Resident outraged by the City of Kent deleting audio recordings

 

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The City of Kent council’s process of recording their committee meeting minutes faces backlash from one resident.

Landlord, Christopher Meyers, has spoken out against the council many times. In May 2015, when the construction of the new architecture building on Kent campus began, Meyers received word from his tenants that the dust going into the air affected their day-to-day living.

Meyers went to the council about this issue to seek justice for his tenants, but councilman Garret Ferrara told him that since the land on which his tenants lived counted as state property, they couldn’t do anything about it.

This eventually led to Meyers saying the remark was “asinine” and getting reprimanded for using the word.

After making that comment, Tara Grimm, the clerk of council, wrote in the minutes that Meyers used “insulting and vulgar language” toward Councilman Ferrara, which Meyers disagreed with.

“Of course I objected to that,” Meyers said. “That’s character assassination. That’s libelous.”

Grimm records the committee meeting minutes and posts them online for public viewing. Once Meyers saw her summary about his comment, he immediately asked for the audio recording, only to find that Grimm normally destroys the audio recordings after taking down the minutes. Outraged by this, Meyers questioned why she would get rid of a public record.

“I don’t know why you would wipe out the best records you have of a meeting,” Meyers said. “It’s not on stacks of paper, you know, it’s digital. It’s digital and takes no space. And someone can come back and refute something they said—that I said.”

The Open Meetings Law, also known as the Ohio Sunshine Law, allows the citizens the right to sit in on council meetings, but does not require the council to allow citizens the right to speak. The city of Kent council, however, allows the public to speak at committee meetings during the citizen comment time, which Meyers frequently takes part in. 

“That is just a time for citizens to come up and get off of their chest what’s on their mind. And that can be anything that they think is in council’s realm of authority,” said Hope Jones, law director for the city of Kent.

Jones said Grimm does a good job of recording, in written form, the minutes of council, what they’re discussing and what they vote on.

“That is truly the intent,” she said.  

Meyers said it’s important to keep the audio recordings because it’s the technology used today for people to know the truth.  

Grimm told Meyers she doesn’t keep the audio recordings because she uses specialized equipment, which would require an upgrade if they wanted to keep them for storage.

Meyers said the council has more options than just upgrading old equipment.

“You can put years and years of council meetings on thumb drives and it takes no space, and it’s just crazy,” Meyers said. “They don’t want to admit any wrong doing. They don’t want to admit that it’s so easy and they haven’t been doing it all along.”

In the record retention schedule for the city of Kent, it states that the retention period for committee meeting audio is “for minute taking purposes only upon adoption of written minutes.”

“Once council adopts a set of minutes to reflect what happened at an earlier meeting… Tara is then permitted to dispose of that record. So, she’s doing it legally the way she’s supposed to do it,” Jones said.

The city of Kent has reached out to their IT specialist, who will look into helping them keep track of audio recordings. In the meantime, the council has discussed keeping the audio recordings around.

Jones said she personally thinks they should hold onto the recordings a little longer.

“I don’t think we would keep it a year,” Jones said. “Just long enough for maybe a resident, that if an issue came up, a resident would say, ‘Hey, wonder what happened?’”

Meyers said he will continue to fight for his tenants and go to committee meetings until all of his issues with the council are resolved.

“You can’t let yourself be so damn self-important that you don’t listen to anybody when you can see that he’s right,” Meyers said.

One resident is not happy with the fact that the City of Kent deletes their audio recordings after committee meetings. Find out why. #JMCRPP

— Tierra Thomas (@TierrasPen) May 9, 2018