The South Bend Common Council is considering two moves to make the new city clerk’s job easier, soon after criticizing her predecessor for being too slow.
While serving as city clerk from 2019 through last year, Dawn Jones didn’t often get along well with the council and mayor James Mueller. One of their big complaints about Jones was that it took her too long to process meeting minutes.
At Monday’s council meeting, the council will consider two items to reduce the workload of new clerk Bianco Tirado, who was endorsed by Mueller and defeated Jones in the May primary election.
One would allow Tirado to hire someone to prepare the rough drafts of meeting minutes. Jones had angered the council when she paid her daughter to prepare the minutes without council approval and against city ordinance.
In the other action, the council will consider creating a new council administrative assistant, at a salary up to $58,000. The job’s duties closely align with what the clerk does, including scheduling council meetings, providing administrative and technical support for the council, and handling council communications.
Indiana’s public access counselor has said minutes typically should be prepared within 14 days. Council member Troy Warner, sponsor of the meeting minutes bill, said Tirado has inherited a backlog of about 60 meetings that need minutes transcribed. He says she eventually wants to purchase artificial intelligence software for the job, but would hire a firm, at a lower cost, to transcribe them initially.
"Once we get the backlog kind of caught up of the meeting minutes, then the clerk's office will evaluate that again," Warner says.
Warner declined to comment on the bill creating a new council assistant, and said he didn’t yet know whether he’ll support it.
