The Town of Bayfield will ask voters in November to allow it to stop publishing legal notices in full in the Pine River Times and instead publish the full text on its own website in an effort to save money.
The issue, Ballot Question 2D and 2E, will be asked of Bayfield-only voters on Nov. 6.
Currently, the town is required to publish legal notices and financial reports in their entirety in the local newspaper - this newspaper. The town wants to change that to publish only the titles of the public notices in the newspaper and refer readers to the town's website for the full text of the legal notice.
But taking the "public" out of "public notices" isn't the way to save funds.
Like the Times' coverage of government meetings, public notices help residents of Bayfield, as well as county residents, know what is going on in their hometowns.
The Town of Bayfield isn't a rich municipality.
How do I know that?
In the Oct. 5 edition of the Pine River Times, in the legal notices on Page 5B, anyone can read that the town paid $320,504.05 in expenditures for the month of August.
That included a payment to The Durango Herald for professional services for $1,637.70. Both the Herald and Times are owned by Ballantine Communications Inc., and the Herald handles our legal advertising services. Our services are for legal notices.
Looking in the Aug. 10 edition of the Pine River Times, there were $239,125.19 in expenditures for the month of July. The payment to the Herald was for $1,580.47.
Other notices from the Town of Bayfield are for public hearings for land use changes, including a vacation rental home in Dove Ranch, a use by review for a firearms store in Bayfield, or for bids, such as one from the school district seeking snow removal services.
The Town of Ignacio also publishes most of its legals in the Pine River Times.
I'm not good at math, so I became a writer, but even I can tell that $1,000 to $1,500 a month to pay for public accountability is reasonable within the context of $300,000 or more a month in expenses. This lets taxpayers know how their money is being spent.
Sure, folks who read that in the Times can go look up that information on the town website.
When was the last time you visited a government website? I probably do it more than most folks, because it's part of my job to look at municipal and school board agendas, but even I'm on them only a few times a month.
Newspapers simply provide greater access to our readers. It's also affordable - newspapers' rates for public notices are governed by Colorado statute and have not changed since 1993. There aren't many items you can buy today that cost the same as they did 25 years ago.
Anyone who wants to spend 50 cents can read this week's public notices. If readers don't want to spend that, they can read the Times for free at local libraries. It's also available, at no charge, at www.pinerivertimes.com. Not everyone around here has internet access, either, or if they have it, there are periods when our service is darned slow.
Also, all legal newspapers in the state post their public notices to an aggregated website, PublicNoticeColorado.com, at no additional cost. That's one-stop research, for example, for construction companies or other businesses that bid on government contracts.
People have walked into our offices asking for a copy of a public notice that ran in 2005 or whenever. As long as they knew the year, and preferably the month, I was able to help them find a copy of the public notice.
Also - what if a government website crashed? Maybe someone who wanted to bid on an item could ask, "Where is the proof you had information on that bid?"
With public notices in the newspaper, the government agency receives a copy of the ad, notarized and saying which issues it was published in. That makes it easy for the town or other government agency to say, "Here it is."
Also, contrary to the notion that this is a money-saving measure, there would be some cost involved, according to the News Media Alliance, a trade association that represents about 2,000 newspapers in the United States and Canada. Whether it's developing web architecture, archiving files or defending a lawsuit because a programming glitch obliterated a notice, public entities will still have expenses maintaining their own legal notices and access to them.
Let's keep public notices where they belong - in the hands of the public.
Vote no on Bayfield Ballot Questions 2D and 2E.
