Forum Editorial: Council must be ready for difficult conversations
EDITORIAL MUG: Editorial art Horizontal
We take our role as our community’s newspaper seriously. That means trumpeting our community’s successes, and also pointing out where we fail to meet the standards we set for ourselves. Sometimes that means difficult conversations.
Stories like the one on our front page this week are never easy. That’s why over a month of investigation, we bent over backwards to try to be as open and honest as we could with city officials about where our story was headed. To the detriment of our community, we never did get much of a response.
So we can’t say why the Maryville City Council has been holding so many closed meetings lately — more in 2025 than in the two prior years combined, and on track for a similar number this year. And we can’t say why meetings to discuss issues as mundane as a contribution to the Mosaic women’s health clinic were held behind closed doors, nor can we say for sure why more controversial topics of undeniable public interest, like a data center discussion, were held in closed session either.
All we can do is point to the facts. And the fact is, the council’s practice of holding so many closed meetings for reasons that plainly do not align with law needs to stop.
Perhaps even more dismaying than the negligent practices currently in place — and there’s really no other word for what’s been going on, from the meetings themselves, to the meeting minutes that show absent council members voting, to the lack of engagement so many feel from the council on the data center — is that none of our city officials seem to think they owe any kind of explanation.
But the only way things can change is to start with exactly that: an explanation.
Thus far, city staff have refused to explain how they decide which topics should be earmarked for closed session, and what guidance, if any, the council is given to keep the discussion on that very narrow topic.
We do not believe that anyone becomes a City Council member for any reason except that they feel they have something to give back to the community they care about. We ask our council members, so many of whom ran for their posts by saying they would be transparent, to provide those explanations publicly. And then, to go through a public process of changing those practices to ensure that our community leadership meets the standards we set for ourselves.
Even if it means a few difficult conversations.
