Emails to Missoula city council no longer easily publicly viewable due to format change (2024)

For at least 10 years, journalists and anyone with access to the Internet could read all the emails sent to members of the Missoula city council and the mayor and all emails sent between those elected officials.

The topics ranged from the mundane — people complaining about dog poop on public trails — to matters of high importance to public interest, such as city council members arguing with each other over policy proposals or businesses attempting to influence the mayoron particular issues.

The emails are a window into what the voters and taxpayers in Missoula are interested in and what they want to talk to their elected officials about. In 2007, then-Missoulian reporter Keila Szpaller revealed that city council members were sending emails to each other during public meetings, oftentimes "discrediting the public, scheduling lunch meetings and making jokes." The emails also revealed strategic alliances between some members.

The emails are also public records, and like a lot of government records, are available to the public under the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the Montana Public Records Act.

Now, on the website that used to show all the emails to city council listed by date, there is simply a message that says "As of March 4, 2024, City Council emails will no longer be published on the city website. You may continue to connect with your city council representatives by (contacting individual members or emailing the entire city council through the form)."

City council president Amber Sherrill was unaware of the website that showed all the archived emails and was unaware that they were no longer posted until the Missoulian contacted her on Thursday morning.

"I do think it's important that the public has access to their representatives and all public records are public," she said.

After looking into the matter, Sherrill called back with an explanation.

"It's a by-product of going to the new form email system," she said.

The form email system is better for the city council because it requires senders to list which of the six city wards they live in, Sherrill said. Before, when emails were sent to all 12 members, nobody had a clue which ward the sender lived in so sometimes nobody responded.

"I think it's a great system," Sherrill said. "So now, we can scroll down and say oh, that's Ward 6, that's (Ward 6 representative) Sandy (Vasecka) or oh, that's Ward 4, I need to get back with them."

Sherrill also said she's been told the old system was extremely labor-intensive for the city clerk, who had to convert dozens of emails everyday into PDFs and then upload them.

"Especially if we have a contentious issue, they would get behind," Sherrill explained.

Sherrill said she would work with city staff to look into the possibility of coming up with a system that would allow the emails to be published regularly without taking up too much staff time.

In the meantime, all emails to city council are still accessible, but they have to be acquired through a more cumbersome public records request through the city.

The Missoula County website does not publish emails sent to the county commissioners online, but those are also available via a public records request.

Under the Montana Public Records Act, emails from private citizens and other types of correspondence that are received by government officials are considered public records.

The Missoula City Council's Committee of the Whole discussed the email format change on March 13 of this year. In that meeting, city council member Daniel Carlino expressed his desire for constituent emails to city council to still show up on a city website. He asked a city staff member if it was possible and the staff member responded that it took a lot of staff time.

"I know sometimes journalists have been like 'oh look, wow, I can see a bunch of constituents are reaching out to Missoula city council'," Carlino said at the time. "Is there a way to track people's emails when they email us all because it was kind of nice having them on the website so people can see what people are saying."

Dale Bickell, the city's chief administrative officer, said it was possible to keep the website up but it was "difficult to manage" and a "constant issue with capacity."

Amber Sherrill was absent from that meeting, as were four other city council members.

City council member Mirtha Becerra said she'd like to see the city give the new format "a try".

"It's not set in stone," she said. "If we hear from the media or anyone saying that they would like to see some changes I think we can work through that. I think it would be great to give this an amount of time to see if it works and tweak it if needed."

She said the new way was a good compromise between effective use of staff time and still allowing constituents a way to reach the council members.

City communications director Ginny Merriam said that the old system was a huge workload for the city clerk's office.

"We were the only government we know of that was doing this," Merriam said. "The County doesn't post emails as a matter of course, nor does the state. But they are all public records."

She said the Missoulian's request this week was the first time anyone had inquired about the change.

"I've heard from several council members that they are communicating much better with their constituents because they are not just receiving a barrage of emails addressed to the entire council," Merriam said.