Residents press Newcastle council over hard-to-find notices and unreliable meeting recordings

Newcastle — Residents who spoke during two public-comment periods at Tuesday’s special Newcastle City Council meeting pressed officials to improve meeting notice and recording practices, saying the special meeting was difficult to find on the city website and that recent meetings had not been reliably recorded.

Amber Elam of the China Creek neighborhood said she has noticed glitches during several meetings in the past two years and urged the city to have IT confirm recordings and to record daytime finance committee meetings so working residents can access them. “What can we do to be proactive so that they are recorded?” Elam asked.

Len Troutman told the council the notices he received lacked ballot titles and numbers and said he feared potential procedural violations under public-disclosure rules. “The notice that I have has no indication of the ballot titles or ballot numbers,” Troutman said.

Several commenters, including Kathleen Fudge and Larry Fudge, said the meeting was hard to find on the city calendar and asked staff to put meeting links in an easy-to-find place on the website. “Nowhere in your calendaring system does it say that this meeting’s happening,” Kathleen Fudge said.

City staff and the mayor responded that the special meeting was noticed at least 24 hours in advance, that official notices and agenda packets are posted in the city’s document center and that in-house recordings will be posted to YouTube as soon as possible. City Clerk Westman explained that meeting packets include hyperlinks to the document center.

Deputy Mayor Charbonneau acknowledged a staff omission of proposition numbers on an earlier notice and said that was why the council called the special meeting to clarify the record. “I think our city attorney made a very human error and didn’t put the numbers on,” Charbonneau said.

Speakers asked for clearer online calendar postings, earlier notification for special meetings and recordings of finance committee meetings held during the workday to increase accessibility. The mayor said staff would follow up on posting and recording availability. The meeting was adjourned at 5:53 p.m.