- Iron County Planning Commission postponed a meeting due to a scheduling error.
- The meeting was mistakenly scheduled for the year 226, causing legal concerns.
- The postponed meeting will address important agenda items in two weeks.
CEDAR CITY — What may have been Iron County's shortest ever commission planning meeting was held Monday, lasting less than 19 minutes. Approximately 10 of those minutes were spent sorting out a technical error that caused the meeting to be scheduled during the year 226.
"I posted it for July 13 of the year 226, slightly before Constantine was emperor," County Clerk John Whittaker joked when he discovered the mistake.
Due to the error, the meeting was not noted on the state website. According to the Open and Public Meeting Act, notice must be posted on the public organization's website and noted in local newspapers or information must be provided to local media. It also must be posted on the Utah Public Notice website, which is ran by the state. All this must be done at least 24 hours prior to the meeting.
The clerical error prompted several concerns for Commissioner Paul Cozzens, who brought attention to the error.
"We've got three action items, and we've got a topic discussion going from a three to five-member commission, which is a pretty huge discussion," Cozzens said. "For people who didn't get the notice of the agenda, they won't be able to speak to the items we are going to be discussing. I think it's a problem. I think we either need to talk about all these things again in the future meeting or cancel this meeting."
Other items on the agenda included an amendment to a request for approval for Iron Springs Inland Port Project Area and Legacy Racing to use county roads for an off-road event, which is scheduled for Aug. 28-30.
Whittaker said that the meeting was posted in "four different places," adding that he received email confirmation that he posted it to the state website.
"I've got evidence that it was posted to the public website, but I can't find it there," Whittaker said. "Sometimes if I type the date wrong, it's the wrong century."
Deputy County Attorney Sam Woodall, who was present at the meeting, said that it was possible to move forward with the meeting under an exception that includes an "unforeseen technology error."
"If you would call this, commissioners, a technology failure where (Whittaker) has made that attempt and it was posted on our county website, that is an option," Woodall said. "Otherwise, failure to notice could invite a lawsuit. You could proceed the meeting but take no action on actionable things."
After several minutes, Cozzens made the motion to postpone the meeting, and told KSL in an interview on Tuesday, that he believes that "it's not fair for the public to not know about these things."
"We all make mistakes. I get that," Cozzens said. "But since 2024, this is the fourth time this has happened, and we've just got to get it right. We need to post the notice on the state website, and then we need to go back and verify and see if it's there.
"If we make a mistake, we need to correct it," he added. "I build cabinets, and we measure twice and cut once. We make mistakes, but we make sure things are done right, and the public needs to know. We have public and open meetings, and they're entitled to get a copy of the agenda."
KSL spoke to Whittaker, who acknowledged his mistake, while also saying that he plans on contacting the state requesting they fix the process that allows people to make "an accident with a typo to have the meeting start in the year 226."
"I'm going to reach out to the state and say, 'Would you please just send an error message when someone is hosting in the past, because they probably aren't meaning to,'" he said. "We made a good-faith effort, but ultimately the commissioners decided not to move forward with the meeting."
The meeting has been postponed for two weeks, at which time, present-day, actionable items on the agenda will be discussed and decided on.
"I was upset, but it also struck me as funny," Whittaker said. "Like, oh, my gosh. That was scheduled before the Gregorian monks. That's a long time ago."
