by Logan Gruber
operations@thenewsleaders.com
While city employees, like the city administrator and other department positions, have had city-provided email addresses for some time, city council members have only recently been provided with their own email addresses.
At a Sauk Rapids City Council meeting at the end of 2015, Community Development Director Todd Schultz and City Administrator Ross Olson noted the mayor used to have an email address provided by the city a number of years ago, but at the time the technology wasn’t available to make it easily accessible from the mayor’s home so they had to come to city hall to check any emails.
Until now, city council members used their own private emails, hosted by Yahoo, Google, Hotmail or other sources to handle both personal and city business. With improvements in technology, as well as concerns about security and transparency, Schultz was directed by the council to create email addresses for the mayor and council members to use.
The addresses would be turned back over to the city when a council member leaves office, allowing for the emails to be archived and any future messages that might be sent to the address in error dealt with in a timely manner.
The addresses are formed using the first letter of the first name, followed by the full last name of the person. All of the email addresses are available on the city website at ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us, and they are listed here as well:
Mayor
Brad Gunderson – bgunderson@ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us
Council members
Steve Heinen – sheinen@ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us
Kurt Hunstiger – khunstiger@ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us
Nick Sauer – nsauer@ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us
Ellen Thronson – ethronson@ci.sauk-rapids.mn.us
