Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SANDY — Multiple investigations into the water quality incident continue to move forward, while communication is a point of contention in Sandy City.
At this week’s council meeting, Sandy City Council staff employees voiced their anger after they were taken off of a citywide email distribution list after the water quality incident.
This agenda item sparked a lot of angst and a lot of questions and debate, even among council members.
Mayor Kurt Bradburn said taking council staff off was a mistake, but he wanted to help council members by not clogging up their email accounts and that there were trust issues, too.
"I just don’t like you making a unilateral decision about my email,” said city council member Kris Coleman-Nicholl.
“Well, and you’ll forgive me if I’m a little tentative about what information I give you after you leak sensitive personnel information (to a local media source),” said Mayor Bradburn, referring to the decision to put the city’s public utilities director on leave during an investigation after the water crisis.
“Okay,” Coleman-Nicholl relied, moving on to other orders of business, in one of many tense exchanges between leaders throughout the more than two-hour-long city council meeting.
The staff members are getting those emails again. But this small issue points to a bigger problem for Sandy spelled out by legal counsel.
.@sandycityutah council staff says they were intentionally left off city email lists. @MayorBradburn says it was his decision, but he didn’t mean to leave staff off just council to better improve comm.
— Caitlin Burchill (@newsyCaitlin) February 27, 2019
Staff mem. says if that’s true they should have been told to tell council pic.twitter.com/uRjFzphsA9
“Everybody in this room knows there’s some dysfunction that needs to be resolved, so that’s why it’s important to stay in your lanes as it related to what the branches, and the roles of the branches of government that you have,” Tracy Cowdell said.
While Cowdell said oversight is important, leaders are now grappling with how to get along and gain the public’s trust again.
“Sandy City is a great city to live in, to run for office in, and we are blowing it by the stuff that is going on,” said council member Linda Martinez Saville.
Council staff also brought up some hiring concerns, but the council tabled a budgetary oversight motion on the matter until next week’s meeting.
