By Rick Harvey
RHarvey@CarrollCoNews.com
Residents interested in following the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission might have a more challenging time doing so moving forward.
At its regular meeting Wednesday, Feb. 22, at The Auditorium, the CAPC voted 4-0 to immediately change the start time of meetings and workshops to 3 p.m. — a time that could be problematic for residents and business owners wanting to attend.
Moreover, new commission chair Chris Clifton again brought up the idea of CAPC meetings no longer being recorded on video or live-streamed on the city’s YouTube page, a practice that gave those unable to attend a way to watch each meeting.
“For me, it’s very late,” Clifton said of the time schedule that has been used in recent years where CAPC workshops have started at 5 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month and regular meetings have begun at 6 p.m. on the fourth Wednesday of the month. “[The change in time] just helps me personally. So, that’s where I come from.”
Commissioners David Avanzino, Chris Jones and Steve Holifield said they were OK with the time change, although Holifield cautioned waiting on taking action since commissioners Jeff Carter and Mark Hicks were absent from Wednesday’s meeting.
“I’m good with it, too, but we do have two people not here and I’m not sure we should make a decision without their input,” Holifield said.
Avanzino said he liked the time change and if “they don’t like it they can bring it up when they are present.”
Clifton also mentioned the idea of moving the CAPC meetings to the recently renovated basement at the Auditorium, something that the city council also mentioned doing at its last meeting. That led to Holifield asking whether the space in the basement would be suitable to continue to record and broadcast the meetings.
“So, that’s the third part of the logistics is doing away with video,” Clifton said. “The state law is we have to have audio. My thought is it has been political. [Video] has helped things be more political than they should be, and I’m afraid it limits debate because people worry about cameras and things.
“It’s not about like not being transparent. I want everyone to come to the meetings.”
The topic of moving to audio-only recordings of the meetings wasn’t voted on at Wednesday’s meeting after Holifield suggested it should be a separate topic and discussion. Commissioners said it would be discussed at the next workshop, now scheduled for 3 p.m. Wednesday, March 8.
Currently, the few city meetings or workshops held during the day — typically only cemetery commission meetings and an occasional hospital commission workshop — are only audio-recorded and are currently only available via a CD from City Hall for a small fee. All other commission meetings and workshops are usually video-recorded and live-streamed.
CAPC meetings have drawn great public interest for years, many times rivaling interest in city council meetings. In fact, YouTube videos of CAPC meetings often have more views than council meetings.
That included the Feb. 8 CAPC meeting, which, as of Thursday morning, Feb. 23, had 164 views. Also as of Feb. 23, the CAPC meeting on Jan. 31 had 101 views and the Feb. 22 meeting already had more than 50 views a little more than 12 hours after it took place.
A CAPC meeting last September has been viewed more than 300 times.

NO RE-VOTE ON INTERIM DIRECTOR
Despite not legally voting to approve CAPC finance director Scott Bardin as interim director at its Feb. 8 meeting, commissioners took no action to correct the error at Wednesday’s meeting.
At the Feb. 8 meeting, commissioners voted to go into executive session in order to discuss the hiring of Bardin as interim director. After commissioners returned to their seats following the session, Carter, who was then the chair, announced “we’re still in our executive session.”
A motion, second and vote was made to made to hire Bardin as interim director. After the vote, Carter asked for a motion to end the executive session and return to an open public meeting.
“So, there was some confusion or questioning of our executive session from the last meeting and that was double-checked with the Municipal League,” Clifton said at Wednesday’s meeting. “We announced we were going into executive session and then came back out and we voted publicly. And there is never any vote in executive session or anything like that.”
This isn’t the first time that the commission has returned to the table from an executive session and taken a vote before officially adjourning the executive session. In April 2020, the commission went into executive session for the announced purpose of discussing salaries and contracts for employees and contractors — which is not permissible under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The law outlines specific guidelines for public bodies meeting in executive session.
“(E)xecutive sessions will be permitted only for the purpose of considering employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining, or resignation of any public officer or employee,” the act says, with the only exception being for matters related to the security of a public water system or utility system. “The specific purpose of the executive session shall be announced in public before going into executive session.”
After commissioners returned to the table at the April 2020 meeting, they voted not to renew the contract of Lacey Ekberg, who had been shifted from the full-time executive director’s role to a contractor status after discrepancies between her resume and her actual work history were revealed. After voting not to renew Ekberg’s contract, the commission voted to adjourn the executive session and return to open session, just as it had a meeting in February 2020 when it voted to shift Ekberg to contractor status.
John Tull, a partner in the Little Rock law firm of Quattlebaum, Grooms and Tull, said in April 2020 that the commission’s votes on Ekberg were improper.
“You’re supposed to come back from executive session into the normal session and vote in public,” Tull said. “You can’t have a vote in executive session. I don’t think they’re following the proper protocol and someone could question that vote if it were done in a quote, executive session, close quote. They should adjourn the executive session, come back out, announce that they’re returning to normal session and then make the vote.”
Tull received the Arkansas Press Association’s Freedom of Information Award in 2018 and has provided members of the press association with legal assistance since the early 1990s.
Clifton said he doesn’t believe the vote on Bardin was improper.
“So, when you start reading like Robert’s Rules of Order or even if you get into, and I’ve got a copy of it, the Arkansas FOIA policy, it doesn’t give you a clear, like you have to do it this way as far as like voting to go in or out or any of that,” Clifton said Wednesday. “It’s you announce, you go in, you come back out, and it’s really pretty straightforward. So we want to be transparent, but we do have some legal requirements there.”
The Freedom of Information Act states: “No resolution, ordinance, rule, contract, regulation or motion considered or arrived at in executive session will be legal unless, following the executive session, the public body reconvenes in public session and presents and votes on the resolution, ordinance, rule, contract, regulation or motion.”

PLANS FOR HIRING DIRECTOR
Wednesday’s meeting also included discussion on forming a hiring committee to vet candidates for the permanent CAPC director’s position.
Clifton said Lynn Berry, wife of Eureka Springs Mayor Butch Berry and director of communications for the Branson Convention and Visitors Bureau, has once again offered to help the committee in the process of selecting a replacement for Madison Dawson, who recently stepped down.
Clifton said he recently met with the city’s human resources department about the hiring process of CAPC staff positions and urged commissioners to be mindful of the privacy of candidates who apply for the roles.
“We have to be really careful protecting confidentiality in the interview process,” Clifton told commissioners.
Clifton later said that once the interview process starts, candidates should be referred to as “candidate A, B, those type things.”
“I would just encourage the public to know that we have a duty to protect people’s privacy,” he said. “So, we will have to go into executive session for personnel matters.”
According to Arkansas’ open-record law, the names of all applicants, including job applications and resumes — with information such as addresses and phone numbers redacted — are public record and can be released through the FOIA.

FUNDING APPROVALS
Commissioners approved four funding requests from grouping hosting upcoming events.
Requests of $5,000 were unanimously approved for Opera in the Ozarks, Jeep Jam and a request from Basin Park Hotel general manager Jack Moyer for a new event, Eureka Springs Blues Party, an event that will feature blues, rock and funk music.
A request of $3,000 was also approved for Springtime in the Ozarks.