Want to take a look at the Nov. 26 minutes of the Salt Lake County Regional Service Area board of trustees?
Or how about the minutes from Dec. 9, Dec. 10, Dec. 11 or Dec. 12? The Jan. 3 minutes, maybe?Good luck, because you won't find them where they're supposed to be - in the official minutes book at the service area's operations office.
In fact, there are 18 sets of minutes from 1997 and the first five days of 1998 that were unavailable to the public as of Tuesday.
But the whereabouts of those public documents is not exactly a mystery to service area staffers, who report the minutes are still in the possession of a former trustee, Janice Lee Snider.
Requests for the minutes have gone unanswered, so service area attorney Mark Anderson has been asked to retrieve the documents.
Anderson confirmed Monday that he plans to contact Snider and ask her to turn over the records.
Among the missing documents are the minutes from three trustee meetings on Sept 24, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 (a continuation of the Sept. 30 session) - all of which were approved on Dec. 10.
Minutes for five December meetings and two January meetings, all of which were approved Jan. 4 at a special Sunday meeting, also aren't available within a reasonable time as required by state records law.
Then there are the minutes from the Jan. 4 meeting, and those from a special Jan. 5 emergency session that was called just to approve the Jan. 4 and 5 minutes before the new board took over.
Not to mention minutes from June 25, July 15, July 30, Aug. 16, Aug. 27 and Sept. 17.
Failure of the service area to issue "adequate and timely minutes" was cited as a major weakness in the recreation district's operations by both a state audit report issued last September and independent audits of fiscal 1997 and the last six months of fiscal 1996.
Snider, who has controlled board minutes for several years and rewritten them at her discretion, was not available for comment Tuesday and did not return phone calls to the Deseret News.
Jan Furner, who was named acting executive director when the new board of trustees placed executive director David Howick on indefinite paid leave Jan. 5 pending an investigation, said Snider has indicated she needs access to a computer printer to finish the minutes approved in early January.
"She's not withholding those records," Furner said. "Janice wants to come into the office and finish preparing the minutes, and I'm in the process of working that out with the new board.
"We're hopeful that can be accomplished sometime this week," he added.
But Furner said he's baffled as to why minutes from meetings held from June through October were not finished and filed once they were approved.
"There's simply no reason for that," he said.
While it's highly unusual for one member of a public body to revise minutes written by a paid staffer, Snider said in December she didn't think there was any problem with her "refining" minutes at her own discretion because board members are ultimately responsible for service area records.