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<br />preparing the meeting minutes. The recordings were destroyed after the minutes <br />were approved. <br /> <br />Ms. Carr stated there was interest in obtaining the audio to help Council be more <br />transparent for the citizens. She said if we cannot download it for access then it <br />should be stored. <br /> <br />Mayor Welsch noted that the City was already doing the minutes in a way that <br />was not recommended by our attorney, which is mainly verbatim. She stated that <br />if the majority of the Council decided to store audio, she hoped that they could <br />stop verbatim minutes and transcribes the minutes in the way the attorney <br />recommended. Mayor Welsch also stated that any discussion of this should be <br />part of a larger effort in clarifying the City’s official record retention policy. She <br />believed Mr. Walker and staff were working on the record retention policy. She <br />felt the audio should be noted for the City Clerk to do the minutes and once the <br />City Council approved them; those minutes become the official record of the <br />meeting. <br /> <br />Mr. Sharpe questioned if there was a downside to keeping the audio. He said if <br />there is not then he had no problem with keeping it. <br /> <br />Mr. Kraft stated he was concerned with any legal downsides in keeping the audio. <br />He also felt the audio could be misleading and they could not be used for court <br />evidence. <br /> <br />Mr. Price agreed with Ms. Carr that the technology is there and would not be <br />expensive to store. He said there have been arguments regarding statements he <br />made in meetings because of the minutes being paraphrased incorrectly and not <br />giving the true intent of his statement. He said with audio, you could match it up <br />and get the right statement. He asked the maker of the motion could mirror <br />whatever the state law said toward keeping records so they could run <br />simultaneously together. <br /> <br />Mr. Crow said that the state law probably has not got to this point to answer that <br />question. Mr. Crow said that the motion states that they would be kept and the <br />City Clerk knows that they would be kept. He said it did not need a time frame. <br /> <br />Mr. Crow also questioned why he had not heard about a records’ retention policy <br />discussion going on by staff until now. He said some Councilmembers knew <br />about it and others were not aware. He was also surprise that they are <br />comparing this motion to a deposition that uses a professional court reporter who <br />gets paid to just do court reporting verbatim versus our City Clerk who has a <br />multitude of duties. Mr. Crow stated that many of the members of Council have <br />had concerns about how they have been characterized in the minutes. He <br />believed the audio seemed to be the easiest answer and he did not understand <br />why this was so controversial. <br /> <br />9 <br /> <br /> <br />