Editorial: Too much at stake for mistakes

May 08, 2008 06:29 pm

— The Cleburne City Council met Tuesday night to authorize pay more money to the architects working on civic/performing arts center, which is now projected to cost $10.5 million.
You say you didn’t know anything about the meeting? Shouldn’t that have been in the newspaper?
Yes, it should have. But we didn’t know about it, so we couldn’t tell you. And you couldn’t make your thoughts known at the meeting as a result.
Ordinarily governmental bodies send us copies of the agenda before the meetings. Except for school districts, they aren't required to — it’s a courtesy that allows us to keep you informed of important matters like spending millions of dollars of your taxes.
The person responsible for handling the task of informing us was not in the office the day the meeting was posted, and the substitute didn’t think about sending out the notice to local media. An honest mistake, we’re sure, but one that needs to be avoided in the future.
Cities with Web sites are required to post meetings on their sites, and Cleburne did, but not in a spot that is easy to find.
Here’s what we suggest. Secretaries do their job the best they can and shouldn’t be held responsible for knowing how to cover everyone else’s job functions.
But on something as important as this, the city manager or assistant city manager should make sure local media are informed. A phone call to the city secretary or her substitute with a friendly reminder should suffice.
And meetings should be announced on and linked from the home page of the city’s Web site so they are easily found.
For our part, now that we know where the information is, we’ll be sure to check regularly to make sure we don’t miss another meeting.