Councilors told Mayor Heidi Franco at Tuesday’s meeting that they felt she had represented them inappropriately in a letter sent to Heber City residents.
Since before Franco’s time, the monthly newsletter has delivered community alerts, event announcements and messages from mayors with monthly water bills. Since Franco became mayor, they’ve also included synopses of city council meetings.
On Tuesday, councilors raised concerns with the April edition. It portrayed quotes from three councilors in a March meeting as being in favor of a resolution to limit public comments in meetings, as well as a quote from Councilor Yvonne Barney and one from a resident opposed to the resolution.
In the Tuesday meeting, Councilor Rachel Kahler said the newsletter misportrayed her stance by isolating her comment without full context.
“Mayor, it’s not about accountability of our words; it’s about the way you’re spinning this to the public in the city newsletter,” Councilor Mike Johnston said. “Any of us are welcome to write something on their Facebook blog or whatever you want to do, but it’s not appropriate for any of us, in a city newsletter or on a city website, to attempt to demean somebody’s point or couch it in such a little piece as this as what it was, to throw somebody under the bus and try and win political points.”
City Attorney Mark Smedley told KPCW the city is in the process of reviewing its policy to determine if there are restrictions on using the newsletter this way.
Barney agreed that within the newsletter format, the notes could have led people to draw stronger conclusions than they otherwise might have with more context.
“As a citizen, I would see it in a negative way. I would be angry at my council members,” she said.
Barney suggested using more general language instead of portraying councilors’ opinions as simply for or against a nuanced issue.
“I think it’s important to let the community know, ‘Here’s a concern. We might possibly have some conflict with this situation. Go to the minutes, go and listen to the audio, so that you can have a better understanding.’ But I don’t think that we have to lead them to that conclusion,” she said.
Franco defended her use of the newsletter as a way to alert residents to what’s going on in local government.
“I’m trying to pick the biggest things that have significant impact,” Franco said. “I can’t change your facts, okay? I can’t change what was said. I listened to that whole two-hour-plus discussion a few times to say, 'Okay, this seems to synthesize the main arguments.”
Several councilors acknowledged they were quoted accurately but still took issue with how they were portrayed.
Councilor Scott Phillips pointed out that since the meeting in early March, the proposal to limit public comments had changed in a way that the newsletter didn’t reflect. The change would allow for up to 10 minutes of public comments on each agenda item up for a vote.
Franco said she didn’t include that in part because it happened after the meeting, and also because no one had told her about the change.
“I received multiple messages from folks in the community saying, ‘Why are you guys being attacked like this publicly? Can’t you just get along?’” Councilor Ryan Stack said. “I guess we all wear that blame equally, but we have to be able to heal and move forward and not take shots at each other. Let our debate be it’s debate, but the minute we step down off of [the council stage], we should all be getting along and modeling the behavior we want to see from our citizens and in the community.”
Franco and other councilors echoed the message that the elected officials should seek to get along better in the future.
So did Tracy Taylor, the Heber resident whose public comment was included in the newsletter.
She told KPCW she didn’t mind being quoted in the newsletter. She also said she was glad the alert about a potential limit to the public’s opportunity to speak up reached lots of people.
The council postponed voting about when to allow public comments in meetings until next month.
