LETTER: NDAs signed by officials in 2024 are still haunting Port

To Ozaukee Press:

Trust is the one thing every relationship depends on, and the one thing almost nothing survives losing, whether it’s a marriage, a friendship, a business partnership or the relationship between a city and the people it serves.

That is why the 2024 nondisclosure agreement tied to a proposed north side development still matters. Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke signed his addendum to a 2024 NDA on May 15, and the seven Common Council members signed their own individual addenda six weeks later, on June 26, all binding them to an agreement tied to a 2022 deal between the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation and a microchip manufacturer.

But the underlying agreement had already expired by the time those addenda were signed. The city’s own copies show no countersignature from either the company or WEDC.

Put plainly, the documents public officials were told to sign weren’t worth the paper they were printed on. That didn’t stop them from having real consequences. Believing they were bound by the NDA, officials treated the project as confidential and met with the developer’s representative two at a time rather than as a full council, raising serious questions under Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law.

Someone convinced elected officials they were legally obligated to operate in secret. The public deserves to know who prepared those documents, why they were presented in 2024 for an agreement already expired, and what authority supported that decision.

It’s also worth noting that the same team of consultants and attorneys the city retained in July 2024 went on to handle the data center negotiations that followed, a continuity that deserves scrutiny, not because it proves wrongdoing, but because residents are owed a clear accounting of who has been steering this process from the beginning.

Ald. John Sigwart was the one who told the public what was happening. He paid for it. The mayor stripped him of every committee assignment, delivered by certified letter. Whatever the stated reason, the message to the rest of the council was clear.—dissent is costly.

Whether that 2022 microchip project and today’s data center were the same undertaking or not, it raises a fair question. What was this NDA still protecting once the project it named was dead?

The city can protect legitimate confidential information while still explaining its decisions. If records can’t be released, explain why. If meetings were structured a particular way, explain the reasoning.

Residents don’t need their officials to be perfect. They need them to be honest.

Brigitte Pyzyk

Grafton