Truth or Consequences City Commission and staff plan a “retreat” next week, violating essence of Open Meetings Act

by Kathleen Sloan | August 13, 2020
5 min read

During yesterday’s Truth or Consequences City Commission meeting, the “retreat” to be held next week was referred to repeatedly. It turns out that in the last several years it has become a tradition for the City Commission to make it as difficult as possible for the public to attend its yearly planning session.

The planning session will be held at 9 a.m. on Aug. 19 at the Black Range Lodge in Kingston, which is 40 miles away.

Mayor Sandra Whitehead said the meeting would not be available via online conferencing and wouldn’t be taped or recorded.

Asked why the City Commission would go on a retreat, Whitehead said, “We do it every year. There will be 10 seats available to the public or you can read the minutes. We don’t take any action.”

Prodded again to answer why, Whitehead said, “We need this for us.”

Looking at last year’s retreat minutes, available on the City’s website, May 29, 2019, it is clear major City decisions on projects, staff and policy were made, setting priorities and goals for the year.

This was the only meeting in which plans and goals were discussed, making it the most important meeting of the year. Not making motions and taking votes obscured the City Commissioners’ positions on various issues. Not taking action, as Whitehead claims, does not mean decisions were not made.

For example, the minutes show the City Commission was informed the smart meters for electric customers had “gone out to bid” and would be presented to them “for award.” It was further decided no alternative technologies would be considered, other “options” being “removed” from consideration.

This decision resulted in contracting Landis+ Gyr for an undetermined but minimum amount of $1 million by mere motion at the Aug. 27, 2019 meeting, with no public hearing. The bid award was made in an open meeting, but the negotiated contract, with a menu of services and no set price of public-purse expenditure, was signed later by Whitehead behind closed doors.

Going on “retreat” as elected officials goes against the essence of the state’s Open Meetings Act, which the City adopts each year, this year at the July 8 meeting.

The OMA states, in part, at 10-15-1 (A), “In recognition of the fact that a representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate, it is declared to be public policy of this state that all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them. The formation of public policy or the conduct of business by vote shall not be conducted in closed meeting. All meetings of any public body except the legislature and the courts shall be public meetings, and all persons so desiring shall be permitted to attend and listen to the deliberations and proceedings. Reasonable efforts shall be made to accommodate the use of audio and video recording devices.”

“All persons so desiring” to attend the Aug. 19 meeting will not be allowed to beyond the 10 seats allotted, and moving it 40 miles away ensures poor attendance, as well as disdaining virtual-meeting access.

The New Mexico Foundation for Open Government Executive Director Melanie Majors said, “The term retreat is not found within the Open Meetings Act (OMA) which states ‘when a majority of a public body gathers to discuss public business, in their capacities as members of the body, any such gathering, in constitutes a ‘meeting’ subject to the Open Meetings Act.’” 

“Council members should remember the purpose of open-meetings laws is to allow the public to see the workings of government,” Majors said.

In addition she warns, “by holding the in-person meeting, the council may be in violation of the Governor’s executive order regarding gatherings.”

During the COVID-19 crisis, the Governor has said in-person meetings should be avoided, pressing business to be done by virtual meetings.

The Attorney General’s Office issued guidelines for holding virtual meetings, which Majors forwarded:

  • At the start of the meeting, the chair should announce the names of those members of the public body participating remotely. 
  • All members of the public body participating remotely must identify themselves whenever they speak and must be clearly audible to the other members of the public body and to the public. 
  • Members of the public should be afforded remote access, via live stream or other similar technology, if possible, or call-in number for listening by phone. 
  • Chair should suspend discussion if the audio or video is interrupted. 
  • All votes of the public body must be by roll call vote. 
  • The public body should produce and maintain a recording of the open session of the meeting. 

The City, at its regular meetings, is not following these guidelines, since the audio in the GoToMeeting application is extremely poor, as reported repeatedly by the public. In addition the City was not posting the taped sessions of the meetings from January to July, but has recently corrected that problem. Roll-call votes are not made in the virtual meetings and speakers often are not identified.

Randy Van Vleck, the attorney for the New Mexico Municipal League, was asked for an opinion on the City Commission holding a retreat 40 miles from the City, making it extremely difficult for the public to attend. He would not comment specifically on the retreat, but did say, “The Open Meetings Act requires openness when public business is discussed.”

Googling the term “city council retreats” turned up a few examples, Dallas, Oregon among them.

The city has about 16,000 residents and holds yearly retreats, which are also goal-setting and planning sessions, but they are completely open to the public, Sam Kaufmann said, who works for the city manager.

Dallas City Attorney Lane Shetterly also pointed out that Oregon’s Open Meetings Act requires local-government meetings be held within their jurisdictions; therefore their retreats must be held within Dallas city limits. 

The Truth or Consequences City Code does not address where meetings are to be held. Perhaps that could be added to the retreat agenda, which brings up another possible violation of the Open Meetings Act.
​
Last year’s retreat agenda only stated “Future goals planning session,” but the minutes show there was a specific agenda that should have been noticed to the public.

The state Open Meetings Act states, “Meeting notices shall include an agenda containing a list of specific items of business to be discussed or transacted at the meeting or information on how the public may obtain a copy of such an agenda.”

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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