Council gets notice

Public notices and lifeguards were discussed at the July 2 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council.

Joshua Wood, vice president of the Wyoming Press Association (WPA), gave the council a presentation on open meeting laws and the importance of using newspapers for public notices.

Wood discussed the Wyoming Association of Municipalities (WAM) Resolution 24-09, regarding legal advertisements. WAM resolutions are not law, but rather suggestions for laws to be enacted by the legislature. The resolution changes the current requirement of local governments to publish memorializations and public notices in newspapers of general circulation to allow them to publish said notices anywhere.

Wood shared statistics from CODA research regarding public notices in newspapers. According to the study, 87% of Wyoming adults get news from local print or digital newspapers, 78% of Wyoming adults read public notices in digital newspapers and 68% believe state and local governments should be required to publish public notices in newspapers.

He also discussed the importance of using an independent party to publish notices.

“It’s been floated before in legislation that municipal governments should be able to publish their public notices on their own websites,” Wood said. “One of the things that helps with municipalities publishing their public notices with newspapers is, again, that independence. It separates … this town council from the perception of impropriety … Newspapers stand as this independent third party, doing this job for well over 100 years and making it extremely accessible.”

“If we have a local newspaper, I feel like everything should be published in that newspaper because chances are more people will look at that newspaper then they will our Facebook page or our regular page [website],” Mayor Chuck Davis said. “To me it’s the best way to get it out there, it kind of takes a burden off of us. Nobody can come back on the Town because we’re open and transparent by doing it this way.”

Next, Wood spoke on Wyoming Open Meeting Laws. He said this conversation was a result of the communications regarding the pool manager that were said to have taken place during the June 26 special meeting.

He focused on Wyoming state statute 16-4-403(d), which reads “No meeting shall be conducted by electronic means or any other form of communication that does not permit the public to hear, read or otherwise discern meeting discussion contemporaneously. Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among members of an agency, shall not be used to circumvent the purpose of this act.”

“The intent can be innocuous enough to be having a text thread among council members talking about something,” Wood said. “However, whatever the intent of that, if you have a majority of a council on an email, you’ve got a meeting, you’ve got a quorum of the council.”

He said following the 1979 case Emery vs the City of Rawlins, the definition of a “public meeting” changed.

“The definition of a public meeting was later amended not only to not only define a public meeting as one where an action was taken, but also one where quote ‘discussion, deliberation or presentation of information occurs,’” Wood said. “[I] just wanted to present that information. [It’s] something to chew on for not only you people up here, but the people watching.”

“We don’t have a text thread where all of us talk to one another, it’s not a discussion or deliberation type scenario. We might do planning, like we’re going to have a meeting or exchange information, and the emails we exchange are usually in preparation for these meetings,” Councilwoman Kathy Beck said.

Later in the meeting, the council discussed hiring four Rawlins Aquatic Center lifeguards to work on contract at the Saratoga Municipal Pool. The lifeguards would be able to work Fridays and Saturdays in July, with their availability potentially opening up more in August.

“It will definitely keep some of the concerns down about the pool being open. If their schedule changes in August, and they can provide a little more time, that’s when our kids are going back to school so it could help out,” Davis said.

The lifeguards were hired at $18 an hour plus mileage.

The next meeting of Saratoga Town Council will be July 16 at 6 p.m. at the Saratoga Town Hall.