FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The first recording of City Council meetings began Monday night but not without an ironic twist.

“I don’t see anything in the minutes about a vote being taken,” said Councilman Mike Ford referring to the Dec. 28 council meeting when the procedure to begin recording council and Planning and Zoning Commission meetings was adopted by resolution in a 4-1 vote.

That December meeting was not recorded, and Ford questioned Monday night whether the council had in fact voted on the resolution the previous month.

“We did vote on that?” he asked.

“Yes we did,” said City Clerk Lisa Hanks, who takes the minutes by hand, and until Monday’s meeting did not have a recording to verify definitively what occurred.

At the start of the Jan. 11 meeting, the first order of business was to adopt the minutes from the last council meeting of 2009.

Ford, whose vote was the lone one against the resolution to record meetings, noted that the minutes did refer to a vote being taken in the case of all the other resolutions adopted at that meeting but not for the new recording procedure.

“It says the resolution was adopted, but it doesn’t say it was voted on,” Ford said. “The vote was 4 to 1, and I voted against (it). I think that should be in the minutes.”

Monday night, Ford moved to amend the minutes to reflect several changes, which also included identifying him as the council member who moved at the Dec. 28 meeting to reduce the time period for retaining copies of the digital recordings from seven years to two weeks, which died for lack of a second. These changes were unanimously approved by the council.

The new procedure requires that City Council and Planning and Zoning Commission meetings “be recorded for a verbatim transcript to be on the record to aid in the preparation of the minutes.”

Hanks said the digital recording of council and commission meetings will be maintained on a computer in her office and are public records.

As of press time, she had not met with the city’s information technology director to upload the digital recording onto her computer. So, she could not verify that either the Jan. 4 commission or Jan. 11 council meeting had, in fact, been recorded.

“Lisa, just push the red button?” Council President Lonnie Mixon asked at the start of Monday’s council meeting, referring to the tiny digital recorder on the dais in front of him. “No lights come on to show it’s working.”

The first words spoken at Monday’s meeting, which preceded even the invocation and pledge of allegiance, were those of Mixon who announced the new procedure.

“For your information, tonight’s meeting and all future meetings of the council and also the planning commission will be recorded,” Mixon told the audience. “So anytime that you have anything to say, you have to come up to the lectern and speak into the microphone, so it can be recorded.”

Shortly thereafter, Ford raised the questions about what he said were not reflected in the minutes from the Dec. 28 meeting regarding the resolution that created the new recording procedure.

Councilman Rick Kingrea said at that meeting that he introduced the resolution in order to have a permanent actual record of what occurs at council and commission meetings because some residents have questioned the accuracy of the minutes in some controversial cases.

A Fairhope Courier story about that Dec. 29 meeting did note that the council voted 4 to 1, with Ford against, to start recording such meetings. The newspaper also recorded that meeting on a microcassette recorder but the reporter thinks he has taped over it.