The newly formed town of Holiday Island held two municipal meetings last week to cover one agenda. Due to technical difficulty on Tuesday, Jan. 19, the remainder of the meeting resumed Thursday, Jan. 21.
Mayor Dan Kees chaired and council member Linda Graves administered the Zoom meeting. Graves spoke about purchasing computers, printers, accounting software, and data storage.
There was discussion about creating a town website, and the motion to approve the resolution to establish an electronic domain name was approved.
Council chose a dot com over a dot gov for cost purposes, cityofholidayisland.com. There was discussion of merging the HISID website and the town website, but there was no vote.
Council also discussed setting up membership with the Arkansas Municipal League. It was discussed that the town has not yet received tax revenue but hopes are that by the February meeting revenue would be received.
Election results of the 2020 votes were unanimously accepted by the council, which also read and approved the email resolution establishing municipal protocol for incoming and outgoing emails providing search abilities for FOIA compliance. Also discussed was a social media policy to establish acceptable behavior by elected officials as it pertains to city issues.
Council considered and approved the resolution for pavement of the Dolce fishing pier, situated on Army Corps of Engineers property, within the town limits. HISID Manager Lawrence Blood said that council’s approval of the resolution would serve as a benefit to expedite the pavement project.
Freedom of Information Act procedures were discussed for a future resolution as they relate to the steps followed in processing FOIA requests of city documents, meeting records, and public information. Graves recommended adopting a best practice procedure of scanning documents for electronic storage and easy retrieval.
She suggested the city create a standardized form for all FOIA requests and to offer it on the city’s website when that is established. For public transparency Graves discussed regular protocols of public information including the electronic posting of meeting videos on YouTube, with a link from the website.
Council also discussed charging $5 for information provided by electronic thumb drive. “We want to be accessible, there’s no doubt about that,” council member Jerry Pittman said.
City Hall is expected to set up their physical location in the HISID office as they have not yet established their offices. Currently public meeting notices have been placed on the FaceBook page at City of Holiday Island 2020.
The next meeting has not yet been scheduled.