Communication with Mary Street on Selection of New Mayor

Mr. Kingsford,

Thank you for your email. I feel badly about the process, but I don't think the Councilmembers set out to do anything wrong here. Just after Mayor Washburn passed away, we Council members received an email from City Staff telling us what state law requires us to do as part of the process of selecting a new mayor. Staff said we needed to post the position for 14 days so that applicants could submit letters of interest. Staff said they would post the opening the day after Mayor Washburn's funeral and schedule a special public meeting for the City Council for the day following the application deadline and that at that meeting the applicants would have time to address the Council. Staff further stated that they would schedule a second public meeting for a week after that for us to appoint the new mayor.

Because there was a week between the first public meeting where the applicants addressed the council and the second public meeting where we appointed a new Mayor, I assumed that we council members had a full week to meet the applicants individually and ask them questions and get to know them. It never really occurred to me to hold a public Q & A session, and that was just lack of experience on my part.

Anyway, the night of that first public meeting where the applicants had their 3 minutes to address the council, we were told at the end of the public meeting that our legal staff advised us that we weren't supposed to talk to the candidates from that point on because it would be in violation of the public meeting act. In other words, we were told we couldn't call the candidates or have a sit down meeting with them for a one-on-one to get to know them better. We were told that any meeting we had with them had to be a public meeting. I really didn't understand this at all, but I didn't get out the megaphone and yell HALT to the process. Rather, the next day I called the UtahLeague of Cities and Towns attorney, Dave Church, and asked his opinion. He told me that he didn't believe the Open Meetings Law precluded me having individual conversations with the applicants, so, against the advice of our city legal staff, I went ahead and called several of the applicants during the ensuing week to ask them questions. I had already talked with some of the applicants who put their name in the hat early in the process so I just needed to get to know some of the applicants who put their name in late. Our legal staff still says that I shouldn't have done what I did, but I don't think I could have made a decision without doing this.

Moving forward, I think we need to have a sit down with City Staff and prepare a written procedure memo for future councils so that they don't run into the same problem we had this time. I believe it was a combination of lack of communication and lack of experience that resulted in our process going the way it did.

But I DO feel good about the decision. I support our new Mayor and am really impressed with what he has done this week to get to know what is going on in the city. I think we made a really good choice, even if the process we went through had issues.

This is a really long answer to your question, but to sum it up: The City Legal Staff and the City Recorder set up the meeting schedule for the process. The City Council probably should have asked for a public Q&A time in the meeting when the applicants presented themselves, but it honestly didn't occur to me (I don't know how the others felt on this on) because of the assumptions I had about our ability to talk to the candidates after the public meeting. By the time we were told we were supposed to do our Q&A in a public meeting, it was too late to properly notice another public meeting before our deadline to appoint an Interim Mayor.

I hope this explanation helps a little. Again, I feel badly about the process, but not the outcome. Please feel free to call or email me if you have more concerns or questions.

Mary

Mary Street

Orem City Council Member

mstreet@orem.org

801-358-6279