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  Home Page » News » Parsons Emails Cause Stir

Parsons' emails cause stir

Advisory board member files open-records request

by Ted Holteen
Herald Staff Writer Durango Mayor Renee Parsons will have to turn over nine months of e-mail correspondence to comply with a Colorado Open Records Act request filed Sunday by a local resident.

Mark Smith, a member of Durango's Parks, Open Space and Trails Advisory Board, confirmed that he made the open-records request through his attorney, Nancy Agro, but declined to give his reason for the request until it is filled.

"I want to wait for the printed material, and it would be totally premature to comment before I see it," Smith said Tuesday.

In a letter to several city officials, including Parsons, Agro requested copies of Parsons' e-mails from both her personal and City Council accounts. The request was specific to three recent and ongoing city projects: Twin Buttes, the Flying Fish II store and the Grand Central Hotel and Conference Center at Railroad Square.

Explaining her request to access Parsons' personal e-mail account, Agro wrote "The latter e-mail is requested because we have copies of several e-mails sent from that address by Mayor Parsons evidencing that said e-mail address is used for purposes consistent with her city functions as mayor and councilor. I have attached a sample of one such e-mail for your records."
The sample enclosed with the open-records request was a series of e-mails between Parsons and several employees of The Durango Herald, including this reporter, regarding a Sept. 24 Herald article. The e-mail account listed on the correspondence was not Parsons' city-issued account.

City Attorney David Smith is out of town until Oct. 20, but City Manager Ron LeBlanc said he has not been told the reason for the request and would not speculate on Smith's motivation.

"The burden is on (Parsons) to comply, but we're going to work on anything that came through our server and make those available," LeBlanc said.

Parsons said she will comply with the request, but she believes it is politically motivated, in part because Agro's husband, attorney Geoff Craig, is listed on the Twin Buttes' project contractor list, and Smith works next door to the project offices.

"I will fully comply with the state statute, of course, but I'm assuming the request is related to Twin Buttes because Mark Smith testified in favor of the project at the Planning Commission, too," Parsons said.

By Colorado state law, the city has three days to respond to an open-records request, but Agro wrote in her letter that her client is willing to extend the deadline to Oct. 24 to allow the city attorney to review and respond to the material in the request.

"In as much as we are interested in receiving full and complete disclosure in accordance with statute, we are willing to extend compliance ... provided that no records are deleted or destroyed within that time and that the records are submitted to Mr. Smith in their entirety by the date of his return," Agro wrote.

ted@durangoherald.com