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School committee meeting audio tapes erased

By: BETH BOTTIS

09/02/2004

NORTH KINGSTOWN- All of the audio recordings of all school committee meetings have been erased, leaving some residents, parents and school committee members roaring mad.
According to the school department, a technical problem that occurred when the district's computers were being upgraded inadvertently erased all audio recorded meetings of the school committee. The recordings had been saved on the computer of Konnie Mazur, school committee secretary.
However, the school department claims that the Open Meetings Law only requires public bodies to maintain written minutes of meetings.
"The (Attorney General's) Guide does not state that the school committee is required to maintain a recorded copy of meetings but we do this to aid in producing the written minutes," Mazur told town resident Chris Prata in an e-mail.
Prata says the issue arose a few weeks ago when he had requested copies of all of the recordings from the past two years. According to Prata, on several occasions over the last two years, when citizens spoke at school committee meetings during the open forum, some recordings 'ended early' and some portions of meetings were not on the tapes.
Prata said he requested copies of all the tapes to see what instances were omitted and if portions in the middle of meetings were erased, leaving the rest of the meeting intact.
Now Prata says he wants some answers. He has requested information about when the recording equipment was purchased; the make, model and cost as well as a copy of the invoice for the equipment; the minutes from any and all meetings discussing recording the minutes, including the decision to buy the equipment.
Additionally, Prata has requested the names of the IT personnel who performed the destruction of public records; the names and titles of the supervisory and/or managerial IT personnel; any and all correspondence regarding the destruction, including memos and e-mails; and any and all written procedures regarding the recording of meetings.
Prata says that he has received answers on only some of his requests but has not yet received a copy of the invoice for the equipment along with a few other details.
Ironically, the school department had discussed possibly borrowing the copies of recording meetings from school committee member William Mudge, who has persistently demanded recordings after each meeting and had to pay each time he received a recording.
Mudge has said that he does not want to give his own discs to the school department to copy for fear that they will get lost or damaged again, and leave them with no recordings.
Prata, meanwhile, says that he does not believe that it was a coincidence that the recordings were erased when he was investigating missing segments.
Additionally, Prata says that the copied recordings from Mudge probably would not hold up in court since they had been out of the custody of the school department and anyone could claim that they were tampered with.
Prata stresses that this situation is not going to go away and that he will continue to pursue his requests.