Recorder off at meetings

Electric City no longer makes audio recordings of its council meetings.

The city stopped doing this about a month ago on agreement between Mayor Jerry Sands and City Clerk/Treasurer Jackie Perman.

That raised a question from resident Sam Stanczak, who has been attending council meetings the past several weeks.

“How can you do this,” Stanczak asked?

He asked Sands if it was illegal to not record the meetings. Sands answered, “no,” and explained that most cities and town do not.

The city has made a practice of recording meetings for years, but decided that council minutes taken during the meeting are sufficient to provide a framework of what went on in official meetings.

Stanczak asked if the council needed to approve the decision to stop recording meetings and the mayor said, “no.”

Perman said that it is very infrequent that parties come in and want to listen to specific meetings.

Stanczak still wasn’t satisfied and wondered if it would be easier for the city to “hide stuff.”