Dear Editor,
I am sure are probably aware of the the council agenda for February 11, 2021, Item A of New Business.
Whereas the Mayor has deemed that the audio recordings of Town Council meetings should no longer be used as the official minutes of the Council proceedings.
The problem with this is the the Town Clerk and past Town Clerks within the last 2 years have not been able to process the written minutes of the council meetings. (This is not intended as a criticism or a reflection on the Clerk and previous two Clerks or their abilities). Obviously something has changed to prevent the Clerk(s) from being able to perform this function of their duties. Prior Town Clerks, even with a very busy schedule have been able to account for all of their duties including maintenance of the Minutes and processing new Minutes.
So what has changed?
The Audio Recording is the official record for the Town of Stevensville Town Council and should remain so. Otherwise, these records could be……lost….Remember the Nixon tapes. As such a record should be adequately safeguarded by the town staff and with the enormous expenditure the town has undertaken with maintenance of the Town’s Data via First Call Computer Services and the fact that the Clerk(s) cannot seem to process the minutes in a timely manner due to whatever has changed to prevent this duty from being accomplished, I believe it imperative to maintain the Audio Recordings as the Official Town Council Minutes.
As it is, when and if the minutes are ever transcribed, they are summaries of the meeting, not a complete record. Often when comparing the actual recordings with the processed minutes, they have a tendency to differ.
Also, the written minutes, are supposed to be reviewed for accuracy by the Mayor and the Town Council before approving the official written minutes. I wonder how many of them actually read the transcriptions? I say this because on some occasions multiple council meeting minutes have been approved at once with little to no discussion. Which tells me an adequate review may not be happening. Prior to publishing the minutes in the Agenda Package, I always sat down and reviewed the draft minutes and if any errors were found, our Clerk corrected the written record prior to publishing the Agenda. As a Council member, I read each and every copy of our minutes and on a few occasions we approved the minutes with identified errors to be corrected.
So, if the Council chooses to make the written record the Official Record, who will review the audio and compare it to the written minutes? What level of review will occur?
How does a Private Citizen who may not be able to attend a meeting verify the actual conversations that took place. Because it is the conversations at the council meeting that are important as is the final outcome of the vote by the council.
Fact is, if you listen to the minutes, you will find out how poorly the council meetings are run and how little attention Council pays to its own rules.
No, the Audio Record needs to remain and those records are required to be available to the public. Fact is, under state law 2-3-212 (1) which states the following:
Minutes of meetings — public inspection. (1) Appropriate minutes of all meetings required by 2-3-203 to be open must be kept and must be available for inspection by the public. If an audio recording of a meeting is made and designated as official, the recording constitutes the official record of the meeting. If an official recording is made, a written record of the meeting must also be made and must include the information specified in subsection (2).
So, now we will record the meeting, and then make a transcript, which seems to me that the transcript may no longer be allowed to be an abbreviated version of the minutes. Which means if you are going to have an adequate version of the written record, then it should have an extensive review process in order to declare the record valid.
As I said before, the Clerks lately are not able to keep with the transcription as it is. How can the Clerk make detailed transcriptions of the minutes and what review process will take place to verify adequacy of the record.
The town has a duty to the Citizens to maintain accurate records.
I am pretty sure, that not many of the Council, Clerk or Mayor reviews the minutes very well, if they did there might be a lot of unfinished business dating back to 2017 that has not been finished. This includes items that were tabled and never re-visited. Things that are going to come back and bite the Council.
Has anyone looked at the 5 and 10 year plan for the airport that was implemented after annexation. Has anyone addressed the small portion of property the County deeded to the Town during my tenure as Mayor. Which has to be addressed within 5 years of our acquisition of that property? I will give you a hint. It needs a resolution to include it as part of the River Park. Back in 2014 or 2015, not sure of the year, but we had an airport ordinance issue that needed to be completed. It was tabled until we received a letter back from the State Attorney General. What ever happened to that?
Jim Crews
Stevensville