Westcliffe Mayor and BOT flaunt open meetings law again

“I talked to the Board members, and they all said the same thing, that Mark Dembosky should be the new Mayor Pro-Tem.” This statement by Westcliffe Mayor Paul Wenke was tantamount to a confession that he and the Board of Trustees (BOT) had talked with each other outside of a public meeting to come to a decision in secret about who would be the Mayor Pro-Tem after George Mowry resigned. The meeting took place on Tuesday, January 21 with the first agenda item to appoint a new Mayor Pro-Tem.

Further compounding the issue is that Colorado State law also states that it is the Board of Trustees’ right to appoint the Mayor Pro-Tem, not the Mayor. When this was pointed out during public comment by this author, Mayor Wenke stated, “In six years as Mayor, this is how we have always done it.” After the town attorney Clayton Buchner stated that, in fact, it was the board that needed to vote for the Mayor Pro-Tem, not the Mayor, the board hastily held a vote, with no discussion, to appoint Trustee Mark Dembosky as the new Mayor Pro-Tem.

What was not addressed was the fact that Mayor Wenke and the BOT have continued to show a complete flaunting of the Colorado Open Meetings Law month after month. Former Town Manager Caleb Patterson constantly advised the Mayor and BOT of the law, but his suggestions were often discarded, and he visibly irritated Mayor Wenke during a meeting in November. The law states that “All meetings of a quorum or three or more members of a body, whichever is fewer, at which any public business is discussed or at which any formal action may be taken must be open to the public unless an exception applies. The Open Meetings Law defines a “meeting” as “any kind of gathering, convened to discuss public business, in person, by telephone, electronically, or by other means of communication.”

In addition, a judge ruled in 2023 that the Open Meetings Law could not be skirted purposefully by a process of serial or daisy-chain meetings. Trustee Dembosky has been discussing a strategy where only two members of the board, which is one less than a quorum, could meet and hammer out long-term strategy and then relay those ideas or decisions to other members while not violating the Open Meetings Law. However, the Judge overseeing the 2023 case against the Douglas County School Board commented on this strategy by stating, “Circumventing the statute by a series of private one-on-one meetings at which public business is discussed and/or decisions reached is a violation of the purpose of the statute, not just its spirit,” In that case the school district paid $103,000 in attorney fees and costs.

As previously reported, it appeared that the BOT had violated the open meetings law in a December 12 meeting during an executive session. In addition, at the end of a workshop meeting on January 9, at the end of the meeting, Mayor Wenke asked two members to stay and talk, which appears to be another violation.

– Jordan Hedberg