Evanston City Council seeks solution to communication breakdown

EVANSTON — During the Evanston City Council work session on Tuesday, March 11, councilmember Jesse Lind requested a discussion on the communication issues between the mayor and council members.

Lind said he felt it was important, as he thought the council appeared more ineffective than effective.

Mayor Kent Williams asked Lind, “I can simply ask, when did we get off course? To me this all came about in the last two years. What is your feeling?”

Councilmembers Lind and Jen Hegeman both said they felt the tension had been building with one thing after another — arguments, an investigation — all causing the communication within the council to be dysfunctional.

Lind said he thought it all started with differing opinions on the old Wyoming State Hospital buildings.

Williams responded, “I don’t want to sound argumentative, but I didn’t start it. I look back and ask myself, ‘Could I have acted differently?’ Yeah, probably. If someone wants to talk to me, you know where I am.”

Williams said the council hasn’t had tension or anger among members until recent years.

“I look at the other members on this council who have been on it for a long time,” Williams said. “We may have disagreed, but we have never had these kinds of anger issues before.”

He said he found what Evanston City Attorney Mark Harris discovered in the collection of four council members' emails highly offensive.

“And you wrote it, Ms. Hegeman,” the mayor said.

Williams was referring to an email Hegeman had sent to fellow councilmember Mike Sellers last summer that turned up as the two, along with councilmember Jesse Lind and former councilmember Tim Lynch, were under investigation for violating Wyoming’s Open Meetings Act.

In the message, William’s first name was spelled with a U instead of an E.

“There is no excuse for that,” the mayor said, “and you can’t tell me that was an honest mistake. The rest of you did nothing to change the misspelling after you read it. Why?”

Hegeman apologized and defended the spelling as a typo, adding that she was under pressure to get the email out in a short time, skimming the papers in a hurry, and the mistake was not in subsequent messages.

“I was in a hurry to get the information … and there is a reason that Mr. Harris chose to use that copy out of the others that were shown to him,” Hegeman said. “That is malice. From day one on this council, when I started asking questions, it felt like I was told, ‘Little lady, know your place, behave and don’t ask questions.’ It never got better, and I felt targeted.”

Hegeman said that, after Williams lost his temper in a council meeting last summer, the council should have had an emergency meeting then to work out the issues among them.

Williams defended his right to his own opinion, regardless of being the mayor, and he wondered why the discussion they were having now wasn’t asked for back in August. He said he felt blind-sided.

Lind commented that the four council members had acted on the advice of an attorney that represents the Wyoming Association of Municipalities on how to handle a vote of no confidence.

Councilmembers David Welling and Evan Perkes both said they felt left out, as they were never contacted about the statement of no confidence in the mayor. They felt it caused a division in the council.

Welling said he received a call from the WAM director stating it was inappropriate for them to have called the WAM attorney, as she represents WAM only.

The back-and-forth arguments continued until Harris interrupted and said he had talked to another attorney who agreed with Harris’ assessment, and said the whole investigation could have been avoided if one member had gone to another council member separately, one by one, and given each a copy of the statement and said, “This is what is going to be read at the meeting.”

Harris also said that he, not the WAM attorney, should have been contacted for advice.

Hegeman said she couldn’t come to Harris, as she doesn’t feel like he represents all the council members. She also pointed out that after Harris’ wife — Evanston City Clerk Diane Harris — was heard on the tape of an earlier controversial incident, she didn’t feel she could go to him for advice.

“This all seems to be coming back to you, Mr. Harris,” Hegeman said.

Harris suggested, if that was the case, she should contact the Wyoming State Bar, like she did a year ago.

Lind said he doesn’t know what questions to ask if he doesn’t know what is going on, so he suggested that the mayor use the work sessions to advise new council members on what is going on and what has happened in the past, so they are familiar with issues.

Sellers said that when he and Wendy Schuler served as president of the council, they took notes at the meetings and gave a copy to every council member.

Harris suggested from now on, in work sessions, the agenda should include a review of what took place at the previous regular meeting; what’s coming up and what staff is aware of that could be coming up. He suggested a roundtable discussion on those items at the beginning of each work session.

“It has never been my intention to withhold any information,” Williams said. “I like Mark’s suggestion. The community deserves better than what they are getting from us.”

This story was published on March 26, 2025.