PagosaDailyPost.com: My lawsuit challenging the Town Council’s decision to meet secretly in executive session on September 17, 2015 — behind closed doors, with their attorney Bob Cole and two private developers — reached a substantial conclusion when Judge Greg Lyman ordered the Town to make public a portion of the audio recording made during that secret meeting.

The Town Council decided on Thursday not to appeal Judge Lyman’s ruling to a higher court… and on Friday, Town Manager Greg Schulte emailed me the audio recording I was seeking. The Town’s attorney, Bob Cole, had assured the Council on September 17 that numerous instances of case law supported their decision to meet behind closed doors with two private developers. Apparently, Judge Greg Lyman did not agree with that assessment.

All that remains now is to settle up the attorney fees. As the losing party in the suit, the Town government may be responsible for all or most of my attorney costs.

After waiting almost a year for resolution on this case, I suppose the least I can do — for my readers and for anyone else in Colorado with the same concerns about secret government meetings — is to transcribe the recording I’ve been provided with, and share it here on the Daily Post.

Portions of the audio recording are inaudible — as was also mentioned by Judge Lyman in his written ruling (which you can download here.) I have occasionally used three dots “…” to indicate portions of the audio that I could not discern adequately. But I believe the following transcript is a fairly accurate textual record of the executive session meeting with developers Matt Mees and Bill Dawson.

We start off by noting that Mayor Don Volger instructed everyone to speak clearly into their microphones, perhaps knowing that the meeting — and the audio recording – were going to be the subject of a possible lawsuit. In some cases, the admonition was in vain.

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