Houston council convenes unannounced meeting

The Houston City Council gathered Monday in an apparently illegal meeting at the Mid-Valley Senior Center to discuss a real estate transfer between the city and the nonprofit Mid-Valley Seniors Inc.

The council apparently pushed the envelope on the public notification requirements of the Alaska Open Meetings Act (OMA), although city staff and council members said they believe a caveat added to their monthly calendar is sufficient notice of a public meeting.

The meeting was public -- no one was kept out. What's not clear is whether the meeting was publicly announced in a proper way.

Houston runs a blanket statement on its calendar that says council members can meet "any day or every day" at the Mid-Valley Senior Center.

The OMA requires "reasonable public notice" and further states that the notice "must include the date, time, and place of the meeting."

Typically, local governments in Alaska use a variety of strategies for meeting that obligation, including radio and print advertisements, bulletin boards, Web pages and public service announcements. In Houston, notices are typically posted under Plexiglas on bulletin boards at city hall, Mid-Valley Senior Center, and near the mail boxes inside Miller's Market.

That's not unusual, but the wording of the Houston notices posted around town last week is. The September page of the city's calendar appeared under Plexiglas last week as usual. The meeting held on Sept. 10 was not mentioned on the calendar. In a blank space at the top of the calendar grid, a note reads, "more than '3' council members may be present at the Mid-Valley Multi-Purpose Senior Center for any activity on any given day and or every day of the month."

A specific time or date is not mentioned, but Houston's city clerk, DaleAnn Pond, said she believes the notice is sufficient.

"[Council members] have a right to be over there. It's posted," she said. "It's on our calendar every month, and it has been every month for years."

Pond also pointed out that the seniors called the meeting, and invited the council members.

Mat-Su Borough Clerk Sandra Dillon wouldn't speak directly to the legality of Houston's meeting announcement. She did say the borough does things differently, and that borough officials are careful not to attend meetings outside their own schedule without a legal announcement.

"My position in dealing with the (Open Meetings Act) is that you never have more than a quorum of any governing body at any other meeting," Dillon said. "Certainly our assembly members are invited to other meetings all the time. But when they go, they make sure that they don't have a quorum."

A Wasilla attorney, Richard Deuser, works on retainer for the city. Deuser said he was unaware of the blanket meeting announcement. He said Houston hadn't asked him for advice on meeting announcements.

"They may have in the past, I don't want to say they never have, but no one at the city has asked me about (the act) recently," Deuser said. "It's a small city with a small budget and they only call me with certain selected tasks. I'm not in a capacity where I'm advising them on every action -- they couldn't afford that."

Deuser also said he hadn't researched the open meetings act recently and couldn't say if any specific meeting was illegal.

Assistant Borough Attorney John Aschenbrenner didn't want to make any call on the legality of the announcement or the meeting.

"They have an attorney and it would improper for me to comment, because I don't represent them," Aschenbrenner said.

Aschenbrenner agreed that Houston is sometimes treated as a political subdivision of the borough (in platting issues, for example), but said that the two entities don't share legal resources.

Aschenbrenner was faxed a copy of the "any given day or every day" meeting announcement but refused to give his opinion on the matter.

Houston council member and deputy mayor Jerry Nelsen said he didn't believe any laws were broken.

"I don't think of it as a regularly scheduled meeting, I think of it as a workshop between the two bodies," Nelsen said.

Nelsen said since the seniors' group had called the meeting and the city council had discussed and scheduled the meeting at a previous public meeting, he figured the council had acted appropriately. Nelsen said he would check on the law and the manner in which meeting announcements were made, but he maintained that no inappropriate actions had taken place.

"No decisions were made or could have been made," Nelsen said. "My contention is that there was a meeting announcement at the previous council meeting. In my heart, I really believed we had it properly covered."

The meeting itself played out without controversy. All seven sitting council members attended, and the meeting was run by Bruce Babcock, who chairs the Mid-Valley Seniors board. Other citizens also attended, including three candidates who are challenging council members for their seats. There was participation all around the table on the one-item agenda, but no deals or policy decisions were made at the work session by either of the participating bodies.

Babcock and the seniors' board want the community center's building transferred from the city ownership to their nonprofit. Council members seemed to like the idea of a transfer, but they question some legal issues.

The 40 acres of borough-owned property that include the center have been dedicated for use by organizations serving senior citizens. According to Babcock, a series of zero-dollar leases and subdivisions of the overall tract that go back to the 1980s are confounding the transfer.

The property -- now properties -- have changed hands and been cut up by no less than three not-for-profit organizations and both local governments. By the end of the work session, both parties had agreed that more fact-finding was necessary, so that ownership and legal responsibilities would be more clear in the future.