{"id":69584,"date":"2017-07-14T14:48:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T20:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-fire-shows-confusion-on-public-meeting-rules\/"},"modified":"2017-07-14T20:48:35","modified_gmt":"2017-07-14T20:48:35","slug":"cortez-fire-shows-confusion-on-public-meeting-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-fire-shows-confusion-on-public-meeting-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez Fire shows confusion on public meeting rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Cortez Fire Protection District\u2019s board of directors received a primer on Colorado\u2019s Sunshine Laws after an calling for an illegal executive session on June 14.<\/span>The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After an attempt to hold an illegal executive session at their June meeting, members of the Cortez Fire Protection District\u2019s board of directors said on Wednesday they now have a better understanding of Colorado\u2019s public meeting laws.<\/p>\n

During the Wednesday meeting, board member Sherri Wright suggested everyone on the board undergo a special training on executive sessions and the Colorado Sunshine Laws, since she believed there was some \u201cconfusion\u201d about the subject at the June 14 meeting. Board member Rodney Branson had asked for an executive session at that meeting, even though it was not posted on the agenda as required by the Colorado Open Records Law.<\/p>\n

\u201cI strongly recommend that we have a board training to learn this stuff so that we don\u2019t have these discussions again,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n

But board president Orly Lucero said he and other board members had studied the Colorado Special District Association meeting guidelines, and wouldn\u2019t let such a breach in protocol happen again.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everything came out clear,\u201d he said. \u201cThe procedure of the executive session \u2013 I think everybody got it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to minutes from the June meeting, which were published on the district\u2019s website on Thursday, Branson had asked for an executive session to discuss an anonymous letter he received with complaints about the fire station. Although he did not present the full letter at the meeting, he said the complaints included a claim that the fire station didn\u2019t have enough working smoke detectors. Fire Chief Jeff Vandevoorde said the circuit board that controls the smoke detectors hadn\u2019t been working because of a leaky roof, but the district had just ordered a new one. He also asked that future concerns about the station be brought directly to him instead of to the board, which doesn\u2019t control fire operations.<\/p>\n

The minutes show that Wright, who participated in the meeting by conference call, and administrative assistant Wendy Mimiaga objected to an executive session because it would violate the Colorado Sunshine Laws\u2019 guidelines for public meetings.<\/p>\n

Colorado statute requires all executive sessions to be posted on a public agenda at least 24 hours in advance, including the reason for the session. The Special District Association rules also state that \u201can executive session is appropriate to discuss personnel matters concerning a specific individual,\u201d as long as the individual is notified in advance, but not to discuss general policy matters.<\/p>\n

Other action<\/div>\n

During the meeting, the board of directors also:<\/p>\n

Heard an update on the new fire station\u2019s construction from Virgil Gray of Weeminuche Construction Authority. He said the company that was hired to remove asbestos from the old administration building had received approval from the state after an unexpected delay in June, and the demolition should proceed soon.<\/em>Heard reports from Vandevoorde, administrative assistant Wendy Mimiaga, and assistant chief Shawn Bittle.<\/em>Approved the district\u2019s 2016 audit report from Heidi Trainor. <\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Find out more<\/h4>\n

To learn more about the Colorado Sunshine Laws and other public meeting laws, go to coloradofoic.org and click on \u201cResources.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

lessons learned after breach of Sunshine Law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,318,350,13,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-fire","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69584"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}