By Lucky Kidd
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — A proposal to designate the City of Hutchinson’s website as an official publication for legal notices came up one vote short at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. While three of five Council members voted in favor, it needed four votes to pass because it was a charter ordinance that required a 2/3rd majority to pass.
Voting against the charter ordinance making the change was Vice Mayor Stacy Goss and Council member Steven Garza. Goss was strongly opposed to making the change, saying for nothing else. “We owe as much transparency as possible to our residents, and if something else viable comes in the future we can change away from a print newspaper.”
Garza’s major concern centered on one group of people. “What about the person who doesn’t own a computer? If everybody owns a computer, they might do it,” Garza explained.
Council member Jon Richardson on the other hand backed the change, mainly for one reason. “We have a newspaper that publishes things for cities in the wrong state with the same name as our city. How much faith do we have that they are going to publish the right public notice in the right newspaper.”
Also speaking against the change was Michael Glenn, co-owner of the online Hutchinson Tribune. Glenn said print media still has a role in the area of information. Saying there are three main ways people learn about what’s going on in their community, state and nation, Glenn noted “Public notice is a huge component of that, and with published notice, newspapers remain the largest vehicle of public notice in all 50 states.
City Attorney Paul Brown, who brought the ordinance to the council, said moving publications online would provide a cost savings to the city. He noted the city is already posting a lot of their actions online.
Even if the ordinance had passed, there would still be certain types of notices, budget information among them, that would still have to be published in a newspaper.
A number of communities around Kansas have already designated city websites as an official publication, including McPherson where one of the city commissioners is a former executive of the current owner of the Hutchinson News. In Salina, their City Commission moved their official publications from the Salina Journal, a sister paper to the News, to an online news site that also produces a weekly print publication that meets statutory requirements.
