The Fairmont City Council postponed a vote Monday to update the city’s record retention and data practices policy after three council members wanted a summary of any major changes from existing policy.

The policy governs procedures to handle information requests from private citizens.

Flaherty & Hood, the city’s interim legal counsel, requested the policy update after handling several information requests for the city. The law firm suggested that rather than evaluate Fairmont’s existing policy and procedures, the city should adopt a model of data practices and records retention program that is familiar to the attorneys and used in other communities where they provide legal services.

Ruth Cyphers suggested the vote be postponed or tabled. Tom Hawkins said he understood the attorneys not wanting to spend a lot of time reviewing the old policy, but thought that “in a 30-minute billing, they could give us just a synopsis of what the highlights are.” “I’d like to just see what the changes are,” said council member Randy Lubenow “If we’ve got it from 2017 from the League of Minnesota Cities, and now they’re asking us to change it again, what are the changes? Why are they requesting that?”

City Administrator Humpal said he would pass on the council’s request for a summary of any major policy changes to the law firm and ask for a time and cost estimate of preparing it.

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