Bluffdale puts the kibosh on politics in newsletter

Bluffdale city leaders are pulling politics out of the monthly newsletter published by the city.

The Bluffdale Times, a newsletter residents receive with their water bill, until recently had been used as something of a political forum in the ongoing feud between Mayor Claudia Anderson and the City Council.

An amended resolution passed by the council Tuesday night seeks to return the newsletter to its role as a tool to communicate important news and upcoming city events to residents.

"As soon as she started observing that things weren't going her way, Mayor Anderson began using the newsletter as a political forum," Councilwoman Martha Speed told the Deseret Morning News. "Things were being printed that were not correct."

City Council members believed they needed to prevent that, Speed said. "The newsletter has to be truthful, informative and useful."

The resolution calls for the newsletter to be prepared by city staff and approved by the mayor a minimum of five days prior to printing. A minimum of two members of the City Council will then review and edit the newsletter. After that, no changes to the newsletter will be allowed without being reviewed by at least two members of the City Council.

The changes to the newsletter policy had been proposed since March, but the City Council tabled the issue four times because meetings were running late into the night.

Speed said she hopes the amended resolution will put an end to problems with changes being made to the newsletter without council approval, as well as edits requested by the council that were not getting into the mailer.

Messages from the mayor and City Council were not included in the city's March, April and May newsletters. Short announcements about the June 26 referendum vote on the city's form of government appeared in all three editions, but they didn't contain opinions on the issue from either side.

Previous issues of the Bluffdale Times were dominated by the war of words. The front of the two-page newsletter in February included dueling opinions on the firing of former administrative services director Brent Bluth and the hiring of Dave Hogue as his replacement.

More than one-third of January's newsletter was used for the mayor and City Council to explain their respective positions on the city's form of government and the pending referendum on the issue.

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E-mail: jpage@desnews.com