The Ravalli County Commissioners met last Thursday, March 12, and amended the county’s Public Notice and Public Participation Policy. At the start of the meeting the Commissioners’ Administrative Assistant Glenda Wiles said that she had received many inquiries as to why the commission was suddenly considering a policy review at this time.
Deputy County Attorney Howard Recht gave a couple of reasons. He said that in addition to the fact that it hasn’t been reviewed in a few years, there was at least one matter of litigation involving the Bitterroot Star in which the Star asked that this policy be reviewed.
“That would be another reason,” said Recht.
The Bitterroot Star is in court with the county over its decision to settle the Big Sky Development case for $675,000. The newspaper alleges that the decision took place in violation of public notice and public participation laws. Following a mediated settlement conference in that case in which a tentative settlement agreement had been reached, the newspaper was told that the proposed settlement would be considered for adoption by the full board of county commissioners on March 12.
At the meeting, however, the commissioners and their attorney made it clear that the tentative settlement agreement with the newspaper was not on the table and that the current review of the public notice policy was a separate matter. In answer to a question about that, all the commissioners, except Commissioner Jeff Burrows, who participated in the settlement conference along with Recht, denied that they had seen any settlement agreement.
As the commissioners proceeded to review their policy section by section, Deputy County Attorney Recht repeatedly made suggestions for changes that were extracted from the settlement proposal with the Bitterroot Star, stating that they were proposals made by the newspaper. These proposals and others were considered as the commissioners adopted individual changes by motion of the whole board.
The commissioners unanimously rejected the first proposal presented by Recht that would have added language to the policy stating that the public notice agenda item “must provide sufficient factual detail about the item to permit interested parties to comment meaningfully.”
Public comment was in favor of the change but the commissioners found the language to be too constricting and opted instead to add that the agenda item must include the “date, time, place and subject matter.”
The commissioners did agree to change the requirements for posting the agenda, which in the policy under review was to merely place it in the glass box on the third floor of the hallway. It was changed to include the outside glass box, “and, electronically mailed or otherwise provided to local media, and published on the County’s website.”
The commission affirmed the current requirement that a notice be posted 48 hours prior to the meeting, but added the clarification that weekends and holidays did not count. Monday’s agenda will be posted on Thursday.
The commissioners also agreed to provide public access to non-privileged and relevant documentation contained in the “Commissioners Meeting Folder” prior to the meeting including connections to the information on the internet.
“While it’s nice that the commissioners are considering improvements to their public notice and public participation policy, these changes don’t really address the fact that if people can’t figure out what these meetings are about from the posted agenda item, then they don’t really have the opportunity to participate meaningfully,” said Victoria Howell, co-publisher of the Bitterroot Star. “We shouldn’t have to go to court over and over to make this right, but it looks like that’s what’s happening.”