Letter to the Editor - Madison Daily Leader - Pat Doak
Letter to the Editor
Several people, including Dakota Energy members and non-members, have been publicly attacked by Dakota Energy management for having differing opinions. Those attacks included personal insults, slurs, allegations and attempts to discredit them.
What Dakota Energy member or non-member will be publicly attacked next if they dare to speak their mind?
This isn't an isolated case.
Look at how Dakota Energy's town hall was conducted. Members that attended weren't even allowed to speak, much less ask questions. When a member in the audience tried to ask a question, she was ridiculed and insulted. All questions were required to be submitted via text and were screened by Dakota Energy's hired marketing firm Lawrence & Schiller and then soft-balled to the panel.
Look at the letter to the editor in the Watertown Public Opinion attacking a Dakota Energy member. Look at Dakota Energy's newsletter, website and Facebook page. Look at the newspaper and radio adds Dakota Energy has published. Who's writing those scripts and paying for them? Dakota Energy management, Guzman or their St. Louis Law firm, or is it the Schoenbeck Law firm, or Lawrence & Schiller?
Is this the management culture, the directors' philosophy, at Dakota Energy? Attack anyone that disagrees? Portray them as incompetent, publicly discredit them?
Dakota Energy didn't ask for our opinion and when we did ask to have our voices heard, we were told at the town hall meeting that a vote wasn't needed.
All we are asking for is to let the members have a voice, a vote on a issue that would fundamentally change the business model of our co-op.
By the way, while I barely have a pulse, I do have a brain, and I write every word of my letters all by myself, without any coaching. It's very insulting to suggest otherwise.
Pat Doak, Huron
Note: This letter to the editor originally appeared in the Madison Daily Leader
https://www.dailyleaderextra.c...
Posted May 21, 2021