Sandy Oaks News began taking detailed records and recordings for the community directly after incorporation and before there was even a city government. The desire to keep solid records came after the Committee to Incorporate promised the community that it would announce the deadline for people to apply for office, but instead kept the deadline secret and created their own political action committee, SOPAC.
Honesty and transparency are issues that everyone cares about and besides being a source of information for the community, the goal and purpose of Sandy Oaks News is to keep a watchful eye on the city government in hopes of promoting government transparency.
Recording Has Helped the Community
So far, keeping records of meetings and conversations has helped lend some perspective on what’s going on in the community.
Somebody, either City Attorney Art Martinez de Vara, a Council member, or both, secretly changed something that the City Council voted on. The reason we know this is because there are records. We have records of what happened at the meeting and we have documents of the changed information and we can compare these against one another.
We know that Mayor Clement lied to voters outside the voting location last November because there’s an audio recording of him doing so.
We know that Mayor Clement lied to news media about property taxes because we have a recording of him talking about creating a retroactive tax.
We know that Alderman Gay lied in a speech he gave the Texas Public Policy Foundation because someone was videotaping the speech.
More than just catching liars, recording meetings helps Sandy Oaks News take accurate notes, which benefits everyone because it means the information is as accurate as possible.
Aldermen Tremblay and Ball Upset at Recording
On March 7, 2015 Alderman David Tremblay and Alderman Micki Ball met at the clubhouse with the purpose of meeting citizens. During the conversation with Sandy Oaks News, Ball gave short, snippy answers. When asked why she was being so rude, Ball replied that she didn’t appreciate being recorded.
When Alderman Tremblay realized he was being recorded, he refused to discuss any other topic, closed his notebook, and said “We’re done.”
Before getting up and walking out of the room, Tremblay asked “What have you ever done for the cause?”
Lack of Transparency In The Exact Same Meeting
In the very same meeting that Tremblay and Ball were upset, these issues came up:
Roads
Before Tremblay became upset he answered a few questions regarding roads. According to Tremblay, the city doesn’t own any roads. He believes that all of the roads inside of the Waterwood subdivision belong to Waterwood Development and that they will soon belong to the WPPOA. He also believes that all of the roads outside of Waterwood belong to the county. When Tremblay was asked to prove this, to show documentation, he said he didn’t have anything.
Tremblay personally benefits by claiming that the city doesn’t have responsibility of the roads because he doesn’t live in Waterwood. Instead, his own property tax bill would be lower as Waterwood residents would have to pay both a property tax bill for “city services”as well as the POA maintenance fee to repair roads.
City Business
Ball claimed that the meeting couldn’t be recorded because they had, in her words, “put it out there” that it wasn’t going to be a recorded meeting. But when the meeting was planned during a city council meeting, no one ever said anything about not being able to meet with and record city officials talking about city issues at a city designated meeting. There are multiple recordings of this city council meeting, and none of them include someone banning recording devices.
That wasn’t Micki Ball’s only lie. She also claimed that the meeting wasn’t, in her words, “city business.” According to Ball, she and Tremblay being at the clubhouse that day officially as a Aldermen and City Council representatives with the purpose of meeting and talking to citizens was not for “city business.”
Ball actually admitted later on that the meeting was an officially sanctioned meeting and that they had permission to be there for city business. How do we know this? Because it was recorded.
Hiding Public Information
Because the money being paid to City Attorney Art Martinez de Vara is from public funds, citizens have a legal right to know what he’s being paid. For months now, people have been wondering what the city has been paying him, but no one on the City Council is willing to tell citizens.
But when Alderman Ball was directly asked what Martinez de Vara was being paid, she refused to give the information, a violation of the Texas Public Information Act.
Alderman Ball broke Texas law. How do we know? Because it was being recorded.
There’s a Required Need for Recording
Citizens deserve to know what is going on in the community and what council members are saying, planning, and doing.
Sandy Oaks News is gong to record absolutely everything it possibly can to ensure that citizens in Sandy Oaks get as much information as possible in order to keep government open and transparent. If David Tremblay has a problem with that then he can keep walking out.
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