Sheboygan city council censures member for revealing confidential information and using racial slur
SHEBOYGAN - In a unanimous vote last week, the rest of the city council censured District 2 councilperson Roberta Filicky-Peneski.
That’s after it came to light that Filicky-Peneski disclosed the contents of a closed-session meeting last fall to former City Administrator Todd Wolf without authorization and said the N-word while recounting what someone else had said.
Both actions are “well-understood” by the council as being inappropriate, the resolution said.
The censure indicates the city council’s disapproval of Filicky-Peneski’s actions but does not impact her role or abilities on the council.
City council condemns unauthorized meeting between Filicky-Peneski and Wolf
In October, the Sheboygan Press reported on Wolf’s response to a city director repeating the N-word during an internal meeting in the context of the director discussing a racist incident brought to his attention, which raised concerns about Wolf retaliating against another city director who told people outside of the meeting about the incident.
Later that month, the city council met in closed session to discuss Wolf’s conduct, a meeting from which he was purposefully excluded. “Closed session” means members keep what they discuss confidential unless and until the city attorney decides that closed-session discussions can be made public. Filicky-Peneski voted in favor of going into closed session at that meeting.
But shortly afterwards, Filicky-Peneski met Wolf in her home and talked about things discussed during the closed session. In addition, she said the full N-word while recounting the city council’s discussion — saying someone “didn’t say [the slur]” but said another offensive term.
Wolf secretly recorded the conversation, according to the city council resolution — a snippet of which, with the racial slur, was sent to the city council last month by since defeated city council candidate Aaron Guenther.
City councilperson Dean Dekker — an author of the resolution, along with Amanda Salazar — called the issue “two-fold,” saying it was “unethical” for Wolf, while still employed as city administrator, to go to a city councilperson’s home and secretly record their conversation.
“That being said, how the information was obtained does not diminish the fact that council rules were broke (by Filicky-Peneski),” Dekker said. “While this lapse of judgment should not define or take away from all the good accomplishments of Alder Filicky-Peneksi, it does need to be addressed by the council, and I feel a vote of censure is the appropriate measure.”
City council President Barb Felde said Filicky-Peneski’s real punishment will be the council’s “lack of trust in her now.”
“She’s a good alderperson, she does her job well, but trust is a big issue. So, I think that’s probably punishment enough,” Felde said.
Guenther said the council’s action to censure Filicky-Peneski was “hypocritical,” saying that when city director Chad Pelishek said the same racial slur in August, that was used to begin an investigation not against Pelishek, but Wolf.
“I want open government, that’s it,” Guenther said.
Filicky-Peneski apologizes for repeating racial slur
The city council resolution censuring Filicky-Peneski said council members should hold themselves to "a high level of ethics," including avoiding “offensive and incendiary language and the use of words that, by their very nature, demean groups of people.”
While Filicky-Peneski said the racial slur “in a context that did not include labeling any particular person with that word, there is no context whatsoever where the use of such a slur is appropriate, ethical, or acceptable,” the resolution said.
“Societal rejection of the use of said slur is so complete that on August 8, 2022, just two-and-a-half months prior to Alderperson Filicky-Peneski’s use of the slur, in a story widely covered by national media, the highly successful and respected assistant football coach at Oklahoma State University, Cale Gundy, resigned in wake of his reading the same word from song lyrics contained on a player’s iPad,” the resolution continued.
“Even more recently, a similar event in the City of Sheboygan made clear the community consensus that use of said slur even in the somewhat less inflammatory context is never appropriate,” it read.
Filicky-Peneski apologized on the council floor.
“To my colleagues, I apologize to you for the actions that have brought us to this point: Namely, my speaking about discussions that were held in closed session when I was outside of the closed session itself. It was inappropriate of me to do so, and I’m sorry,” Filicky-Peneski said.
“Additionally, I apologize to the community for repeating a racial slur. It was a lapse of judgment on my part and does not reflect my personal values. I am sorry,” she said. “You may be assured that I have learned from these mistakes, and they won’t happen again.”
Reach Maya Hilty at 920-400-7485 or MHilty@sheboygan.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Sheboygan Press: Sheboygan city council member censured for breaking rules, saying slur
