Winter Park adds fine print to email disclaimer

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the City Commission’s actions on rules governing written communication. The Commission did not vote on the discussion item.

A communication controversy seems to have been put to rest by the Winter Park City Commission Monday, but there’s a lot of fine print involved.

“That thing has more warnings than a Viagra commercial,” Commissioner Tom McMacken said of a new mandatory disclaimer aimed to keep mass emails on the straight and narrow.

The city-staff-generated disclaimer came in response to a series of newsletter emails that Commissioner Carolyn Cooper had sent out to a list of recipients detailing her opinions about city issues.

None of those communications were deemed unethical, but fears that she may have been mistaken as speaking for the entire Commission led to calls for official rules about mass emails or mailers. Other commissioners had also received the emails, which they said may have the potential to violate the Government in the Sunshine Act.

The new set of “legalese” rules for commissioners discussed adding a disclaimer to all written communication warning recipients that the opinions stated only belonged to the commissioner sending them. That would only apply to mailers or emails that will be read by 10 or more recipients.

Mayor Ken Bradley wanted to be sure that the rules weren’t so restrictive that they couldn’t send out holiday greeting cards without a legal disclaimer.

“If you wanted to send out a Happy New Year message… would you want to be able to do that too?” Bradley asked Leary. That would be allowed, City Manager Randy Knight said.

And that was the end of it, as far as McMacken hoped.

“I personally would like to put this thing to bed,” he said. “I know we’ve talked about it and talked about it and talked about it.”

But Commissioner Steven Leary had an idea that could solve the issue at once: Getting the commissioners on the Internet officially.

“We can kind of do away with a lot of the stuff if each commissioner had a page on the city’s website,” Leary said. “Each commissioner could post a thought on the page at any time. I don’t think it helps the discussion… but it would give them the opportunity to post on any issue at any time.”

Knight didn’t comment on the idea of individual pages for each commissioner.

McMacken was hoping the issue was finally finished.

“In the spirit of the last conversation, guys… it’s just [time for] moving forward,” he said. “You put it behind you and just move forward.”