In my January 22nd OpenCdA post titled Policy Question, I asked, “What is the City’s written policy regarding reading citizen letters into the minutes of City Council meetings?”  The question was predicated on the City’s selectively and arbitrarily reading some letters into the minutes of the City Council meetings while rejecting others.

Today’s Coeur d’Alene Press article titled The letters of the law by Tom Hasslinger almost answers the question.  Almost, but not quite.

In fact, today’s newspaper article reveals that the City is still trying to use the Coeur d’Alene Press as the City’s own weapon of mass deception.

In explaining why personal letters opposing a McEuen Field public advisory vote, some dated January 17th, were read into the January 17th Council meeting minutes, while a letter dated December 9th written by County Clerk Cliff Hayes and sent to the Mayor on December 9th somehow didn’t get read into the minutes of the December 20th Council meeting, today’s newspaper article reported:

The City Clerk’s Office said by time the city received Hayes’s letter, the canvassing topic wasn’t on the meeting’s agenda. Instead, the general policy is that written comments not scheduled as an agenda topic aren’t read into the record. Instead, they’re copied and delivered to each City Council member’s mailbox.

So a letter from County Clerk Hayes mailed on or about December 9th from Coeur d’Alene to the Mayor at the Coeur d’Alene City Hall didn’t make it all the way from the County Administration Building to Coeur d’Alene City Hall by December 20th?   Yet letters dated January 17th by people who said they were out of town or unable to testify personally at the January 17th Council meeting managed to get mailed and delivered on the same day?  Does anyone really believe the US Postal Service is that bad?

In fact, there is irrefutable evidence that the City had County Clerk Cliff Hayes’ letter in time to read it into the minutes of the December 20th Council meeting.  Here is a YouTube excerpt from that meeting.  Beginning at approximately 28 seconds into the excerpt, Councilman Mike Kennedy says:

County Clerk Cliff Hayes wrote us back a letter answering some of those questions, and he took exception to some of the comments that were made — particularly those by me.  So I read his letter and the story in the newspaper, and I just wanted to clarify a couple of things and report back on what I think we found and discovered…” [emphasis added]

Kennedy’s comments made at the December 20th Council meeting contradict the City Clerk’s Office explanation that the City supposedly had not received Hayes letter of December 9th in time to be added as an agenda item at the December 20th meeting.  Kennedy made it an agenda item when he offered the explanation in the YouTube presentation.

Moreover,  the Idaho Open Meeting Law, specifically Idaho Code § 67-2343(4)(c), allows that after commencement of the meeting, the agenda may be amended to accommodate unforeseen issues, provided that: (1) there is a motion made that states the good faith reason the new item was not on the original agenda, and (2) the motion to amend is adopted by the governing body.

In plain language, if the Mayor and City Council had really wanted to read County Clerk Cliff Hayes’ letter into the minutes of the December 20, 2011, meeting, they could have.  The law allowed it.  Kennedy admitted he had the letter — he referred to it in the YouTube.  Since the letter was sent to the Mayor, she had to have given it to Kennedy on or before December 20 so he could concoct his self-serving explanation.

Even if we believe the City Clerk’s Office explanation about why Hayes’ letter could not be read into the minutes of the December 20th Council meeting, there have been two Council meetings since then.  The letter could have been put on the agenda (if, in fact, that is even necessary) and read into the minutes of either of those.

From all of this, one thing should be very clear:  The City of Coeur d’Alene does have a policy about reading the public’s letters on an issue into the Council meeting minutes.  The policy is, “We’re going to make up the policy as we go along.”