As recently as 2016, once a month, the city would drop off its council meeting packet at my office — about 60-100 pages of agenda, minutes, the check register, project bids and department reports.

I referred to the file as my monthly light reading, but I’ll let you in on a little journalism secret: some of the best news is buried.

In my 14th year as a journalist — and celebrating my 10-year anniversary of working at the Democrat on Saturday — I have been to more meetings than many can fathom. From school boards to city councils, health departments to fire departments, and ambulance districts to county commissions, name a tax-supported entity and I’ve probably attended its meeting. My favorite ever was the mayoral council in Searcy, Ark., where 13 or so city leaders formed a unique body that allowed the county judge to greet everyone by the same title as they came in, saying, “Good evening, mayor.”

Every such meeting has an agenda. By Missouri Sunshine Law, all public governmental bodies shall give notice of the time, date and place of each meeting, and its tentative agenda, in a manner reasonably calculated to advise the public of matters to be considered.

In layman’s terms, posting the agenda with a time, date and location on the front door of city hall or a school admin office suffices. While I have seen this law disregarded or abused at certain times, even overseeing coverage of multiple incidents when I was editor in Monett, I have not seen such incidents in south Barry County.

After a few years here, the physical copies of packets and agendas were replaced with digital PDFs emailed to me around the same time of the month. Now, technology has progressed enough that many entities post their agendas and packets online.

This is the case for the city of Cassville, which also still emails me the packet, and the Cassville school board.

There is also a difference between getting only an agenda and getting a full packet. The agenda contains only the bullet points of discussion topics, a schedule for the meeting. The packet on the other hand, contains all kinds of information and documents relevant to the agenda items.

If you are interested in what is discussed at Cassville City Council meetings or Cassville School board meetings but cannot attend, you can usually get about 90 percent of the gist from the packets — for the other 10 percent, you have to witness the discussion in person.

The city of Cassville met on Monday, for example, with an agenda that, in my experience, looked a bit slim. Almost all meetings begin with the “Consent Agenda,” which contains items like approving minutes, approving paying bills and approving minor purchases. These can all be approved with one vote to speed up the process, and barring any unique circumstances, takes maybe a minute.

After that, the “Regular Agenda” begins, first with visitors addressing the council if there are any, then moving to considerations of bids and finally to new business.

This month, Cassville opened and considered bids for water tower inspections and mowing services, approving those bids later in the new business part of the meeting.

In new business, there were only six items to be considered. The city called for an election to continue its capital improvement tax, initiated a 45-day comment period prior to making changes in the LAGERS retirement plan, awarded the tower inspection bid to Maguire Iron, Inc., awarded the mowing contract to Yock’s Mowin’ Service, authorized an agreement with Cintas for uniforms and consumable goods, and appointed Alderwoman Taylor Weaver and former mayor and Cassville Resident Jim Craig to the Planning and Zoning Board.

From a reporter’s perspective, there’s not much news there to cover outside of the capital improvement tax election, which I will have a story about in coming weeks.

The rest can be explained simply. The LAGERS change moves a small percentage of cost off employees and to the city. Maguire will clean and inspect the city’s five water towers for three years for a total cost of $24,990, split up as work is completed.

Yock’s contract was the most interesting, as it went up nearly 50 percent but, at $202,932, was also about half the cost of the other two bids. The reason for the hike was staffing and pay increases, And the city accounted for a 5 percent increase in cost, so it plans to offset the extra with decreased spending on other budget line items.

Cintas has been a long-time uniform provider and “consumable” goods amounts to toilet paper and hand towels at city properties. And, the P&Z appointments are routine in January.

More interesting than anything you can read on the agenda itself is the 32 pages of packet information relating to the next agenda section: departmental reports. In those pages are reports from the police, public works and finance departments, plus a report from Element 79, the city’s economic development partner.

In the police report, there’s a breakdown of the calls in December 2023; a report on activities of Cpt. James Smith, the department’s child crimes investigator; breakdowns of call volume per day; and an annual report for 2023 call type and volume.

In public works’ report, there’s updated on just about every job city employees have completed in the last 30 or so days, updates on the sewer project, information on effluent at the treatment plant and any discharge from the lagoon (no discharge in December).

The finance report tells spending and revenue for the 2023 fiscal year, sales tax revenue breakdowns and an update on what staff has accomplished since the last meeting.

Element 79’s may be the most interesting. Just a flash in the pan at the meeting, you would have to attend in person or seek out the packet to know Cassville has now partnered with an online listing company to help promote commercial property sales.

It was here I learned the fact of the meeting for me — Cassville has 10 commercial buildings currently listed for sale. They include: Designs by Debbie, Copy Cat, Tim’s Fly shop, B&K Auto Body Building, Route 76 Pool Hall (former American Legion building), Hartland Apartments, Four Seasons Real Estate building, a commercial lot near Walmart, Peddler’s RV Park near Roaring River State Park and the former Red Iron Workshop on Highway 76. I’ll be the first to admit, of those 10, I only knew about Tim’s Fly Shop and the Pool Hall.

At these monthly meetings, I am typically the only person attending who is not associated with the city. The only time residents ever attend meetings, for the most part, is when they have a complaint.

Now, I know attending meetings is my job, not yours. And, delivering information city residents need to know is also my job. However, with the availability of agendas and packets in 2024, those who wish to seek information and be informed can easily do so.

I encourage you as a city resident to pay attention to what happens at city hall, and as a parent or school district taxpayer to pay attention to what happens at your school district.

With a little light reading, you may learn and you may be satisfied or left with questions. With a little light reading, you can be informed and engaged.

And, if you have questions, you can call me to investigate.

Kyle Troutman has served as the editor of the Cassville Democrat since 2014 and became Publisher in 2023. He was named William E. James/Missouri Outstanding Young Journalist for daily newspapers in 2017, and he won a Golden Dozen Award from ISWINE in 2022. He may be reached at 417-847-2610 or ktroutman@cassville-democrat.com.