North Plains closed the doors. Did the council ever reopen the meeting?
Missing records and a councilor’s Facebook disclosure raise new questions about what happened after an August 11 executive session.
North Plains residents are once again being asked to trust City Hall without being allowed to see what happened.
At the August 11 special City Council meeting, attendees say Council President Mandy Hagedorn was absent, leaving Councilor Mark DeForge to preside. The city has not posted minutes identifying who attended or explaining Hagedorn’s absence.
Before entering a planned executive session to discuss current or potential litigation, DeForge reportedly read from a prepared statement saying the public would be allowed back into the room before the meeting was gaveled out.
Multiple people who attended in person independently told The Real Friends of North Plains that never happened. They say the doors remained locked and, when they were finally opened, the meeting had already ended.
Multiple Zoom participants reported the same experience: they remained online but were never returned to the public meeting.
Those reports raise straightforward questions that normal access to the city’s records would answer:
Did the council reconvene in open session?
If so, when—and how was the public notified?
Was any motion made, direction given or action taken?
Why were the people waiting outside and on Zoom unable to observe it?
Oregon’s Government Ethics Commission says that when a public meeting resumes after an executive session, the governing body must use reasonable means to give interested people actual notice. Final decisions cannot be made in executive session; the council must return to open session for final action. OGEC’s executive-session guidance specifically warns against reopening without giving the public a genuine opportunity to attend.
The public record has gone dark
As of August 17, the city’s meeting archive shows no council minutes after May 18. Videos are posted only through July 6. That leaves meetings on June 1, June 15, July 6, July 20, July 31 and August 11 without posted minutes—and the three most recent completed meetings without either minutes or video.
A missing YouTube upload alone is not a legal violation. But ORS 192.650 requires a written record or sound, video or digital recording of every meeting and requires that it be available within a reasonable time. The record must identify members present and document motions, decisions and votes.
Nearly three months without minutes is not a small delay. Those missing records cover the departure of three city managers and a mayor. We'll let you be the judge of whether the city is in compliance with what the law requires.
Then DeForge made an announcement
Three days after the executive session, DeForge made a strange, out of context post to his facebook account that the city “will be announcing” a stipulated motion for voluntary remand in its pending LUBA case. He added that repeal of Ordinance 489 would “likely be following.”
Ordinance 489 adopted the city’s updated Housing Needs Analysis and is the subject of LUBA Case 2024-044. As of August 10, LUBA’s official schedule still listed oral argument for September 29.
If the council were to have undertaken the action DeForge described, it would be of monumental public interest. Yet we know nothing.
This is precisely the situation Oregon's sunlight laws are designed to protect citizens from.
DeForge’s post does not yet establish that the council secretly voted. The filing could have been authorized through another lawful process. We also do not know whether the August 11 executive session concerned this case.
That is precisely the problem: the public has no minutes, no video and no explanation.
Did the council make a decision behind closed doors? Did DeForge disclose a city position before the city announced it? Or is there another explanation?
North Plains residents should not have to reconstruct city business from locked doors, blank spaces on a website and one councilor’s Facebook page. The city should release the meeting record and answer these questions immediately.
