A month after the Eagle River City Council adopted a fee schedule for open records requests, the new policy was the center of contention at the council’s April 14 meeting, during which the newspaper’s requests were discussed.
A piece in the April 17, 2026 issue of The Lakeland Times covered the meeting. According to the story:
Eagle River resident Kathryn Craffey stressed at one point in the meeting the importance of transparency in city government to the council which prompted alderman Jerry Burkett to respond by characterizing her comments as “defamation of character.” He had asked that the city council receive a monthly report of open records requests and during Tuesday’s meeting, city clerk Becky Bolte presented that report to the council.
“These were the ones that had a little bit more than just a quick click of a file and then hit send,” Bolte said, adding city administrator Robin Ginner’s were included.
The list, dating from January 2025 to April 2026, cited 73 different requests and named 36 individuals and two governmental entities as having initiated them.
Kathryn and/or Jack Craffey were associated with 30 of the requests; The Lakeland Times was named five times and The Vilas County News-Review named twice.
Following Tuesday’s meeting, Bolte clarified for the Times not all of the searches on the list would be subject to fees under the recently-adopted schedule. Some were simply cited because they required more than a minimum of effort. Following the presentation of the list during Tuesday’s meeting, mayor Deb Brown opened the floor for discussion.
“I just wanted to share how important these requests have been to the community and what we’ve learned from filing these requests,” Kathryn Craffey said. “We’ve learned that my request for clarification of the city budget in January of this year resulted in the city actually uploading the corrected budget. We learned through open-records requests that copies of the Zoom meetings from the town (sic) clerk have to be open records because the city doesn’t put them on their website or on YouTube or on other free sites.”
Craffey said what was also learned through the open records request was Ginner, as the city’s zoning administrator, “is tasked to enforce local zoning ordinances.”
“We learned through a reporter filing a request that an alderman helped put a snowmobile trail on FAA-owned property and we learned that there was no censure of this alderman ever initiated by the mayor or council,” she said.
“I beg to differ,” Burkett interrupted, “and I think that is defamation of character and I will be taking action. Thank you.”
Craffey’s reference was with regard to a 2025 article published in the Times in which Burkett voluntarily confessed during a public meeting he and others “cheated” by granting the Sno-Eagles Snowmobile Club permission to construct a trail through Eagle River Union Airport property.
The area in question is owned by the city but its use — due to its proximity to the airport — is subject to approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Burkett stated he knowingly ignored the FAA’s authority and the city granted permission anyway.
An open-records request by the Times revealed the city council neither discussed nor voted upon (let alone granted any official permission for) any snowmobile trails on airport property.
Ginner reminded alders and those attending the meeting that The Times gave clerk Bolte and herself A’s for transparency this year. Bolte thanked the Times reporter attending the meeting, and she was informed the grades were earned.
“Well,” Craffey pointed out, “they didn’t give everybody A’s.”
