Pea Ridge Times

Special meeting held to correct minutes

- RACHEL DICKERSON rdickerson@nwadg.com

GARFIELD — City Council members met in a special session Monday night to address discrepanc­ies with the minutes from the June, July and August meetings.

The city’s recorder/treasurer who normally takes the minutes has been out sick, and so Mayor Gary Blackburn has been taking the minutes at each meeting. Alderman Kathy Shook, who has been recording the meetings, discovered some discrepanc­ies between the written minutes and the recordings and wished to correct the written accounts. She brought the recordings to listen to as well as proposed correction­s.

Blackburn started out by saying, “We need to really be focused on what the meaning of minutes are,” and asked alderman Terry Warren to read a definition. The definition said, “a summary of action taken at a meeting and the vote taken.”

Blackburn said, “There’s no precedent for what we’re doing, so I’ll ask for some input early on.”

He asked alderman Dale Watkins whether he could remember a time the council had gone back and changed the minutes using what was on a recording. Watkins said he remembered times they had changed the minutes, but only using someone’s memory of the events, not using a recording.

Shook said the minutes are important because in case of a legislativ­e audit, they are the only documentat­ion of what happens in a meeting. She said the mayor’s minutes were “glossed over,” “idealized” and “not factual.”

She added, “I think it’s important that we have accurate minutes.”

Blackburn said the minutes should be a summary of what transpired at the meeting, “not documentin­g an agenda.”

The council discussed several correction­s starting with the August meeting and moving backward toward the June meeting. At one point they discussed deleting from the minutes three paragraphs about comments made at the August meeting by Scott Wassman, Zannie Morrison and Susie Morrison. Wassman’s remarks were regarding the council’s negative attitudes and what had appeared in the newspaper, The TIMES of Northeast Benton County. Watkins said the remarks should be removed from the minutes because Wassman and Susie Morrison later announced they were running for office, and he felt they were using the meeting as a platform.

Blackburn said, “I’m completely against striking (their) address to the council,” and suggested summarizin­g the paragraphs. The council agreed on a short summary of the three addresses.

Upon completing the correction­s, Blackburn asked, “How do we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Warren suggested the city needs its own recording device. Shook suggested a third-person recorder as well — not the mayor or an alderman. Blackburn said he would get someone to type the minutes during the meetings and then print them at the end so that everyone could look at them before they leave.

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