LAKEWOOD INFORMER

Authored by Jeffrey A. Roberts via Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition Three Lakewood City Council members are raising free-speech concerns after Mayor Adam Paul muted two of their microphones while they spoke during a Monday meeting on Zoom convened to consider changes to the city manager’s contract. “You did not mute the other councilors who were singing her (the city manager’s) praises,” council member Rich Olver said to Paul during the 43-minute meeting. “You just want to mute the councilors who are not singing her praises.” Continue reading at ColoradoFOIC.org

Produced by Brother Jeff via Jeff Fard Brother Jeff interviews Lakewood City Council Member Anita Springsteen: “Muting Council Members, First Amendment Rights, Contract Approvals, Death Threat and the City of Lakewood Update. 30 Minutes with Anita Springsteen.” https://www.facebook.com/jeff.fard/videos/607644554464150 (interview starts after intro music video)

Guest post from Lenore Herskovitz On December 5, the Council was scheduled to go into executive session for the purpose of discussing personnel matters pertaining to re-incentivizing City Manager,  Kathy Hodgson’s employment agreement. Unfortunately, before the meeting was to begin no written materials about the topic were provided by Mayor Adam Paul or Mayor Pro tem Sharon Vincent. As a result, Councilors Able, Springsteen, Olver and Janssen voted against going into executive session. The discussion regarding Ms. Hodgson’s contract was rescheduled for a public meeting on December 19. The Mayor did not seem pleased about this change in plans but did not acknowledge any personal responsibility in causing the delay. The Mayor referenced the canceled executive session several times on the 19th, placing full blame on the four Councilors. As the special meeting progressed, the Mayor repeatedly interrupted or muted Councilors Able, Springsteen and Olver. Councilors Mayott-Guerrero and Shahrezaei praised the City Manager without mentioning any of her specific accomplishments. They both stated that they supported the contract. When Councilor Olver offered an opposing view, he was interrupted by the Mayor who continued to talk over him for the remainder of his comment. The Mayor stated that personnel matters were meant to be held in private to avoid personal liability issues resulting from making negative comments in public. It was perfectly acceptable for the two councilors to make positive comments about Ms. Hodgson to explain their support of the contract, but the councilor who opposed it had his explanation suppressed....

On December 19, there was a special meeting for the sole purpose of discussing a resolution to amend the City Manager’s Employment Agreement. At issue is re-incentivizing the contract, which was first discussed in executive session in May 2022. Kathy Hodgson has been the city manager for 13 years. City survey data from before her start and now is an easy way to see how we the people view the city and thus our city manager. From the executive summary, the city survey reports that “Lakewood residents enjoy a good quality of life” and “concerns about safety have increased over time.” Looking closer, we see those statements are true; 84% of survey respondents rated Lakewood good to very good in “overall quality of life”. In that respect, the City Manager could be said to be doing a good to very good job. Unremarked upon was the fact that the statistic down from 90% in 2008. In fact, most categories dealing with quality of life in Lakewood are down. In fact, only one goes up, and that’s not for the city, it’s quality of neighborhoods. So from most standpoints, quality of life in Lakewood is going down. There is data on the quality of city services going back to 2013. At that time, 65% of respondents rated the services as good or pretty good. In 2022, that was down to 50%. That is a 15% drop in overall satisfaction. From this brief data capture, we can see that the city survey...