Granite Shoals laments transparency in yard code talks

Granite Shoals continues to wrestle with rewrites of its landscape ordinance with at least one speaker at Tuesday’s meeting hinting that city council members had hidden reasons for withholding public participation in an ordinance work group.

“We are left with a group that can meet in private, unrecorded, no posted agenda, with avenues and restrictions allowing for no public access to deliberations,” said Susan Bushart, who attended the council meeting electronically via Zoom.

“The taxpayers have the right to hear the discussions in a manner that provides a full understanding of all proposed changes,” she continued.

Council members were forbidden by law to respond to Bushart because her remarks were not on the meeting agenda.

The council established the work group, which includes two council members and several citizens, after several false starts on rewriting the ordinance which will control landscaping and planting, among other things.

Council members said they’d gotten complaints about original rewrites saying the language was too vague and some sections allowed for subjective interpretation.

Council members were careful to establish the work group in a way that exempts it from the Texas Open Meetings Law. That law governs agencies’ needs to set and publish agendas and controls what can and cannot be done in executive sessions, among other things.

A Texas Attorney General’s opinion dated in 2012 states that advisory groups that do not set policy are not subject to the meetings law.

In setting up the group Mayor Ron Munos said the council wanted members to be able to discuss matters freely without worrying about how opinions might be taken.

“We’re striving for complete transparency in this group,” Munos said.

Also at the June 25 meeting, group Chair Robin Ruff gave his first report to the council.

“The initial meeting (June 19) set our roadmap, which is starting with reviewing the current ordinance and ideas that were put forth for a future ordinance,” he said.

Ruff said the first meeting went well, with everyone showing respect. He pledged openness with the council.

“We will update you multiple times before our recommendations are presented to you,” he said. So there will be plenty of public information coming out of this group. There will be transparency and you all will see it, and the citizens will see it.”

The council set the group’s limit at three months, which will automatically dissolve it around mid-September. No limits were set on the number or frequency of reports.

Ruff said another group meeting was set for Wednesday, June 26.