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Residents ask trustees to open water rate advisory meetings; board discusses transparency and process
Summary
Public commenters urged the board to make the Rate Advisory Group (RAG) meetings open and streamed. Trustees and staff discussed Colorado open‑meetings law, the advisory group’s purpose and the tradeoffs between public access and candid stakeholder discussion; board agreed to add the matter to a future agenda for further consideration.
A Wellington resident asked the Board of Trustees May 27 to make the town’s Rate Advisory Group meetings open to the public and livestreamed, arguing the RAG will make policy recommendations affecting residents and therefore should comply with Colorado’s open‑meetings law.
Steven Carmen, identified as living in Park Meadows, told trustees the RAG “will play a key role in ensuring transparency, public engagement, and community representation in the rate‑setting process,” and that closing those sessions would be “inconsistent with the stated objective” of the group. Carmen urged trustees to publicly state their preferences for whether meetings should be open.
Trustees and staff discussed the group’s intended role, legal considerations and practical tradeoffs. Deputy Public Works Director Megan Smith and Finance Director Nick Redavid said the RAG was conceived as a small stakeholder group to gather community values and provide focused input on rate objectives; Smith said the group’s purpose is not a technical rate calculation or a review of individual customer usage but “rate objective and community perspective input gathering.” She cautioned that some invited volunteers might withdraw or be deterred if meetings were open and participants feared public harassment.
Trustee Teets and other trustees said they favor transparency and asked staff and legal counsel to advise whether the RAG is subject to Colorado’s open‑meetings requirements. Town Attorney Daniel Sapienza said his office has provided a memo on the topic and that a legal review could be handled in executive session if the board desired. Several trustees suggested a public town‑hall or broader outreach if the goal is community education; Trustee Daley proposed a town hall as a forum to present technical background and permit broad public Q&A, while noting the roundtable format is a smaller, workshop‑style setting intended to produce more detailed recommendations.
During board reports the trustees moved to add the topic to a future agenda for further consideration; the board directed staff to place an item to decide whether and how to open future RAG sessions or provide alternative public engagement opportunities. No formal change to the RAG’s operating procedures was made that night; any change that would create a decision‑making body or alter the advisory charter would require staff and legal review and likely a subsequent board action.
