“We go above and beyond,” Wood said.
By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Town of Davis Water Clerk Tina Wood responded July 24th to criticism brought forward at the previous meeting by Davis resident Lori Quattro regarding allegations by Quattro that the Town was not following the Open Meetings Act properly and lacked transparency. “I just want to clarify and straighten out some things to hopefully put this to bed,” Wood said.
Wood handed out copies of the The Open Governmental Meetings Act that she had sourced from the Ethics Commission website. In the handout, sections were highlighted much as Quattro had the previous meeting. “Last meeting you were given a partial code of ethics,” Wood said. “This is the full code of ethics for governmental meetings act.”
According to Wood, the Town of Davis does not qualify as a regular meeting, but rather as “Other Governing Bodies” due to the established nature of the meetings and the set schedule the Town meetings follow. “Lori (Quattro) said we fall under the regular meetings, we do not,” Wood said. “It falls under other governing bodies.”
According to Wood the section regarding Other Governing Bodies addresses the nature in which the Council is required to give notice. “The first sentence says, ‘Notice must be given in a reasonable manner. When a governing body meets in accordance with a fixed schedule, such as the second and fourth Monday of each month, it may comply with the meeting notice requirement in the Act by annually posting notice of the date, time and place of these regular meetings or regular committee meetings for the coming year and keeping this notice posted throughout the year.’”
Wood said the agendas, meetings and other documents are available on the Town’s website. “We do have it on our website, since the website went live in 2019,” Wood said.
Wood also addressed the issue brought up by Quattro regarding when the agenda was posted following the July 4th holiday. Wood said that the delay was due to last minute notification by the Governor that the day after the 4th would be declared a holiday. “We did post it in a timely manner,” Wood said. “The Governor waited, we didn’t get clarification until 3:30 that Wednesday that Friday was going to be a holiday. So we were closed Thursday and Friday. So first thing Monday morning is a reasonable manner and I did post it.”
Wood said that she also placed the agendas in the kiosk and makes sure that it is posted on the web. “It is on our website, I do make sure it is out on our kiosk,” Wood said.
Wood said that the Town goes beyond what is expected by the state by posting in multiple locations both in physical form and online. “We go above and beyond,” Wood said. “We post it on our website, we post it on our social media page. This says right here that we only have to post it in the kiosk.”
According to Wood, the Town has worked hard over the past couple of years to ensure transparency. “We have worked very hard over the past couple of years with our website with our information to make sure that we’re transparent, as much as possible and to get everything out there,” Wood said.
The effort, according to Wood, is to make accessing the information as easy as possible for both residents and visitors. “We want our residents, our visitors, media to access that information, but code of ethics says we only have to put it in the kiosk, but we want to make it as easy as possible,” Wood said.
Wood also addressed public comment at meetings. “Are Governing bodies required to allow members of the public to speak at a meeting? No,” Wood said. “’The purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to allow citizens to observe the governing body for purposes of promoting transparency.’”
Wood also suggested that the Mayor and Council take a firmer hand in handling interruptions during meetings. “I think that Mayor and Council needs to maybe sometimes remind guests that they should not be interrupting people,” Wood said. “That they should let people speak and when you are back in session, no one is to be talking. They are supposed to be observing.”
Wood said she has learned new computer skills and worked with the Town’s webmaster to ensure the information is available in a timely manner. “I want everyone to understand that we are doing everything,” Wood said. “I have learned Word Press. I have worked with our webmaster. I get it out there. If for some reason I’m sick or on vacation, Joannie has copies of the minutes the next day if somebody needs to come in and get it.”
According to Wood, she has strove to limit the criticism the Town receives. “I base my vacations around posting so that we don’t get criticized,” Wood said. “We never get compliments, we always get critiqued.”
