Shawnee Dispatch

To the editor:

Regarding the City Council meeting on Nov. 8 and the topic of verbatim meeting minutes: Those who wanted to change the minutes to summary form kept using the reason of cutting costs. The costs are negligible and there are transcription services (including local) that can provide full minutes at lower costs.

Full meeting minutes provide the public with complete transparency as to what the council does. They also provide info as to what members of the public might say at these meetings. Reducing the minutes to summary format takes that away. Thoughts regarding this had been strongly mentioned previously by Council Members Michelle Distler and Dan Pflumm and alluded to by others (Neal Sawyer and David Morris) and finally echoed by Jeff Vaught. Even though seven of the eight wanted to postpone any action Dawn Kuhn still tried to get the item pushed through. Eventually, it got tabled.

Detailed minutes need to be maintained. One out-of-town trip by Council members (like to Denver) would cover a year’s worth of minutes.

Ray Erlichman

Shawnee