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Public commenters urge longer review for agenda additions; resident presses for public-records response
Summary
During the June 3 Mesquite technical review meeting several public commenters asked the council to stop adding land-sale items at short notice and to restore a longer review period; a resident separately said a public-records request had not been fulfilled and asked about HR spending on outside investigations.
During the June 3 technical review meeting multiple public commenters urged the City of Mesquite to allow more time for public review when new items are added to the agenda and to make additions subject to public comment before votes. One commenter said, "1 of the things that we've instilled or installed tech review was to allow people to have more than 3 business days to review what's coming on to an agenda." He argued the practice of adding items without the longer review period weakens the original intent of technical review and asked the council to postpone the land-sale items until the next meeting. "I don't think this should pass and wait until the next agenda," the commenter said.
Later in the public-comment period Dave Baldwin urged that technical review agendas include an explicit action item to allow public comment when items are added, saying, "So it's it's part of the agenda, open to public comment, and I don't have to come up and interrupt everybody to do it again."
A separate resident raised an outstanding public-information request and criticized the city's response time. The resident asked for records showing how much the city's human-resources office had paid outside agencies to perform investigations, saying, "My request was to see how much money HR has paid outside agencies to do investigations." The resident said he believed $80,000 had been spent but that he had not received the records. A city representative responded that staff would follow up and said, "I will definitely get back to you within 5 days to say, hey. This is where we're at."
No formal council action was recorded on these public-comment requests in the technical review excerpt provided. The transcript shows the council receiving the comments and a staff commitment to follow up on the public-records request.
