At the recent Committee of the Whole meeting on Feb. 27, certain City Council members expressed that a public forum for conducting an “after-action review” on the Fufeng matter may not be in the best interest of the city. There was also an attempt at making a direct comparison between that and discussing operational security matters related to topics such as security features being incorporated into the renovations of the City’s Council Chambers.
These are both laughable.
For well over two years now (if going back to the October 2020 meetings held at the Alerus Center, and before that with direct comms with the EDC), this city engaged in an attempt to bring an entity that was ultimately proven to be a national security threat by the Department of the Air Force which also backed up the plethora of statements and perspectives given to the city, not only by the FBI, but also a number of its citizens and an observable willful ignorance on the part of members of the City Council and the mayor.
For two years the city engaged in actively and publicly dismissing citizens as well as federal level experts and senators. Transparency and open communication and discussion acknowledging all mistakes in strategy and in action or omission of action should be at the forefront. Attempting to hide or obfuscate matters and actions taken collectively or individually throughout the entire process under the guise of not impacting negotiations with potential future businesses is at best disingenuous and indicative of individuals on the council being more concerned with avoiding continued public scrutiny than they are with transparency between the city government and the electorate (that’s you, the voters) and ensuring that the mistakes that have been made are not repeated in the future.
To say that conducting a publicly accessible after-action review on the city’s actions and inactions in the Fufeng situation is anywhere near the OPSEC issues of publicly discussing security measures for council chambers (whose needs are, lets face it, extremely debatable and are more than likely just a further inappropriate expenditure of taxpayer dollars better spent elsewhere i.e. schools and infrastructure) is a comparison that reeks of ignorance and either outside influence or an appeasement mindset. The annals of history light well the path to what appeasement ultimately leads to.
The Trust Project
