In a city that prides itself on transparency, Frisco sure has a funny way of showing it. The departure of city employees should be a straightforward matter.  But nothing says, “honest government at work” quite like a settlement agreement wrapped in an NDA and buried beneath layers of off-limits files that are shadow labeled “confidential” and will only magically appear if someone knows exactly what to ask for. 

It’s almost poetic, really. City Hall bangs the drum of accountability every election season, even though they know the city turns around and stashes public records like they’re safeguarding state secrets.  One might expect this sort of maneuvering from Washington, where the filing system seems to be a combination of smoke, mirrors, and selective memory—but from Frisco?  The city that can’t even agree on a dog shelter without a special called meeting.

It is amazing what buried treasures you will find when reading through these settlement agreements the city has with ex-employees.  It is also interesting to see who is getting paid and how much!  For example, Elise Back, who worked for the Frisco Economic Development Corporation, agreed to accept a gross payment of $125,000 and Frank Morehouse accepted $112,500.  What and why are we paying this kind of money in secret NDA’s?

After months of whispers about “HR “mishaps,” and a public records chase that felt more like spelunking through a city-funded labyrinth, we now have a Settlement Agreement for the newly minted EX HR Director, Lauren “Sassy” Safranek.  Let me tell you finding this and getting our hands on this was tough and the city thought they had sealed it tighter than a Prohibition-era wine cellar.  And just when we thought we’d finally uncork the truth, out pop second files, “confidential” folders, and documents shuffled around like a crooked card dealer at a back-alley poker table.   But the saga of Lauren “Sassy” Safrenak takes the cake, the bakery, and the delivery truck.

Frisco’s leadership keeps insisting to the public this is all perfectly normal, nothing to see here, folks, but is it normal?  Is this just a standard, everyday NDA?  We decided to peal it back and unwrap the taxpayer-funded mystery treasure chest (I mean document).   Frisco, where transparency is optional, NDAs are fashionable, and the truth is apparently stored somewhere in File Cabinet B—the one nobody is allowed to open.

BACKSTORY

Lauren Safranek has had reputation in the city for years.  Management loved her!  Employees had great disdain for her!  Back in June 2023 I questioned why Lauren Safranek wanted to change the Nepotism Policy and revise the Employee Code of Conduct policy that had been in place since 2006.  We wrote about it in our blog All in The Family.  Then we wrote about the Workers Comp Policy Changes in our blog Sassy Safranek and the mean-spirited memo written by our Professional HR Director Sassy Safranek.  In December 2023 we did our 12 Days of Malfeasance blogs.  Day 3 was about the HR MALFEASANCE which was about good ole Lauren Safranek forging the signature of then Fire Chief Mark Piland to a document that would change the pay scale for an entire department.  Did she really think this would not raise any eyebrows and her forgery would be unearthed?  Yep, she really thought she was that smart!   

When she realized, she had gotten caught she kicked into overdrive to find a fake reason to investigate then Fire Chief Mark Piland and his staff.  We presented all the receipts in our Day 12: Tangled Web of Lies blog! 

If you forgot about all this drama you should go back and read it because this is the heart of why the city, the mayor and the cabal are trying to destroy one man who has a 40+ exemplary career years, plus positive job reviews in the city of Frisco year after year until Lauren uncovered some “malfeasance” in order to cover her own forgery of legal HR documents

SASSY SAFRANEKS LITTLE CONFIDENTIAL SECRET WRAPPED UP IN AN NDA

Remember transparency is supposed to be the heart of good government here in Frisco.  Truthfully it is more of a suggestion, something politically ignored much like turn signals on the Tollway side roads.  The Lauren Safranek NDA reads like a political thriller written by a board attorney on a Friday afternoon.  It has pages of legal yapping designed to make sure the public learns absolutely nothing about why the City’s top HR official suddenly needed to be paid nearly a year’s salary just to walk out the door quietly.

Is this a general release?  No, it is so sweeping it could double as a Tornado Warning.  Safranek isn’t just leaving her job, she’s legally erasing every single gripe, claim, concern, complaint, or whisper she ever uttered about the City.
Ethics Complaints filed against her? Gone.  Any HR violations she witnessed? Gone.
Any retaliation she alleged? Gone.  Potential whistleblower issues? Vaporized.

The Payout: A Golden Parachute Stuffed with Taxpayer Cash

40 weeks of salary.
40 weeks of COBRA medical, dental, vision coverage.
A lump-sum payout for her accrued leave that has not been used.
Payment by city for $1,716.65 for a conference she attended.
Payment by city for employees attorneys fee’s in the amount of $7,600.

City will compensate Safranek for time spent assisting with the defense in pending lawsuits at a rate of $100.00 per hour, such payment to be made in 30 days of submission. 

ASK YOURSELF: An at-will HR director being handed nearly a year’s pay to quietly resign is not “normal.”  It’s not even “Frisco normal,” and this city has normalized some Olympic-level gymnastics around accountability.

The Most Alarming Part: The Secret Second File

Buried deep inside the NDA is the crown jewel of municipal opacity: The City agrees to take all negative documents—complaints, investigations, findings, her ethics complaint, and more—and remove them from her public personnel file and place them in a separate, hidden, confidential file.

Transparency Hidden In – A literal second file. 

According to the NDA  “these documents will be agreed upon by Safranek and will include, at a minimum, the following: Shank’s complaint, Coulthurst’s complaint, investigation findings, employee’s ethics complaints,” the letter from the Deputy City Manager dated June 16, 2025 and this agreement.

It also notes that basically the second file the public will not see, that is kept “to the extent permitted by law,” which is lawyer-speak for “we’ll hide it unless someone catches us!”  WE CAUGHT YOU!

This is the Frisco leadership and government equivalent of cleaning your house by shoving everything into the garage and padlocking the door.  Frisco taxpayers deserve better than a filing system borrowed from Watergate.

The City Also Requires Her to Help Defend Them in Lawsuits

Safranek must cooperate in two ongoing lawsuits involving Cameron Kraemer and Jesse Zito, paid at $100/hour — and she gets to keep her notes connected to those cases.

A city that insists it did nothing wrong is apparently very eager to keep its former HR Director close at hand… just not on staff, not in the building, and not talking.

A “Neutral Reference” to Keep the Story Contained

If a future employer calls?  HR will give a bland, robotic response confirming her dates of employment.  Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing truthful.

Because when you’ve spent thousands of taxpayer dollars hiding the mess, the last thing you want is someone in HR accidentally telling the truth.

City Admits Nothing, Explains Nothing, Accepts Nothing

As expected, the NDA contains the standard “we did nothing wrong” boilerplate.
The City denies all wrongdoing, says they’re settling merely to avoid “cost” and “distraction.”  Right — because nothing says “totally innocent” like hiding negative documents in a secret secondary file and giving your fired HR director 40 weeks of hush money.

Council Approval: Your Elected Officials Signed Off

Don’t miss this detail: The NDA was contingent on City Council approval at a public meeting which happened on July 1, 2025. This was the meeting that Burt Thakur and Jared Elad were installed as new council members. How much did they know about this agreement is to be seen.  We are curious how much knowledge Jeff Cheney, John Keating (mayoral candidate), Brian Livingston, Angelia Pelham, and Laura Rummel had. 

Fact remains, every elected official who voted “yes” signed off on lying to the public, a year’s salary and cobra benefits, withholding information from the public in a secret file, hiding negative or truthful reviews to a future employer and more.   Keating made the motion to approve, and it was seconded by Angelia Pelham. 

Crazy part is if you go to that agenda on the city website and click on Item 24 it has not documents attached to it.  Why because the city PLAYED HIDE AND HOPEFULLY, THEY WON’T SEEK!

The Bottom Line

You could hide a small nation’s war crimes under a release this wide. The Safranek NDA isn’t a routine HR separation.  It’s not a miscommunication.  It’s not an exit interview gone wrong. It is a coordinated legal shutdown, executed at the highest levels, designed to hide information from the public and neutralize the City’s own HR Director.

The City didn’t just settle a dispute. It purchased silence. It buried documents. It built a second file. It erased complaints. It sealed the story.

And they used your tax dollars to do it.

Frisco deserves transparency — not confidentiality closets, political NDAs, and under-the-table golden parachutes.

More to come.

Disclaimer: This blog includes satire, parody, and comic relief.  It contains summarized accounts created solely for humor and commentary.  Any resemblance to real events is either coincidental or intentionally satirical.  Reader discretion — and a sense of humor — are advised.