Technology over meeting minutes
by George Wiley
If she fights at all, Redondo City Clerk Sandy Forrest chooses her battles.
One battle Forrest does not want is how to handle the minutes of city council meetings, even if she agrees with critics that the council could save money by shortening the minute-taking process.
Rather than talk about city minutes, Forrest would rather alert the council to improvements that need to be made if she is to drag her office and its public records into the computer age.
"Before I can get us into the 21st Century, I've got to get us into the 20th Century," she said.
She estimates the cost of doing so may be "between $40,000 and $50,000" to buy the scanner and the related software the city would need to get going. After that it will take years of staff time before all police, public safety and clerical records can be put into computers where they can be instantly accessed by both city staff and the public, Forrest said.
Forrest adds she intends to propose the computer upgrading to the city council on within the next few weeks. To help her prepare for such an upgrade, Forrest has hired former Hermosa Beach city clerk and city councilwoman Kathleen Midstokke as deputy city clerk.
Midstokke will be Forrest's assistant; a major part of her job will be to help prepare the clerk's office for the computerization effort.
The appointment for Midstokke brings her back to the South Bay professionally. She has always lived in Hermosa, but after her term on the city council, she quit politics and took a job as a municipal paralegal for a downtown Los Angeles law firm. That was six years ago.
"I always preferred the city clerk's role," Midstokke said.
Forrest and Midstokke say they didn't know one another before Midstokke applied for the Redondo Beach job. Both had been city clerks elsewhere before coming to Redondo, Midstokke in Hermosa and Forrest in Lawndale. Forrest threw her hat in the Redondo political arena last year, and in a May 1999 run-off election she beat former Redondo city clerk John Oliver in his bid for re-election.
Forrest said she sees her first duty as an administrator. As such she wants first to provide public records to city residents, and secondly to work with and serve the city council and other city officials. But she's not out to create enemies, which is one reason she's not about to battle the council about city minutes.
"We'll give the city council what they want," she said. "We're not legally required to furnish in-depth minutes, but the battle isn't worth it."
Others disagree.
One person quite willing to take up the fight to save Redondo money on its minute-taking process is current Norwalk city clerk Gail Vasquez-Connolly. In a letter to local papers she pointed out how Redondo could save thousands of dollars by shortening its minute-taking process at council meetings and perhaps at other city agency meetings as well.
Vasquez lives in Redondo and is married to Redondo Beach city manager Paul Connolly. Vasquez-Connolly insists she has no axe to grind with Redondo, despite the fact that her husband worked for the city for 28 years but did not have his contract renewed as city manager when it expired a few months ago. Instead, the city council appointed current city manager Lou Garcia to the post. The council's reasons for dropping Connolly and hiring Garcia have never been fully disclosed. But Vasquez-Connolly said her relationship with Connolly is irrelevant to her bringing the matter of minute-taking methodology to the attention of the public.
"I'm addressing the issue because I have expert knowledge of it. My relationship with Paul has nothing to do with my letter."
Forrest, who knows Vasquez-Connolly as a prominent city clerk in California, agrees. "I don't think Gail has an axe to grind," she said. "I think she's offering her clear, professional opinion."
California law does not treat municipal minutes like court testimony said Vasquez. There is no legal reason why minutes must or should contain word-by-word or even summary descriptions of what was said at city meetings. What the law requires, notes Vasquez, is that the actions taken at city council meetings be recorded. This means the minutes must reflect the motion made and the vote on that motion with respect to any issue on the agenda at public meetings. Agendas must be published beforehand so that the public can attend if interested. There are strict legal requirements for adding last-minute, unpublished items to agency agendas.
In addition to recording motions and votes minutes must record who said what in public hearings. But this means keeping a record of public testimony at hearings, Vasquez-Connolly emphasizes, not add in what city officials had to say about those comments.
She said if councilmembers want to check what they actually said at a meeting, they can review the video or audio tapes that are kept of all meetings.
"I do record in the minutes the reasons for a dissenting vote, so it's there in case you need to research why someone dissented," said Vasquez-Connolly who is responsible for Norwalk's minutes, "but it isn't required."
But the Norwalk clerk does say Redondo is wasting money by having contractors transcribe minutes on an expanded format. Vasquez-Connolly estimates that in the past the city spent as much as $50,000 a year on the "frivolous" keeping of expanded minutes.
Forrest said she has no way of computing how much the city has paid for minute transcribing. The previous contractor left the job suddenly, and records of which transcribing services are for what municipal office are unclear, Forrest adds. But she said Vasquez-Connolly's estimate of $50,000 for minutes may be on the high side.
Forrest does know how much she'll be paying the transcriber who'll be doing the minutes in the future. The transcriber, Diane Cleary will be paid $20 per hour, said Forrest. But there will be a cap on what can be charged. For each hour spent at a city council meeting, the transcriber will be allowed three additional hours to transcribe. So each hour of time spent at a city council meeting will cost the city at most $80.
Forrest said for that price the city minutes will reflect "the meat" of what is said by all participants, public and councilmembers alike.
Recent examples of minutes show brief summaries of councilmembers' comments. The minutes are not verbatim transcripts.
"I would much prefer to have staff do it," said Forrest. But she adds that her current staff of 5.5 persons, including herself and Midstokke, is too overworked with other duties to do the minutes too.ER
