First off, thanks toAspen City Councilman Jack Johnson for doing the right thing on Monday night.
The right thing wasto point out that some recent e-mails to City Council members were not includedin Monday night’s meeting packet, and so were not available to the public asthey should have been. As the result of Johnson’s action, the agenda item thatthese e-mails addressed (the redevelopment of the Bidwell Building) wascontinued to the May 27 meeting in order to give the public the opportunity toreview this material.
The public’s accessto public documents is a big deal. The public is entitled to pretty much thesame information as City Council. If that weren’t the case, City Council couldgo around making all kinds of decisions based on secret information. That’s notgood.
Johnson’s action wasunprecedented. I’ve never seen an elected board continue an agenda item, justbecause the public was not provided with the information it was entitled to.Thanks, Jack.
•••
Aspen is a bignumbers city with a big government approach to running things, so an extra $49million government subsidy to the Burlingame Ranch affordable housing projectmight seem abstract and unimportant to taxpayers.
So, here’s one way tolook at a $49 million subsidy. Figuring Aspen’s population is approximately5,000, a $49 million subsidy would come to $9,800 per person. Where a6-year-old kid is going to come up with $9,800 is not the point here.
The point here isthat $49 million is a lot of money no matter who is paying it, and theresidents of Aspen might think about paying attention to this issue. Theoriginal subsidy was about $14 million. The projected subsidy now is about $63million.
Marilyn Marks, amember of the city’s Citizen Budget Task Force, presented the $49 millionnumber at a recent City Council meeting. For her work in bringing to light agovernment subsidy that is almost five times what voters were originally toldit would be, Marks also receives a Doing the Right Thing award.
•••
Some localjournalists have long figured that local elected government boards are justfine with providing the public (their boss) with the absolute minimuminformation the law requires. This information includes board meeting times anddates, and election dates. The law requires elected boards to run legal noticesabout both of those items. These notices are in the back of newspapers in tinytype that even if you are looking out for them, you sometimes miss. That’s whathappened to myself and at least one downvalley newspaper editor in regard tothe recent Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District election. We missedit.
There are severaltheories on why an elected board would want to do the absolute minimum the lawrequires in this regard. Some boards probably don’t want the public (theirboss) to know what they are up to. The public can get kind of ornery, ask toomany questions, stir up trouble and make meetings last too long.
For other boards, itjust never occurs to them that it’s OK to go beyond the absolute minimum inletting the public know what’s going on in their own tax-funded district.
Colorado MountainCollege is among the worst in keeping the public posted on when and where it’smeeting, what actions the board took during those meetings, and other businessthat some consider boring. CMC does the absolute minimum in this area, despitethe fact it has a full-time media relations department.
The Garfield County Library District is doing a better job inpublicizing its monthly board meetings. For the past several months it’s beenincluding the board meeting agenda as well as the time and place in its legalnotices. Still, with a multimillion-dollar capital improvements project underway, one would think the board would want to let the people who are paying forthese new libraries know how their money is being spent.
Government committeesare really bad at letting the public know what they are up to. The CarbondaleParks and Recreation Committee is a good example. Earlier this year thecommittee made recommendations to the Town Council on plans for the Delaney dogpark (aka the Carbondale Nature Park). The only reason any of the dog parkusers knew about this meeting was because someone took it on themselves to posta notice at the dog park. A letter to the editor about the meeting would havereached hundreds, while this notice reached dozens.
Some would say it isthe newspapers’ job to keep the public up to date on elected boards andcommittees. To some extent, they’d be correct. But in Carbondale alone thereare at least six appointed Town Council committees, and this does not includeany of the special districts: schools, CMC, fire, library and others. And let’snot forget the forest service, BLM, DOW and CDOT.
Newspapers do nothave the staffing to keep up to date on all the elected boards and theirappointed committees, plus state and federal government. It’s incumbent onthese elected boards and appointed committees to go beyond the absolute minimumto communicate with the press and public.
Which brings us backto the Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District. A total of 118 peoplevoted in the recent board election. This is out of an eligible votingpopulation of about 7,000. That’s a little less than a 2 percent turnout. Therewere three candidates running for two seats, and less than 2 percent of theeligible voters turned out.
Hardly anyone knewabout the Carbondale fire district election, other than several dozen volunteerfirefighters, their friends and families, and a few staffers. After talkingwith a fire board member, it doesn’t appear the fire district wanted to sneakit past the public and keep it “in the family,” if you will. The fire boardfigured it was doing all it needed to do by posting one legal notice for theelection.
It doesn’t take muchfor an elected board, special district or committee to go beyond the absoluteminimum in communicating with the public. There are all kinds of ways: a letterto the editor, a PSA sent to radio stations, radio interviews, updated Websites, e-mails, fax machines.
Elected boards,committees and special districts won’t take the extra step to communicateunless the public demands it. Or until candidates are elected who understandthe public deserves more than the absolute minimum in this regard.
Lynn Burton is night editor for the Aspen Daily News.He can be reached at lburton@aspendailynews.com.