Continued Use Of City Emails Approved For Citizen Boards

WAUKESHA, WI — The Common Council on Tuesday approved a motion to continue to provide official city email addresses to citizen members of boards and commissions.

It also approved a measure that would direct the city's Information Technology Board and the mayor’s office to create a policy for onboarding such citizen members that would include training them on the use of city email address for city business.

Alderwoman Cassie Rodriguez brought up the issue when someone threatened to sue the Landmarks Commission, Chris Pofahl, the city's IT director, said at Tuesday's meeting. The members of the commission were using their personal email addresses for city business.

If a discovery or open records request of emails was made, the city might not be able to produce the emails that were sent from private email addresses because they would difficult to locate.

Rodriguez added they should be aware they could be subject to fines if they can't produce records that are requested.

"The fines are more significant than $200-a-year per commissioner," she said, referring to the cost of creating a city email address.

The city began giving citizen board members city email addresses in February 2020. But the pandemic hit, and the focus of the IT department shifted to mobilizing the city's workforce.

In the last few months, the city discovered the following about 72 citizen commission members.

• 54 had never logged in.
• 11 hadn't signed into the account in over a year.
• Two hadn't signed into the account in over six months
• Five people were actively using the account.

Pofahl said the cost of providing a citizen member a city email address and a license is close to $200 per year. The 67 inactive accounts cost $13,000 a year.

City Attorney Brian Running said citizen members using emails is a good idea because they are subject to the same sort of record rules elected officials are.

"It allows us to retrieve records for an open records request easily because we know where to go," Running said.

He added there may not be a lot of communication for certain members, but it doesn't mean the email account shouldn't be there to use.

"The records requirement applies to you regardless of what volume of records you generate," he said.

Running added the city needs to be compliant with a policy that all city email correspondence has to be done on city email addresses.

Alderman Daniel Manion said there needs to be policy work done to enforce the use of the city addresses. He motioned for the item to go to the IT board for a policy to be created.

Rodriguez said she believed the issue of citizen members not using city emails comes from a lack of awareness. She suggested some type of orientation to be rolled out through the mayor's office.

She added it isn't just email use but also how to behave in meetings, such as making motions. She heard from commissioners who said they were not aware of those things when they joined a committee.