Council violates City Charter

By Charley Able

Lakewood Edge

LAKEWOOD – City council violated the City Charter during a late January retreat in Estes Park, ignoring a Charter provision that requires official meetings be held within the city.

The council, in the meeting held 75 miles from the closest corner of Lakewood, went into executive session, but used a contrived reading of Lakewood City Charter to justify it.

The Charter sets forth rules for governing the city. It was compiled by a 20-member City Charter Commission and approved by voters in 1983.

According to the Charter (Article II, section 2.15) :  “All official meetings of City Council and those of any board, commission, or committee of the City shall be held within the corporate boundaries of the City and shall be open to the public, except for executive sessions.”

A plain reading of the Charter language would indicate that the phrase “except for executive sessions” refers to the requirement of being “open to the public.”  Instead, City Hall stretched that phrase to mean executive sessions can be conducted anywhere.

That interpretation is far from the intent of the Charter Commission, said Roy S. Howard, who was the Charter Commission’s attorney and who drafted the Charter language.

Howard said the exemption for executive sessions applies only to the “open to the public” wording.

“I believe somebody wanted the meetings held within the corporate (city) boundaries because of concern over something that had arisen in the past,” Howard said.

The record verifies Howard’s account.

Minutes and audiotapes of the Charter Commission’s meetings show the panel wanted any meeting at which “a vote” is taken to be conducted in Lakewood.

The minutes and tapes of the Commission’s Oct. 26, 1982 meeting, on file at the City Clerk’s office, show the commission unanimously approved a two-sentence ban forbidding Council and its board and commissions from conducting such meetings outside the city.

“All official meetings of the City Council and of any board, commission, or committee of the City shall be held within city limits. The meetings shall be open to the public, except for executive sessions, which shall be closed to the public as hereafter provided,” the minutes state.

Howard said the Charter Commission was meticulous about recording its conversations both on tape and in the minutes so a clear record would be available  in case questions arose about their intent.

City Attorney Tim Cox, after obtaining a copy of the commission’s minutes, still tried to justify the closed-door session during Council’s March 9 meeting, saying the Charter panel didn’t define the word “official,” leaving it open to interpretation.

But, after Cox was told of the tape on which the Charter Commission declared that “any vote” by Council must be conducted within the city’s boundaries, he quit trying to defend City Hall’s out-of-town executive session.

And City Councilman Adam Paul later contacted the Edge to say he now regrets his vote to enter the closed-door session in light of information provided by the Edge.

“I should have been more diligent,” Paul said.

The Charter Commission’s two sentence ban on such meetings remained unchanged through the Charter-writing process, according to an exhaustive review of the documents. The records also reflect the commission’s insistence that their wording not be shortened or edited.

After the first version of the charter failed at the ballot box, a second, successful Charter election won voter approval in 1983 with no revision of the meetings restriction. Curiously, that section was shortened in the draft Charter presented to voters.

City’s Hall’s latest reading of the Charter ignores the record available inside its own offices.

But the city administrators went even further to compose an opinion favoring their own agenda.

Even if City Hall’s loose reading of the Charter did not run afoul of the Charter Commission’s intent, Colorado law (CRS24-6-402.2(b)) requires that all executive sessions be conducted as part “regular or special” official meetings.

Such meetings, by any reading of the City Charter, are clearly required to be conducted within the city.

Under the state’s Open Meeting laws (CRS 24-6-402.3(a)), before entering a closed-door session, Council must convene in open session, hear why the executive session is requested and under which section of the law it falls.

Only then can they vote in public to enter an executive session.

Councilman Doug Anderson, one of two council members who voted against the out-of-town executive session, said if the Charter language is ambiguous, it should be construed in favor of open government.

“I’m not a Charter writer, I’m not an English major, but the wording seems clear: Don’t conduct meetings out of town; don’t conduct meetings away from Lakewood citizens,” Anderson said. “And I am concerned that, when compiling this interpretation of the Charter provision, no one was diligent enough to check the record, where they would have found the Charter Commission’s language. That language is precise and shows that the city is wrong in its opinion on this Charter provision.”

State law defines official meetings as  ”meetings of a quorum or three or more members of any local public body, whichever is fewer, at which any public business is discussed or at which any formal action may be taken….” (CRS 24-6-402.2 (a&b)).

The city did comply with the Charter’s notice provision by posting a public notice of the meeting at City Hall, including mention of a “possible” executive session, also indicating the retreat was an “official meeting” under the Charter.

And Council’s 9-2 vote to enter the executive session, unless as part of an  “official meeting”, would have in itself violated state law and the City’s Charter.

Councilwoman Vicki Stack also voted against the Estes Park executive session.

“The minutes of the Charter Commission meetings clearly show what I and a number of my constituents have been saying: ‘We can’t conduct city business – any city business – at an out-of-town location,’” Stack said.

“I have read the Charter many times and, until this copy of the Charter Commission’s own words was uncovered, I had no idea how far we have strayed from their original intent,” Stack said. “Now I wonder how far the Charter’s true meaning has been stretched and what other provisions we might be violating because past City Hall administrators seem to have twisted or outright changed the wording of our city’s most important document.”

Citizens also are outraged by City Hall’s contorted use of the Charter language.

“If Council wants to change the Charter, they must send it back to voters. They can’t just avoid their own rules by stretching the meaning of a word here, a phrase there and, in this case, changing the words and meaning altogether,” said former Councilwoman Dorothy Wisecarver.

But City Hall, it seems, would prefer to meet behind closed doors far from the gaze of most citizens and would contort the meaning of the Charter to do so.