2012-11-26 Regular session - Laserfiche WebLink

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Councilmembers had a chance to talk to the developer or anyone about this. Ms. th Carr noted that on October 18 the Council received confidential information on this real estate but this same information was now in Council’s packet for an open meeting. She said they received copies even after she sent an email to Mr. Walker to ask the members of Council to treat them as confidential documents and refrain from public dissemination until the Council had the opportunity to decide whether they would like to consider this an open or closed session. Ms. Carr said this was a change in policy and approach. She said that if the Council was going to change policy and approach, then they needed to take a vote on it. She said that administration might also apply this public meeting to legal and personnel matters. Ms. Carr addressed the Council and asked how did those documents which were marked confidential get into the hands of citizens and would like to make sure that decisions involving real estate be approved by Council as to whether it be heard in an open or a closed session. Mr. Kraft said Council does not vote on what is a public document or not. He said state law governs what documents are confidential, but the documents in this proposed purchase were sent in a public packet and were not confidential, per advice from the City Attorney. Mr. Kraft said state law governs the public status of those documents and because another colleague thinks they are confidential does not make them confidential. He felt when a real estate development was handled in a closed session the residents did not know about it till 3 days to 3 weeks later which was unfair to the residents. He said he supports the idea of doing things as much as possible in an open session. Mr. Crow asked if the City Attorney said that they should bring this up in a public session or did he just say that we can. He did not believe what they were talking about now should be in public session and believed most of the citizens would agree. He said that Council had a contract that tied up a piece of property for over six months with someone who really didn’t have a buyer. Mr. Price said that land was purchased to be developed, not just sold to someone. He said the agenda stated the person was proposing to pursue, which meant nothing had been done yet. Mr. Price wondered how something of this magnitude comes to fruition for a vote of “proposing to pursue. Mr. Price wanted it to be documented that he would not be doing it because that property was too valuable and too large when we are coming out of a recession. Ms. Carr stated that she would like to apologize on behalf of her colleagues and to the City Attorney because apparently opinions are valuable when they agree with some people and are challenged, thrown out or disregarded when they do not agree with them. She displayed a document marked confidential, stating she would give the City Clerk a copy of the page which stated “Memorandum th Confidential” meaning all of those documents where marked on October 18 as confidential and she took that as not to speak of this to anyone. She said she was for public discussion, but for real estate, you do not talk about your negotiations and strategy in front of the buyer and to her knowledge does not feel the Council was finished discussing this issue. She stated that even though persons have talked down to her and get away with it, this did not negate the fact that in this 19