City Council message board now available to the public

Sierra Martin | Managing Editor

SAN MARCOS – The city of San Marcos has made the City Council message board available to the public for the first time. The message board breaks down every agenda item for the upcoming meetings and allows council members to make comments or ask questions before voting on the items during their meeting.

The message board’s purpose is to post City Council Members’ questions and staff’s responses regarding upcoming Council agenda items and other matters of concern. Unlike the city of Austin, only City Council members and authorized staff are allowed to post on this message board.

By having the message board publicly available, members of the community can read about Council members’ questions or concerns with upcoming agenda items and determine how the council may vote.

Lisa Marie Coppoletta, San Marcos resident and Communication Studies Professor, spent years campaigning to have the message board made public, and started the conversation about the issue with the city.

According to a post on the City of San Marcos website forum, “City Council members may not vote or take any action that is required to be taken at a meeting by posting a communication on this message board. In no event shall a communication or posting on this message board be construed to be an action of the San Marcos City Council.”

The most recent regular meeting agenda on April 20 included 65 messages for the 28 agenda items. Agenda item 22: Categories and Criteria Allocating General Fund Dollars due to CARES Act Funds had the most engagement.

In the post, Council member Maxfield Baker asked if they could require applicants for the new small businesses funds to require customers, employees, and owners to follow CDC guidelines.

“The new CRF/General Fund program could require as a condition of accepting the funding that the customers, employees and owners must follow CDC guidelines. A new CRF/General Fund program would be a completely separate program with its own contracts and procedures,” said Shannon Mattingly, Director of Planning and Amanda Hernandez, Assistant Director of Planning.

Shane Scott, city Council member, believes that access to the message board is a good thing for the public since community members can voice their input to Council members.

“I would not even look at it because I felt it was a violation of the open meeting act,” said Scott. “So, I asked the city manager if we could open it to the public, and he found a way.”

According to the Texas Attorney General, “The Open Meetings Act was adopted to help make governmental decision-making accessible to the public. It requires meetings of governmental bodies to be open to the public, except for expressly authorized closed sessions, and to be preceded by public notice of the time, place, and subject matter of the meeting.”

Due to the message board previously not being accessible to the public, Scott was concerned it did not comply with the Open Meetings Act.

*This article was corrected at 3:41 p.m. on April 22 to include contribution by Lisa Marie Coppoletta