Davel's Complaining "Complaint"

As a Village trustee, my experience with Mr Davel shows me a demonstrated disregard for rules and laws, an inappropriate assumption of "tail wagging the dog" control over the Village Board, and an apparent uncouth lack of tact, knowledge, or ethical restraint in his administrative duties. In short, it seems that Mr. Davel simply does what he wants to, regardless of the damage it may do to the Village.

In other words, I believe that his incompetence is as obvious as a neon sign; he is unfit for the position and should be removed by the Board. Ditto for Mr. Joling. Neither of these two could have brought such cost and destruction on the Village without the support of the other one.

Look back at Davel's performance for the past 10 months, read the investigation report, read the extensive augmentation, read their (Davel, Joling, Board members) CYA comments in news articles, and see if you disagree with me.

Wegner and Poyer were targeted with false accusations and "evidence" based on old and to a degree misrepresented texts from an incident already resolved months earlier. This was used as fodder to come to a predetermined negative investigative conclusion in which they smeared Trustee Sorensen just for good measure.

The victim's crime? For Sorensen it was for verbally putting Davel in his place when he berated and tried to bully her into changing her position on the sand pit issue in early February. See my post "The Investigation" Part 4 Davel Claims "Retaliation"? for details on that.

For Poyer, her crime was simply telling the truth when asked about it. She simply confirmed that she had indeed heard Davel telling a crass, sexually inappropriate story not directly to her, but to Wegner who was next to her. They both basically rolled their eyes and thought it was inappropriate. Had Poyer lied to cover for Davel as the "new culture" apparently expected of her, and said no, she never heard it, I believe she would have been portrayed favorably in the report, no matter what the contrived issue was with the texts.

For Wegner, his big crime was to call Davel outside of business huors and chew him out for betraying Wegner's trust and confidentiality regarding his medical records.

This took place minutes after I had mentioned to Wegner about Davel's unnecessary, unprofessional email to the Board revealing Wegner's confidential medical information. This appears to be itself a violation of federal law, and which I kind of assumed Weger had already known about. On top of that, Davel expected the Board members to keep this dirty little secret (of Davel revealing Wegner's confidential medical information) from Wegner himself.

Davel, apparently being unable to cope with Wegner's emphatic rebuke for his poor judgement and stupidity, apparently went whining to Joling about it with who-knows-what kind of story. Joling in turn emailed the Board with a "look out for Wegner" kind of message.

The fact is, that given the circumstances, I believe we should be glad Wegner merely bawled out Davel, rather than filed a federal complaint about it. Wegner is pretty much an upfront kind of guy.

I having said all that, it is the prelude to the story below, of my experience with Davel and his ego and how petty he appears to be over something that other people might barely be annoyed at.

The Story Behind Davel's "Complaining"

In January I was called in for a little meeting at Village Hall with a developer, for my input on his proposal. Before others arrived Mr. Davel told me that he wanted to talk to me later about a complaint someone had filed.

So before I left, I went with him to his office to see what it was all about. His demeanor became confrontational and it turns out that Davel himself made the "complaint". He showed me an email I had sent to the community development director (below) , and demanded an apology for the "waterboy" reference.

Surprisingly he had nothing to say about my allegations of a corrupted appeal process; he did not dispute any of that. Davel's big beef was with the metaphorical use I made of a "waterboy".

I thought it was absurd how upset he was over that. In hindsight, this mentality seems to help explain what led to this investigation disaster that targeted Wegner.

Davel said the meeting with Joling and VanderWaal referred to in the letter was on Davel's first day on the job, and that it was all new to him. I told him that that made the analogy even more appropriate. I said that I had a right to my opinion whether he liked it or not. He had a little fit about it, and followed me out talking loudly for the whole office to hear, about how I didn't know anything because I was never in the military.

It is worth noting that Davel is known to have repeatedly berated, mocked, and slandered Village appointed and elected officials as well as employees. For example telling the staff that trustees are "liars" and "evil people". His reported reputation at Shawano as a bully of women is even more extensive. So the disparity between what he allegedly can "dish out", and what he can "take" seems laughable.

As a result of Davel's tiff, Mr. Joling handed the Board members a document after the Feb 26th special Village Board meeting. That document contained Davel's alleged "complaint" dated February 5th, the same day as the email (below), "Exhibit A" which was my email to Wegner, and he refers to "Exhibit B", which is the discredited 2024 "von Briesen Report".

Davel's "complaint" is what Aaron Myszka identified in the recent HJC investigation report. Myszka speculates that this was the cause of alleged "retaliation" by Sandi Sorensen, which in theory would have been carried out by her act of privately informing Joling of her concerns about Davel's behavior on February 17th.

Davel's so-called "complaint" is dated Feb 5th, but was unknown to the Board until it was handed out on the 26th. Sandi talked to Joling on the 17th, which was 9 days before any of us were ever aware of Davel's beef. So, Myszka's "retaliation" theory is not even reasonable.

Does this scenario sound petty, childish or unreasonable? It is the kind of CYA nonsense they seem to be putting out there to misdirect attention away from what Joling and Davel have allegedly done to destroy the Village organization with this weaponized "investigation"..

I use quotes around the word "complaint", because it was never mentioned again, and the Village Clerk has no record of it ever being filed. I am not sure what Joling and Davel were even trying to accomplish with it. Davel seems to be more of a petulant "complainer" here with his rambling generalities, than any kind of legitimate bona fide complainant.

I have extensive information posted elsewhere on this site, that addresses Davel's claim of alleged "retaliation" that somehow is the cause for the investigation.

Take a look at his complaint and my letter, and see what you think of the whole thing.