WHAT’S NEXTThe City Council’s budget, finance and personnel committee plan to begin meeting next month to start working on the city’s 2011-12 budget. Councilwoman Carol Berz said those meetings would be recorded.
A crashed computer, lost audio of a budget meeting and two City Council members questioning where the recording went all led to the case of a missing recording this week.
But the case has been solved, and now Councilwoman Carol Berz wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again. She said the Budget, Finance and Personnel Committee, which she heads, will be recorded in the future.
“There’s no doubt,” she said Thursday. “Even if I have to bring my own tape recorder.”
The council held a lengthy discussion Tuesday just before committee meetings about the Chattanooga Police Department’s take-home car policy. Berz found out during the meeting that recordings were missing from the council’s work sessions on the budget over the summer.
The audio files included information about a decision the council made concerning implementing a fee for take-home vehicles.
Randy Burns, the council’s management analyst, said the reason for the lost audio is simple. He placed the files on an old computer and, just a few months ago, the hard drive crashed and he could not retrieve the files.
He said now he plans to back up files on a flash drive or perhaps use a network server to back up files.
“Going forward, we’ll get it fixed,” he said.
He said he got a quote of $6,000 for putting a sound and recording system in the council’s conference room. He said he also has contacted the Department of General Services to see if it could get additional quotes.
Richard Beeland, spokesman for Mayor Ron Littlefield, said the city administration would help any way it can.
The council receives a budget, and how it spends its money is up to the members, Beeland said.
“If they want to spend it on something like that, it’s their decision,” he said. “It wouldn’t be a bad thing to spend it on.”
Council Chairman Manny Rico said he wants to make sure the meetings are recorded in some way and open to the public.
“Maybe we better start taking minutes,” he said.
Berz agreed.
“There should be nothing that goes on that isn’t public record,” she said.