Libby City Council breakfast meetings canceled

The Libby City Council will no longer be holding its traditional Wednesday breakfast meetings. The decision to cancel the meetings, made by Mayor Doug Roll, came as a surprise to many of the city council’s members.

“I just decided to shut it down. It was just time, I guess, participation was down,” Roll said of the decision to end the meetings.

Councilwoman Peggy Williams said she had not been informed of an official decision to cancel, but had discussed the meetings with Roll last week. “I think it was last Tuesday afternoon,” she said, “but we didn’t discuss it to the point of a decision.”

Councilwoman Barb Desch was also surprised by the move.

“Really? I hadn’t heard that,” Desch said.

Desch said the decision is certainly the mayor’s to make, noting the meetings began at the request of former mayor Tony Berget several years ago. She said the meetings were started as a way for the council to get together informally and discuss things outside of the formal council meeting.

Libby’s newest council member, Dejon Raines, was also surprised.

“I haven’t heard of this decision, either,” she said.

Councilman Allen Olsen said he was also taken by surprise by the mayor’s decision.

“I haven’t seen anything about this,” he said.

The meetings have been a regular fixture of the City Council since the time of Mayor Berget, who left office in 2008 upon his election to the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners.

Although posted and open to the public, recent meetings have been in violation of Montana’s public meetings law. The law stipulates that all public meetings are not only posted and open, which has taken place, but also requires minutes be taken and incorporated into the official record.

Montana Code Annotated 2-3-12 describes the requirement. “(1) Appropriate minutes of all meetings required by 2-3-203 to be open shall be kept and shall be available for inspection by the public.

(2) Such minutes shall include without limitation: (a) date, time and place of meeting; (b) a list of the individual members of the public body, agency or organization in attendance; (c) the substance of all matters proposed, discussed or decided; and (d) at the request of any member, a record by individual members of any votes taken.”

The Council included a statement in the public notice of the meetings indicating no decisions were being made at the meetings, but meetings have included discussions of policy, stopping short of formal decision-making.

Councilwoman Raines said she believes the meetings have value.

“I’m extremely new here, but I enjoyed them. It was a way to visit with the public in an informal setting,” she said.

Councilwoman Williams echoed a similar sentiment.

“What it did for me was give me contact with other city council members that I would not have run into in the course of my normal day, week or month,” Williams said.

Councilman Olsen took a stronger stance on the cancellation. “I think it’s just another ploy to take the Council underground,” he said.

Council president Bill Bischoff refused to comment on the matter.