4th Street in May 2020 looking South at the location where City Gym now sits. This is before demolition and construction started. The City's property at this location is 80 feet wide.
UPDATE: Listen to audio of Irion County ISD's meeting on this page.
The City of Mertzon and ICISD each are having regular meetings on Monday, July 17, 2023. For ICISD, it will be Supt. Moore's first meeting as superintendent. Below are agendas for each meeting and a few of my comments follow.
My comments:
When these meetings conflict, I have found the City to be quite accommodating in allowing me to drop in later and listen to their audio recording of their meeting. Audio of public meetings is public. To date, ICISD has taken a polar opposite view. Even when I have formally requested audio the response from Supt. DeSpain was that the District did not record its meetings. (A digital recording by any board member or school employee, by the way, is most certainly a public document.) A recent change in their policies requires that they not only record them, but they also should post them on their website. I favor live streaming of public meetings with archived access to prior meetings. This is 2023, after all. If a government body wants the public engaged, they will make their meetings accessible 24/7/365.
Note especially this language on the ICISD agenda: Discuss/Approve budget amendments as presented. I have previously argued that "as presented" was too vague for notice to the public in a posting. Why not be more specific and tell the public something like, "Duscuss/approve budget amendments related to athletic and transportation departments," for example?
As stated previously, I can find no authority for the language prohibiting an attack on character found in both agendas.
Each agenda calls for an executive session under Texas Gov't Code 551.074 relating to personnel matters. Here is how that law reads:
"Sec. 551.074. PERSONNEL MATTERS; CLOSED MEETING. (a) This chapter does not require a governmental body to conduct an open meeting:
(1) to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of a public officer or employee; or
(2) to hear a complaint or charge against an officer or employee.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply if the officer or employee who is the subject of the deliberation or hearing requests a public hearing."