The Ethical Practices Board of Rochester, Minnesota, met on September 18, 2026, at City Hall (Room 104), beginning at 10:30 a.m. The Board approved the minutes of its June 18, 2026 meeting, received no public comment, and reviewed two ethics complaint inquiries submitted on August 17 and August 19, 2026. One complaint was dismissed, the other was tabled to the next meeting, and the Board set its October meeting date. Note: The agenda and adopted minutes are dated September 17, 2026, which conflicts with the September 18, 2026 meeting timestamp provided for this summary.
Reports/Inquiries
Complaint inquiry submitted August 19, 2026 – Dismissed
Complaint inquiry submitted August 17, 2026 – Tabled
So this thing we'll do is approve the minutes from last night. Anyone would like to make a motion to approve announcement. Make the motion to approve. I'll second. Great. Any discussion on that? I'll check in the motion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone who opposed. Okay, I did not change. Do anyone want to change the order's agenda? Yeah. So attorney uh spin like any reports or inquiries. There were um not uh madam there. Any very specific inquiries different than the materials that you have in front of us that did generate some amount of internal discussion um for my team. What I would otherwise also just indicate for the board is that um with the election season, we are paying close attention. It really hasn't generated any other um complaints, formal complaints. Um but we just um keep a close eye on things and as part of the uh candidate form that we did a few months ago. We're trying to give direction to folks, um, awareness of uh the ethics ordinance. Um they of course have a disclosure form that they submit as as candidates. So we usually we keep our fingers crossed that there's not formal complaints that come through to us leading up to election day. Um that's something that we pay close attention to. Just wanted to share that piece. Thank you. Uh up next we have a spot for open comment period. I don't see any audience members or any of the boards interested in making a statement as a community member, not necessarily. We didn't really do get deep into that building at the golf course. In terms of the issue, we're gonna keep going. So that was that was the open comment period. I'm just following the agenda. Okay. We have no unfinished business, so we do have some new business. We have two complaints. Um, I had asked attorney Spindler Craig to remind us of we got some sensitive information. We have information that has not been released to the public. And I asked um the attorney Spindler Craig to remind us, give us a little bit of um you know boundaries, what we can say, what we can't say, because it is it can get confusing. And really just uh I think the simple summary and a practice um that we followed within these meetings is that we we do not reference the complainant by name or association, um uh the respondent, the person who is um who's facing the ethics allegation, usually that ends up being a pretty simple um and straight forward process. Um so using the example of one of the complaints this evening, we'll just refer to it as the restaurant and not um budgeting. Are you including your bill? Is gulf building down here right here? I I think it's it's fine to reference the general location. Okay, and the fact of how it's outfitted inside, and that seems to be the basis for the issue. Um yes, to the extent that that the body thinks they need to discuss that piece. We'll we'll talk about it as much as you want. Okay. We do have two complaints. Um they were emailed to us as one and complaint two, complaint one being a shorter one, like a three-page point two being much longer. Um I'm gonna suggest we just stick with that order and maybe address complaint one initially. Okay, so point one.