We want to take a moment to address some questions about why we feel the City of Belle hosted an illegal meeting on July 31, and explain our concerns and the ramifications thereof.

The meeting was posted at the end of business on Friday. We printed information provided by City Hall that the posting happened around 5 p.m. After the story was printed, the mayor contested it, and so we requested video records from the city of Belle. This would allow the mayor to prove his information.

The city complied with the records request, but the video from Friday, July 28, had already been deleted by Aug. 4 due to the security camera loop. However, a time stamp on the creation of the meeting notice in Word showed the file was created at 4:58 p.m. on July 28, and the treasurer, whose time card was timestamped at 5:05 p.m. said she posted it before she left for the day, though “it wasn’t the last thing she did.” The time of the notice could be interpreted as less than 24-hours notice as notices exclude weekends and holidays when city hall is closed.

Our concern is if the meeting notice was announced after the close of business, that means that notice would not count as a legal notice until Monday at 7 a.m. when the office reopens. This brings the question, did the city meet the 24-hour notice requirement?

According to Sunshine Law 610.020(1), notices shall be given at least twenty-four hours, exclusive of weekends and holidays when the business is closed. According to our attorney, this could mean that the timer for notice stops after the city closes on Friday to resume when business opens on Monday. Meaning to give the full notice for a meeting at 6 p.m. on a Monday, it is required to be published, generally by the end of business on Thursday, at the latest by Friday morning. We are requesting that the Attorney General’s office make a ruling on this issue due to it’s complexity.

The meeting notice did not include a timestamp when it was posted. This would have clarified some of the questions above about when the meeting was posted. Examples of a notice of meetings in the Missouri Sunshine Law book list the requirements of a posted notice in bold, including date, time, and place a meeting will be held.

Probably worse, the notice had the wrong date. The Mayor has expressed that this entire issue is over a “typo that Charro made.” This is a more significant issue than a typo. Miss-spelling a name or word in the agenda would be a typo and would not cause problems. However, this is the date. This is the equivalent of the police showing up with a search warrant with the wrong address and still proceeding to search the house. It won’t stand up in court. The date is the entire point of the document. This again would void the meeting notice. Because of these issues, we notified the city of Belle about the discrepancies with the notice at 2:59 p.m. on July 31 via email. The city moved forward with the meeting and continued to take action on posted agenda items.

An agenda item in the open session was passing ordinances. Because the meeting lacked proper announcement, it may be considered void. A 2004 case between R.E.J., Inc v. City of Sikeston (Sunshine Law book) found that the “City that violated the notice requirements for meeting in adopting an ordinance may have that ordinance voided even if the city repealed the ordinance after being sued.”

Aldermen may want to consider passing these ordinances again in a properly advertised meeting, or checking with the city attorney to see if the first passage was legal.

The City of Belle is currently in the middle of a Sunshine violation investigation, so getting this right should be important to board members and citizens alike. While this may seem like a small thing, please know, it isn’t. The city is believed to be in constant violation of the Sunshine Law; almost every meeting has had an issue.

If the city is OK with making this many violations, when will it stop? What further actions will the city take? A corrective course is needed.

The citizens of Belle are entitled to know what the city is working on. The Sunshine Law is the law that gives the citizens that knowledge.

This is more important to the citizens of Belle because the citizens pay for any action the city takes.

We, as the newspaper of record, have no opinion about the ordinances the city of Belle passes. However, we do have a problem when failure to give proper notice of a meeting and agenda items prevent the public from being involved and the newspaper from reporting the discussion and results. Yes, not giving proper notice of time before a meeting and adding things to the agenda last minute hides city business from the public.