I wrote extensively on March 30 about what appear to be flagrant violations of the Texas Open Meetings Act (TOMA) by the City of Bastrop with its called meeting on March 31.
But wait! There’s more.
Another meeting has been called. This time for Wednesday, April 2, 2025. The agenda says it’s a Special City Council Meeting. But you wouldn’t know that by scanning the list of meetings. It’s not called a Special City Council Meeting on the list of City Council meetings. It’s called “Pet Microchipping Townhall Meeting”.

What’s a city-sponsored “Townhall Meeting” anyway? There is no such meeting type in the Bastrop Charter or Rules of Procedure. Both the PDF and HTML agendas for this meeting repeatedly refer to a City Council meeting or the Council. The HTML public agenda actually says this is a “Special City Council Meeting”. All references to the Council, on both agendas, are highlighted below. Why would any member of the public accessing either of these agendas think this is not a City Council meeting?
And, did I mention that once again, the HTML version of the agenda says there will be a closed session at 5PM, a “Mayor’s State of the City Address” at 6PM and the meeting starts at 6:30. Yes, it does, and it also says, in the upper right corner, that the meeting starts at 5:30. One agenda. Two different meeting start times. The PDF version of the agenda also says the meeting starts at 5:30. So, which is it?
As a member of the public, I have to guess if the meeting starts at 5:30 or at 6:30. I have to guess if that “Mayor’s State of the City Address” will be given or repeated from the other poorly noticed meeting two days earlier, or not. I also have to guess who is giving presentations and guess at the subject matter. Presentations should be identified along with the presenter on an agenda.
The point of the Texas Open Meetings Act is so that citizens know what is going on at City Hall, what their elected officials are up to, and to allow citizens a forum to express their views on the topics advertised.
Governing bodies and city officials can’t just make it up as they go. This meeting completely fails the TOMA test. It should be properly noticed as a Council meeting with a quorum of the Council in attendance to officially listen to and collect citizen input on this subject.