Jun. 10—GRAND FORKS — Grand Forks City Council has not published its meeting minutes in the Herald in nearly a year, despite a mandate to do so.

A review of the Herald’s public notice web archive as well as a statewide database of public notices published in North Dakota newspapers shows the city has not published its meeting minutes in the newspaper since June 2023.

The City Council is also lagging by several months in approving its meeting minutes for release on its own website.

City Clerk Sheri Lundmark says the delays are a result of software issues and a persistent staff shortage, but the city is on track to make up the gap.

“Unfortunately, it’s been a year, and it’s not a good excuse, but we think we’ve got everything fixed up now so we’re on a good path,” Lundmark said.

The city of Grand Forks is required to regularly publish public notices in the Herald, the city’s official newspaper, of the city’s meeting minutes and a listing of checks issued by the city.

State law does not include a specific mandate for local governing bodies to publish these notices in newspapers, but voters across North Dakota mandate they do in regular referendums, according to North Dakota Newspaper Association Executive Director Cecile Wehrman.

“If the voters say they want these things published, they’re required by law to do it,” Wehrman said.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether the city of Grand Forks and Grand Forks School Board will continue to be required to publish minutes of their meetings in two separate ballot measures.

The practice currently costs the city around $4,000 to $4,500 per year, according to City Administrator Todd Feland. He said the practice dates to a time when print news offered the most immediate source of information for residents about local government proceedings.

In the internet age, when cities can publish their own agendas, minutes and financial information online, the necessity of publishing that information in newspapers has “probably become more of a question mark than before,” Feland says.

Wehrman disagrees, pointing out it costs cities little to publish their meeting minutes in the paper and requiring a public notice means there’s an independent record of government proceedings.

There’s also a mandate for newspapers to make sure those notices are being submitted.

“If it’s just published on a government website, who’s going to make sure it gets published?” Wehrman said.

The Herald last published a public notice of the minutes of the Grand Forks City Council on June 28, 2023, according to its archives and the NDNA’s compilation of public notices. On that day, it published two notices, containing the minutes of its March 6 and March 30 meetings.

Lundmark said the delay in publishing meeting minutes and bills in the paper has been driven in part by issues city staff had transferring billing information from the city’s finance software to the automated listing software used by the Herald and other Forum Communications newspapers, Modulist. (Forum Communications sold Modulist to software developer Column in January.)

The problem, Lundmark says, has been exacerbated by high turnover and understaffing in the city finance department, which handles both the meeting minutes and bill listings.

That’s also contributed to monthslong delays at City Council to approve and publish official meeting minutes. The most recent official minutes published on the city website date to Jan. 16.

“It’s not fun for any of us to be in June and still be thinking about January,” Lundmark said.

Lundmark said the finance department is working to publish the backlog of meeting minutes and bill listings, which the city bundles in a single notice, now the finance department is fully-staffed.

She also said the finance department will designate a specific employee responsible for meeting minutes so the minutes can go before council for approval sooner.

The city has continued to publish notices for special assessments, ballot measures and other official city business in the Herald.

It has also published committee meeting minutes on the city website. Lundmark said the City Council’s formal meeting minutes are subject to a protracted vetting and revising process since those minutes will become part of the city archive.

The city also tries to publish the final minutes chronologically, she said.

“I’ve looked at other cities’ minutes and they don’t try and do the same things we do,” Lundmark said. “I’ll say we’re overachievers.”

Herald Publisher Korrie Wenzel said it was “unfortunate” he had not noticed the missing meeting minutes sooner, attributing it to the use of the third-party Modulist in lieu of an in-house team.

“I see this as an oversight, but I also see it as the exact reason why these things need to be in the paper,” Wenzel said. “Now that we’ve seen the oversight, we’re pressing to make sure it gets taken care of. Further, the fact that they haven’t had (the minutes) on their own website shows why newspapers are so important in this process.”