Lake View, Iowa to start posting full agendas on city website

In response to a claim from a City of Lake View employee that the Lake View Resort Newspaper is doing an inadequate job of fully informing the citizenry of upcoming city council meeting topics, the Lake View City Council directed Lake View, Iowa City Administrator Scott Peterson to find a way to post a full agenda on the City's website the Friday prior to each city council meeting.

Marcia Haakenson, the editor of The Lake View, Iowa Resort Newspaper and the reporter normally assigned to cover the Lake View City Council for that publication, exited the June 20, 2011 meeting at which the conversation took place about twenty minutes before business was concluded, and was therefore was not present to respond., though TSN feels it should be pointed out that The Lake View Resort Newspaper is not responsible for the level of detail the city chooses to publish in their tentative agendas.

A twenty seven year old Iowa law put into place before the rise of the internet requires cities over a certain size to spend taxpayer money publishing tentative agendas in a hard copy newspaper and does not offer guidance for municipalities in geographic areas that only support a monopoly weekly publication. Except for the cost of maintaining the website, which the city will continue to maintain anyway, the City of Lake View will be able to self publish a more complete meeting agenda at no further charge to the taxpayers of that town.

Other Sac County, Iowa towns that regularly self publish meeting agendas are Sac City, and Odebolt. Until recently, Wall Lake and Early also regularly self published complete agendas for the benefit of their citizens on their city websites. At the June 13, 2011 Auburn city council meeting, the council discussed plans to revamp their website so that they too can carry agendas and minutes in a timely manner.

A full list of all of all of the websites mentioned in this story as well as tentative and (as they are released,) complete agendas for all of the towns mentioned in this story can be found at http://thesacnews.com.

...at no cost to the taxpayers of Sac County, Iowa.

The City of Lake View, Iowa is still required by law to publish agendas in a hard copy newspaper, and there was not a discussion about discontinuing compliance with that Iowa law at the June 20 council meeting.

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