Opinion: Janet Solberg’s goal as council member was more insurance business for herself

Opinion of Matt Marquardt, a citizen of Mason City’s fourth ward:

Observing Janet Solberg on the city council has been a spectacle like I hope is never repeated, an imposition on the good folks of the fourth ward that they didn’t deserve, even if they allowed it to happen.

I’m here to shed a little light on Janet Solberg; I recently glanced at a Globe Gazette paper that was festering on a men’s room floor and noticed she proclaimed herself some kind of selfless, lifelong public servant. Well, there’s more to the story when it comes to this person who represents my side of town – and very poorly, I might add -that needs to be told.

The first time I attended a city council meeting, almost 7 years ago, the meeting was held at the NIACC campus. After the meeting, I watched Solberg stand in the parking lot, turning in circles, searching for her car, which she could not find. Now, this clueless individual is not quite as lost as she might seem; even insects have one sole purpose – to survive or even thrive.  She hitched her wagon to the Bookmeyer Panzer tank that bulldozed through this community over the past several years. In a savvy move that helped her get re-elected in a vicious election in 2013, she has been a straight-up rubber stamp for a man who was put in office by Chamber of Commerce stooges who were too lazy to want the job for themselves, but knew Eric would do their dirty work. All he needed was a few bobbleheads who would never question him; the only prerequisite was that they would need to be too dense to really know the issues for themselves and merely accept Eric’s direction on how to vote. She fit the bill perfectly, and served dutifully in that capacity.

But Janet Solberg, behind the scenes, was slightly more than that confused woman lost in a parking lot. No, she had an agenda, it seems clear to me. You see, she wants us all to believe she is this selfless public servant, as she told the newspaper. But the truth, as I believe it to be, is that Solberg was not much more than a struggling insurance agent bent on somehow taking her career – and her commissions – to new heights by grossly using her capacity as a city council member to her advantage.   It is known in town that she has made the rounds in Mason City, trying to hold jobs at this insurance office or that insurance office;  she was fired from an insurance company in Mason City prior to her election to the city council for what amounts to gross insubordination.  Solberg had her struggles selling insurance in Mason City, it seems clear; as I am told now, she continues to sell insurance – but out of town. The largest community in North Iowa appears to no longer be fertile ground for this insurance sales “expert” to sell a policy; she thinks she can do better in Nora Springs and Osage – much smaller communities with far fewer prospects – but she might not have a reputation there.  That tells me something, and it ought to tell you something, too.

So, Solberg gets herself elected in 2009 to the Mason City council; in my findings, it’s clear that was akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse.  We had an insurance agent on the down and out now in a position of power, with access in some fashion to a $40 million or so annual budget.  Sworn in to office in early 2010, there is glaring evidence that Solberg immediately began to use her status as a council person to gain an advantage in the local insurance-selling game.  What is the definition of corruption?

I want to share with you, the reader, perhaps a Mason City citizen who feels let down by city hall — maybe you were called a kook or a racist by Janet Solberg, maybe she ignored your phone calls and messages — these emails council person Solberg sent, beginning immediately after she was sworn in to office in 2010 and continuing for some time after.  I want you to think about these emails, the words she wrote to her subordinates, paid a salary by you, the taxpayer, beckoning them to serve her whims.  I want you to ask yourself, is the person sending these emails a true public servant – or a person seeking to use her office to enrich herself, to get a better crack at commissions from new insurance policies? It is clear to me, Solberg was after the insurance business in city hall, and there was plenty of it. No, Solberg was not worried too much about infrastructure, your taxes, amenities to draw new families to town; job and industry (except a hog plant) and quality of life. She was concerned with the city’s insurance policies, who had the accounts, how much the premiums cost, and putting the insurance business up for bid for local offices – one of which she worked at. In fact, in a show of pure audacity, Solberg took her boss from the local insurance office she was employed at to city hall to meet with a city official in charge of our city budget to find out all they could about the insurance business being done by the city. The emails I am sharing with you show that Solberg wanted to know what the city was paying for insurance and wanted the business opened up for bids, locally.  If she and her boss knew what the city was currently paying and the details of the policies, that seems like a great advantage when the time would come to place a bid.

As City Administrator Brent Trout wrote to me via email when I acted on a news tip that was offered to NIT regarding Solberg pursuing the city’s insurance business, “here is the information requested regarding emails Janet Solberg sent regarding the City’s insurance policies. We do not have a record of the date that Janet Solberg and her boss came to City Hall regarding insurance policies. They met with Kevin (Jacobson) briefly and asked for a copy of our insurance policies. A copy was made and she took that with her according to staff. No additional correspondence came from this contact other than those provided in the attached emails.”

The emails sent by council member Janet Solberg (goofygal1998@yahoo.com) to city officials:

These emails peter out in 2012.  But Solberg wasn’t done.  That year, she tried to bring forth a measure to the council that would have required renters in Mason City who take HUD assistance to buy renter’s insurance.  Say what you will about HUD recipients; her action was disgusting, as it was clearly an attempt by a struggling insurance agent to potentially create a new swath of customers she could sell her products to.  As NIT reported on December 5, 2012, a case worker at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Fair Housing Rights division told NIT when asked about Solberg’s idea “That would be discriminatory.  That would be a bad thing.  Forcing or requiring a group or class of people to do something, but not making the same requirement of all renters could be considered discrimination.”

Janet Solberg claims she is not seeking to continue on the city council.  For that, we should all rejoice.  So long, Janet Solberg.  Your time on the city council can’t end soon enough.