a few hours. She also said she would work on shoring up the process to make sure these sorts of things get to Clerk Lynch in the future.

It was Friday afternoon when the presentation was located so it has not been attached to the meeting minutes yet, but I would expect that to happen on Monday. In the meantime, I am able to provide an unredacted copy of the PowerPoint slides Alderperson Del Toro presented during the 04/10/2023 Municipal Services Committee meeting.