Answers from the Parks Department on their lack of transparency...
After months of reporting on the Parks Department's lack of transparency, we have received some explanations from them.
Yesterday, Parks Board president Teresa Sutton reached out on the Blue Dot Facebook page to explain why their board meetings are not recorded, the minutes and agendas are not posted online, etc. Given how often we've written about this issue, we felt it necessary to pass the info along to you:
In response to why meetings are not recorded:
"I can tell you that the Park Department is not equipped nor do we have the money for that kind of recording system. Minutes are always available you just have to call the park office and request a copy. Since the park office moved from the last office and is now in temporary hold, most documents to include past minutes are in storage. At this time it would be almost impossible to go find them. Once the office is up and running in the Wright Center, everything will get back to normal. We have always been transparent. Since the park department is not a government entity, our procedures do not match that of the county council or the commissioners. I can assure you everything we do is open to the public. Sorry if somehow that has been misconstrued to the public."
When asked why Parks Board meetings cannot be held at the government center, similar to county council and commissioners:
"believe it or not the parks department has tried numerous times to use their equipment. with no success. Just to try and use their televisions to provide visual documents during a meeting was diffuclt because we have no one educated in the use of the equipment. The commisioners have their own devices set up to record meetings. It would not be in our best interest to disturb any of that. We also do not have the capabilites or an adequate website to even display the meetings. We do not have funding to hire a computer technician for our needs. So we do what we can. All the information is available you just have to request it. Our website is very limited in what we can put on it. If we do add or make changes it costs a lot of money. Again we are not a government office. We are a small entity in the county. I understand what you are saying. We have limits. The only thing I can say is we try to do our best to work with the public. We know we can never please everyone. We are limited in our funds."
Please note that the Parks Department is a public agency, which is held to the same rules as any government office according to Indiana Open Door Law: https://www.in.gov/pac/files/pac_handbook.pdf
Obviously, we have many questions about these statements and find them inadequate. However, we are happy to report that Sutton has agreed to forward the meeting minutes to us directly every month, which we will of course share with you.