Budget talks inaudible in West Jordan

3-hour meeting quiet, especially City Council

WEST JORDAN — Cities' residents mostly don't show an interest in their governments' budget process until the city has already scheduled a hearing to raise taxes.

Except in West Jordan.

Here, residents sat through last Tuesday's three-hour City Council work session about the proposed 2008-09 budget — unable to hear what was being said — just to watch their city leaders quietly deliberate raising property taxes by at least $2 million. Even from the front row, details like whether city employees should receive a cost-of-living increase or residents should pay for street lights were impossible to hear without a microphone.

And there purposely weren't any microphones.

"When we sit up on the dais and we put mikes out there, it becomes a different atmosphere than when we can just chat and go back and forth and be less formal," Mayor Dave Newton said. "Certainly we don't want to stop the public from viewing what was going on, but that wasn't the most important part of this (meeting), in my opinion. The most important thing was for the council to discuss and weigh these decisions, because these decisions aren't easy, and it's hard when you've got an audience to do that."

The City Council normally doesn't use microphones during work sessions, but when fewer people attend the meeting, it's possible for residents to join the council at its table to hear better, Newton said. In this case, with so many people in attendance, that wasn't possible. Even a recording of the meeting, which was posted on the city's Web site the next day, was equally inaudible in parts.

Newton says, in retrospect, he might have done things differently. The budget is creating enough stir in the city to prompt an unofficially formed group of about 40 residents to meet twice a week — including on Saturday mornings at 7:30 a.m. — just to slog through several 6-inch binders that are the city budget. Newton says he values the group's input — several of the group's suggested budget cuts have already been implemented by the City Council — and he doesn't want to discourage public participation.

The Open and Public Meetings Act doesn't specify that amplification must be used in public meetings in order for city councils to "conduct their deliberations openly," but allowing the public to hear council discussions is an important part of inviting public participation and an assumed component of an "open" meeting, says Tim Smith, a Salt Lake attorney who specializes in the open meetings act.

"The public isn't being allowed to participate in the process if the city council is holding a discussion that no one can hear," Smith said. "At the very least, it's not going with the intent of the act, if not outright violating it. It's basically saying the public is going to interfere with our decision-making process if they can hear what we're saying, so we're going to make it so they can't hear what we're saying because it will be easier for us to make a decision."

Recent comments